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#3: Young: Young considers the public dimension of memorials, and of Holocaust memorials in particular. He notices that monuments refer us to the past, but that they can also play an activist role in the present, thus affecting the future. He quotes Marianne Doezema: "The public monument has a responsibility apart from its qualities as a work of art. It is not only the private expression of an individual artist; it is also a work of art created for the public, and therefore can and should be evaluated in terms of its capacity to generate human reactions."


Reflect on this statement, while looking at these public works of art: http://flavorwire.com/328208/10-playful-public-works-of-art/view-all

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James E. Young 0 114 activity of memory in monuments. It is my hope that such a critique may save our icons of remembrance from hardening into idols of remembrance, For too often a community's monuments assume the polished, finished vencer of a death mask, unreflective of current memory, unresponsive to contemporary issues. Instead of enshrining an already enshrined memory, the present study might provide a uniquely instructive glimpse of the monument's inner life the tempestuous social, political, and aesthetic forces-normally hidden by a monument's taciturn exterior. By drawing very idea back into view the memorial-making process, we invigorate the of the monument, thereby reminding all such cultural artifacts of their coming into being, their essential constructedness. To this end, I enlarge the life and texture of Holocaust memorials to in- clude: the times and places in which they were conceived, their literal con- struction amid historical and political realities, their finished forms in public spaces, their places in the constellation of national memory, and their ever-evolving lives in the minds of their communities and of the Jew- ish people over time. With these dimensions in mind, we look not only at the ways individual monuments create and reinforce particular memory of the Holocaust period, but also at the ways events re-enter political life shaped by monuments. Taken together, these stages comprise a genuine ac- tivity of memory, by which artifacts of ages past are invigorated by the present moment, even as they condition our understanding of the world around us. On a more general level, we might ask of all memorials what meanings are generated when the temporal realm is converted to material form, when time collapses into space, a trope by which it is then measured and grasped. How do memorials emplot time and memory? How do they im- pose borders on time, a facade on memory? What is the relationship of time to place, place to memory, memory to time? Finally, two fundamen- tally interrelated questions: How does a particular place shape our mem- ory of a particular time? And how does this memory of a past time shape our understanding of the present moment? Through this attention to the activity of memorialization, we might also remind ourselves that public memory is constructed, that understand- ing of events depends on memory's construction, and that there are worldly consequences in the kinds of historical understanding generated by monuments. Instead of allowing the past to rigidify in its monumental forms, we would vivify memory through the memory-work itself whereby events, their recollection, and the role monuments play in our lives remain animate, never completed. In this light, we find that the pers formance of Holocaust memorials depends not on some measured dis- tance between history and its monumental representations, but on the The Texture of Memory 215 which minds reflecting on the past inevitably precipitate in the present his- conflation of private and public memory, in the memorial activity by torical moment. It is not enough to ask whether or not our memorials re- member the Holocaust, or even how they remember it. We should also ask to what ends we have remembered. That is, how do we respond to the cur- rent moment in light of our remembered past? This is to recognize that the shape of memory cannot be divorced from the actions taken in its be- half, and that memory without consequences contains the seeds of its own destruction. For were we passively to remark only the contours of these memorials, were we to leave unexplored their genesis and remain un- changed by the recollective act, it could be said that we have not remem- bered at all. The Texture of Memory 213 more to the monument's performance than its mere in society's mind. As Marianne Doezema has suggested, there is much style or school of de- sign. "The public monument,” she writes, “has a responsibility apart from its qualities as a work of art. It is not only the private expression of an in- dividual artist; it is also a work of art created for the public, and therefore can and should be evaluated in terms of its capacity to generate human actions." To my mind, such reaction refers not just to an emotional affect, re- but to the actual consequences for people in their monuments. The ques- tion is not, How are people moved by these memorials? but rather, To what end have they been moved, to what historical conclusions, to what understanding and actions in their own lives? This is to suggest that we cannot separate the monument from its public life, that the social function of such art is its aesthetic performance. “There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument," Robert Musil once wrote. “They are no doubt erected to be seen--indeed, to at- tract attention. But at the same time they are impregnated with something that repels attention.” This "something” is the essential stiffness monu- ments share with all other images: as a likeness necessarily vitrifies its oth- erwise dynamic referent, a monument turns pliant memory to stone. And it is this “finish” that repels our attention, that makes a monument invis- ible. It is as if a monument's life in the communal mind grows as hard and polished as its exterior form, its significance as fixed as its place in the landscape. For monuments at rest like this-in stasis-seem to present themselves as eternal parts of the landscape, as naturally arranged as nearby trees or rock formations. As an inert piece of stone, the monument keeps its own past a tightly held secret, gesturing away from its own history to the events and mean- ings we bring to it in our visits. Precisely because monuments seem to re- member everything but their own past, their own creation, my critical aim will be to reinvest the monument with our memory of its coming into being. None of this is intended to fix the monument's meaning in time, By returning to the memorial some memory of its own genesis, we re- monument with the memory of its acquired past, to vivify memory of which would effectively embalm it. Instead, I hope to reinvigorate this events by writing into it our memory of the monument's origins. mind ourselves of the memorial's essential fragility, its dependence on oth- ers for its life; that it was made by human hands in human times and places, that it is no more a natural piece of the landscape than words on a page, memorial icons seem literally viewers to mistake material presence and weight for immutable perma- nence. If, in its glazed exteriority, we never really see the monument, I shall attempt to crack its eidetic veneer, to loosen meaning, to make visible the we are. For, unlike to embody ideas, to invite ► James E. Young 212 so many Holocaust menorials, even as we look beyond them. It is also to recognize that public art like this demands additional critical criteria if the lives and meanings of such works are to be sustained—and not pressed-by art historical discourse. op- For there is a difference between avowedly public art-exemplified by public monuments like these and art produced almost exclusively for the art world, its critics, other artists, and galleries, which has yet to be properly rec- ognized. People do not come to Holocaust memorials because they are new, cutting-edge, or fashionable; as the critics are quick to note, most of these memorials are none of these. Where contemporary art is produced as self- or medium-reflexive, public Holocaust monuments are produced specifically to be historically referential, to lead viewers beyond themselves to an under- standing or evocation of events. As public monuments, these memorials gen- erally avoid referring hermetically to the processes that brought them into being. Where contemporary art invites viewers and critics to contemplate its own materiality, or its relationship to other works before and after itself, the aim of memorials is not to call attention to their own presence so much as to past events because they are no longer present. In this sense, Holocaust memo- rials attempt to point immediately beyond themselves. In their fusion of public art and popular culture, historical memory and political consequences, therefore, these monuments demand an alternative critique that goes beyond questions of high and low art, tastefulness and vulgarity. Rather than merely identifying the movements and forms on which public memory is borne, or asking whether or not these monu- ments reflect past history accurately or fashionably, we turn to the many ways this art suggests itself as a basis for political and social action. That is, we might ask not only how the monument maker's era and training shaped memory at the time, and how the monument reflects past history, but, or bad most important, what role the monument plays in current history. We might now concern ourselves less with whether this is good art, and more with what the consequences of public memorial art are for the people. This is to propose that, like any public art space, Holocaust memorials are neither benign nor irrelevant, but suggest themselves as the basis for political and communal action. With apologies to Peter Bürger, 1 would like to propose a reworking of what he has called the “functional analysis of art," adapted to examine the social effects of public memorial spaces. My aim is to explore not just the relations between people and their monuments, but the consequences of these relations in historical time. Whereas some art historians have traditionally dismissed such ap- proaches to art as anthropological, social, or psychological, others have opened their inquiry to include larger issues of the sociology of art: pub- lic memorials in this case are exemplary of an artwork's social life, its life James E. Young, from The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning THE CONSEQUENCES OF MEMORY: AN ALTERNATIVE CRITIQUE Public art in general, and Holocaust memorials in particular, tend to beg traditional art historical inquiry. Most discussions of Holocaust memorial spaces ignore the essentially public dimension of their performance, re- maining either formally aestheticist or almost piously historical. So while it is true that a sculptor like Nathan Rapoport will never be regarded by art historians as highly as his contemporaries Jacques Lipchitz and Henry Moore, neither can his work be dismissed solely on the basis of its popu- lar appeal. Unabashedly figurative, heroic, and referential, his work seems to be doomed critically by precisely those qualities—public accessibility and historical referentiality—that make it monumental. But in fact , it may be just this public appeal that finally constitutes the monuments aesthetic performance and that leads such memorials to demand public and his- torical disclosure, even as they condemn themselves to critical obscurity. Instead of stopping at formal questions, or at issues of historical referen- tiality, we must go on to ask how memorial representations of history may finally weave themselves into the course of ongoing events. While questions of high and low art may well continue to inform the discussion surrounding Holocaust monuments, they must not dictate the critical discussion any longer. Instead, we might keep in mind the reduc- -excesses in popular memorial representations, qualify our definitions of kitsch and challenge its usefulness as tive-occasionally vulgar- mass tastes, we must recognize that public taste carries weight a critical category for the discussion of public monuments. Rather than and that certain conventional forms in avowedly public art may eventually have consequences for public memory-whether or not we think they should. This is to acknowledge the unfashionable, often archaic aspects of even as we patronizing
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27 March 2017
Public Monuments
A monument can be a structure or sites that have been set aside to commemorate persons
or events. They are supposed to be lasting reminders to the public and those that interact with
them and they have a special place in society whereby they carry occurrences of the past into the
future...


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