This collection examines commemorative monuments from the late twentieth and twenty-first century.
This collection examines commemorative monuments from the late twentieth and twenty-first century.
The book reveals how those monuments enable new perspectives and understanding of histories as well as a heightened involvement of viewers through not simply their subject matter but also, most crucially, their actual form and design. Exploring new approaches to the art of commemoration that artists and designers have deployed in recent monuments, the diverse range of international contributors examine how artists have undertaken creative engagements with historical statuary and sites, using these interventions to offer critique and commentary. Additionally, the contributions consider the impact of political change on ways in which an inherited commemorative landscape is interpreted and negotiated. Questions considered by the contributions include: How might new monuments be shaped and how might they function differently from those of the past? Is there a place for portraiture in the contemporary commemorative landscape? Should commemorative monuments be envisaged as permanent fixtures or are temporary approaches more viable? How effectively have artists disrupted the meanings of historical monuments and sites through installation, performance, video and other media? How has political change played out at historical sites, affecting how commemorative monuments from prior dispensations are understood in the 2020s?
This collection will be of value to researchers in Art History Visual Studies and Heritage Studies as well as scholars in all disciplines and fields who are interested in public art, public memory and the politics of commemoration.
Introduction PART I Contemporary Mnemonic Strategies
1. Of Long and
Severed Hands: Sammy Balojis Lukasa for Antwerp
2. Commemorating Crises in
Public Memorials by Antonio Martorell and Scherezade Garcia
3. Facilitating
and Practising Democratic Citizenship in Contemporary Monument Making: Two
Examples from Vienna
4. Richard Serra and the Fabricated Post-Industrial
Landscape PART II Rethinking Portraiture
5. On the Plinth/Off the Plinth:
Re-imagining the Figurative Monument
6. Redefining Portraiture in
Commemorative Public Art: Four Portrayals of Nelson Mandela PART III The
Temporary versus the Permanent
7. Do Not Make Failure Go Away! "Permanent
Temporariness" as a Decolonial Strategy
8. Temporary Commemoration and
Permanent Commemoration in Berlin PART IV Creative Engagements with
Historical Statues
9. The Ephemeral as a Strategy of Intervention: Reframing
the Columbus Monument in Madrid
10. Two Feminist Performances at and against
the Statue of John Bright, Rochdale, England
11. Under Construction: Thomas
Lawsons A Portrait of New York (1989-1993) as a Monument about Monuments
12.
Enlivened Memory, Post-Monumental Form: Contemporary Artistic Interventions
into Commemorative Public Art in Post-Socialist Europe V Public Art and
Regime Change
13. Maiming Monuments: Iconoclasm in Visual Culture after
Yugoslavia
14. Applause for the past? Danie De Jagers sculpture Applause
(1981) and the Recontextualization of Public Art in Pretoria
Brenda Schmahmann is a Professor and the SARChI Chair in South African Art and Visual Culture at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
