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Q5. Monuments and Memorials: we seem to be in an era of tearing them down and putting them up. What is going on, what are the functions of monuments; how do they function in terms of sculpture? Soon every city in the western world will be bursting with monuments and memorials. While memorials are more about forgetting then remembering, monuments are about fixing time. Is there scope for other ways of approaching this? m o n u m e n t s , m e m o r i a l s a n d s o c i e t y Thought, speech and expression: the freedom of their use by individuals and societies has become a major issue in the world today. Whether it be tearing down the statue of Saddam Hussein, or building a memorial for the Bali bombings, it seems that nowadays, people have more confidence to express themselves, and this growing desire to express, has resulted in cities becoming ‘representations of the society which constructed it and used it’. Magazines, advertisements, public parades; since the early days, people have been continuously coming up with more and more ways to reach others with personal and social opinions of their community, however, one system that has remained effective and efficient from history until today, is the use of public sculpture such as monuments and memorials. As society becomes more confident and assertive to have its freedom of expression through public sculpture, there is concern that soon enough, every city in the western world will eventually become ‘colossal museums of art’ , rather then well-functional and conventional looking cities. As such, it is relevant, as well as interesting to discuss and look into other ways of approaching this ‘will to express’ while still maintaining the presence of a city. Monuments nowadays take on numerous important roles. Like sculpture, their primary function is to express an idea, a value or a belief of an individual or society. As a general category of cultural objects, monuments, unlike sculptures, are more familiar in the spaces of most cities, standing for a stability which sustains the internal contradictions and communal values of society as well as surviving the day-to-day fluctuations of history [figure 1 city monument].The majority in society is persuaded by monuments amongst other civil institution, to accept these contradictions and values, the monument thus becoming a device of social control which is less brutal, less costly, and more subtle in expression than armed force and media. As another critical function, monuments stand in a complex relation to time: they state a past or its imitation – a way to remember and acknowledge historical events. However, when monuments are regarded as memorials, it has a contrasting function of provoking people to forget history, however, more in terms of its mistakes and ‘wounds’; to give confidence for history to not be repeated, by acknowledging the positive present and the bright future ahead of us. “Monuments are the expression of man’s highest cultural needs.
Approximate Word count = 1995
Approximate Pages = 8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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