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A wide-open imagination is certainly to be encouraged. Unfortunately, the contemporary imagination isn't all that open, having been circumscribed by politically approved shibboleths of inclusiveness, diversity, difference, etc.
Regrettably, we seem to have lost the intellectual courage for heroic representation, preferring instead to retreat to abstractions -- rusting blocks of metal, cubes of concrete, towering pylons -- whose meaning, if any, is decipherable only to the cognoscenti.
A good (read: bad) local example of this tendency is the Human Rights monument on Elgin Street. A collection of interconnecting pillars and polished slabs inscribed with abstract words such as "justice," "equality" and "dignity," it fails to evoke an emotional attachment to its ideals. It creates no lump in the throat.
Such monuments ignore a fundamental dynamic of human life, what psychoanalyst Robert Jay Lifton refers to as the "drive to symbolization." Humans, Lifton says, "are truly an animal symbolicum, beings that live and die, succeed and fail, delight and suffer, work and play, with, by and through their symbols ... With our symbols we humans not only create our world, but create ourselves."
The rest...
Our Human Rights Monument in Ottawa, clearly a product of the "Turd in the Plaza School".
Updates - readers weigh in, cause everyone's a critic at heart;)
Pongo:
You think this monument is ugly, take a look at the monstrosity that stands in Minto Park, a short distance up the road on Elgin Street. You will find the "Women's Monument" there. This monument was erected to honour women abused and murdered by men. While no one is discounting that domestic abuse, sexual assault, etc. is a bad thing and certainly a violation of human rights, why does it have to splinter off into identity politics? Maybe there should be a monument to honour white people abused and murdered by black people to be fair and inclusive.
Women's Urgent Action, the group behind the erection of the Women's Monument, is no stranger to controversy as is demonstrated in the CBC news report you can find in this link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/03/31/monument000331.html
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WLMR:
Is it cosmic irony this crap heap looks like cold war era soviet state art?
Anon: Ugly? Sure. But just think of the wonderful opportunities it provides for vagrants to urinate and defecate upon!
Doubtful adds: Anonymous kinda beat me to it.
It could serve as a good place to take a piss after the Remembrance day observance. Much better than the cenotaph. Perhaps your local "aggrieved" community should try it.
11 comments:
Good lord. Only a bureaucracy could see such a monstrosity from commission to construction. I actually feel like saying something like "My kid could do that," though in this case it's actually the most fitting description.
Your Kids can do way better than that. What a pile of rubbish, and no doubt it cost many hundreds of thousands to boot.
You think this monument is ugly, take a look at the monstrosity that stands in Minto Park, a short distance up the road on Elgin Street. You will find the "Women's Monument" there. This monument was erected to honour women abused and murdered by men. While no one is discounting that domestic abuse, sexual assault, etc. is a bad thing and certainly a violation of human rights, why does it have to splinter off into identity politics? Maybe there should be a monument to honour white people abused and murdered by black people to be fair and inclusive.
Women's Urgent Action, the group behind the erection of the Women's Monument, is no stranger to controversy as is demonstrated in the CBC news report you can find in this link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/03/31/monument000331.html
Is it cosmic irony this crap heap looks like cold war era soviet state art?
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/51/144810460_4f0c67f8cf.jpg?v=0
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That sculpture is deep. Like a septic tank. It would have been more symbolic to have spent taxpayers' cash on "Piss Freedom."
Ugly? Sure. But just think of the wonderful opportunities it provides for vagrants to urinate and defecate upon!
Anonymous kinda beat me to it.
It could serve as a good place to take a piss after the Remembrance day observance. Much better than the cenotaph. Perhaps your local "aggrieved" community should try it.
LOL!!
(sigh) Sometimes I'm one piece of public art away from hating my whole country. And I just know that David Miller will be cutting the ribbon on that little boondoggle in a week.
When I was in Ottawa, I thought of it as the Transformers War Memorial, honouring those brave machines who fell to the Decepticons. Because, after all, it would be stupid to think it had something to do with human rights.
Women's Urgent Action...behind the erection
sorry I couldn't resist...
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