There is a monument to Christopher Columbus at the Minnesota capitol in St Paul? I had no idea. He was an evil old monster, I’m all for removing anything like that — and there is a petition to remove it and replace it with two statues, one of Prince and another of someone chosen by the Indian community. I like that idea.
But then, I think we should regularly change art anyway. The Columbus statue isn’t exactly equivalent to Michelangelo’s David. It was bought and paid for by an association of Italian-Americans about a century ago, and so what it really represents is a wave of self-promotion by an ethnic community that had been discriminated against (which is a fine thing to do; it’s just too bad they picked such a terrible hero), and isn’t necessarily high art. Of course, Michelangelo’s David was also commissioned as propaganda by Florentines to cock a snook at Rome, so motives don’t necessarily mar great art, but does anyone believe this particular statue will stand the test of time? Does anyone think the Confederate statues that dot the landscape are actually significant works of art? Many of them were mass-produced!
I have no problem with old, pedestrian art being taken down and replaced with new stuff — that’s the kind of change that also brings more money to artists, too. And then, a century from now, Minnesotans can look at the statue of Prince and think about whether to swap it out with something new, too.*
We often revise and modify memorial art. That statue of Columbus originally described him as ‘discovering’ America; that did not go over well in a state with a substantial native population and an even larger Scandinavian population (and, I fear, the sensibilities of the Lake Wobegone set were more influential than the Indians) and it was replaced with a plaque that credited him with initiated the merging of the cultures between the old and new worlds
(warning: autoplay video at link!), which is the niftiest euphemism for rape, looting, and genocide I’ve ever seen.
There’s also a Spanish-American War memorial there that had the most revealing change:
The original memorial honored Minnesota soldiers who “battled to free the oppressed peoples of the Philippine Islands, who suffered under the despotic rule of Spain.”
The corrected language reads: “The United States entered that war to defeat Spain, not to free the Filipinos. Most of the battles listed above were fought against Filipinos.”
Yeah, that’s a kinda different interpretation all right.
So sure, let’s not pretend old statues become sacred with the passage of time.
*I know, the music of Prince is timeless, and he didn’t go around maiming and murdering people, but still…we don’t get to dictate the will of our descendants.
You can get a nice purple patina on bronze. Just sayin’.
Ingredients
Sodium Chloride… 5 parts
Ammonium Hydroxide… 4 parts
Ammonium Chloride… 5 parts
Glacial Acetic Acid… 4 parts
Distilled Water… 32 parts
Parts by weight. Brush to surface.
Why use glacial acetic acid if you’re gonna dilute it down to 13 % anyway?
Perhaps Boston should put up a statue of Nathaniel Bowditch (if they haven’t already done so).
Why, don’t you know you’re taking away our precious, precious history? Corruption of our pure historical essence will lead to the destruction of western civilization !
And theOntario elementary school union wants schools to drop Sir John A. Macdonald’s, the first prime minister of Canada, name because they claim he is the “architect of genocide against Indigenous People”.
One of the art museums in Florence has a statue of an allegorical figure (representing Florence), with the allegorical figure of Pisa being crushed underfoot.
Political cartoons, circa 1400, can’t beat ’em.
Should do the same thing with a statue of Grant and Lee. Perhaps the existing Lee statues could be repurposed for that, also, too.
Make the statues MODULAR, so that they can be changed regularly: Lincoln crushing Davis, Sherman crushing Forrest, etc.
Everybody has always known the world was round. Columbus thought it was shaped like an egg. He was wrong. Plus nobody knows what he actually looked like. So a statue serves no conceivable purpose. Just saying.
I’ve already told the story of the statue of Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi, over at Chez Ranum. At Mano’s place I mentioned the Roman Imperial masons’ custom of producing statues with removable heads – so you didn’t have to sculpt the new Emperor from scratch when someone bumped off the old one before the paint was dry on his statue. I’m all out of Classical statue stories now.
Well, okay, there’s the Mutilation of the Herms. But that isn’t terribly relevant, because those statues actually were considered sacred objects and breaking the penises off them was quite the scandalous act. Though it was used as a pretext by his political enemies to have Alcibiades tried for treason and sentenced to death while he was abroad with the fleet, so pay attention to what the Trump junta might try with those who remove Confederate statues in future maybe?
There is mounting evidence that Gandhi had racist views of his fellow South African blacks. Should his statue in Washington DC be taken down? Or is there an arbitrary tally of misdeeds that must be met before a historical statue gets taken down?
ragdish
Yes.
A comment I read somewhere, I think on Facebook:
Taking down these statues is not erasing history. Putting them up in the first place was.
ragdish, #9
The decision on whether a statue be removed, replaced, left where it is or put up in the first place is not one we should make according to some kind of formula. That’s the kind of silly thinking Donald Trump was trying to frame in his speech.
Generally speaking we should remove statues when their continued presence is found to be offensive to some subset of the population. The precise import, meaning and effect of the statue should be discussed and debated.
Also, do you mean Gandhi or Nelson Mandela?
artor@#1:
You can get a nice purple patina on bronze. Just sayin’.
It’ll also puddle really nicely if you strap a bag of thermite up against it. Make sure you sandbag it well to direct the heat. Kids these days always forget the sandbags.
ragdish@#9:
There is mounting evidence that Gandhi had racist views of his fellow South African blacks.
Gandhi was a south african black? Wow, that’s some revisionist history.
I’m all for putting up new statues. Here in Illinois, there should be down in the state capitol, a felon’s park, where those politicians convicted of crimes should be remembered, and their sentences. Might make their successors a little less corrupt.
Gandhi lived and lawyered in South Africa for twenty years.
Some of his fellow South Africans were Black.
When discussing historical figures, you will often find that they are complicated. They were human, after all. I think it mattes a great deal how a statue (or other artwork) portrays them. Does it praise what good they did or does it white wash or even defend evil? There’s a big difference between a statue of Lee riding into battle and one where he surrenders.
The purpose of such art is not simply to portray history, but to portray our view of it. Any work of art always says more about the time it was made than the time it represents and leaving them up would say a lot about our present day. Statues aren’t time capsules. They’re ongoing expressions of our view of society. We should not uncritically leave them standing out of some misguided respect for “history”. History doesn’t need them.
Sir John McDonald was a right bastard, who fucked over Indigenous people in a serious, not to say genocidal way. I’d be all in favour of finding better Canadians to honour
Ditto in Sacramento. The California state capitol has a statue of Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus in its rotunda. Why? Because it’s a fancy marble sculpture donated to the state by wealthy banker D. O. Mills in 1883 and its presence in the capitol is regarded as “traditional” and “historical.” We passed up a perfect opportunity to locate the statue elsewhere during the Capitol Restoration project (1975-1982), during which the building was emptied and refurbished. Isabella & Columbus were moved across the street to State Office Building One for several years and could have remained there, out of the way, but the legislature decided the statue had to come back. And it did.
I would also love to have the lead attorneys convicting the corrupt politicians (memorialized in felon park) memorialized in front of the law school libraries at all the public universities in Illinois-even if they weren’t alumni. The real heroes are those who bring down scum.
“The United States entered that war to defeat Spain, not to free the Filipinos.
Would not it have been more accurate to say “The United States entered that war to grab as much real estate as possible”?
chigau@#16:
Gandhi lived and lawyered in South Africa for twenty years.
/facepalm. Obviously, did not know that.
@ Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls, comment #15
Well, I suppose if it were limited to those convicted, and only state-level politicians, there might be room. If we were to include county- and city-level officials, the park wouldn’t fit within the borders of the state.
(…And yet, I still miss living in Illinois. Most of the time.)
Statues, and “History”, [deliberate scare quotes] is misdirection. Preserving history is accomplished very nicely in books held in public libraries. Characters from history presented as statues serve a different purpose than preserving history. More like presenting a biased “interpretation” of history, distracting one from awareness of the full story.
For example, the vast majority of the civil war statues were put up during periods of civil rights activism. As a veiled attempt at counteracting the civil rights movement.
Before I paint myself into a corner, I’ll see myself out. *sigh*
I’m not sure what this idiom means, but it sounds rude.
I’ve seen the statue in question, and can confirm that it is a hideous example of bronze sculpture. The expression on its face is more adult sized manic Pinocchio than bold, global explorer. Other places have also struggled with what to do with public monuments that are symbols of oppression for large segments of the population. In Bulgaria, soviet era statues are dressed as various superheros and other fictional characters. I couldn’t find a link that wasn’t associated with lots of ads, but if you ask google about the Banksy of Bulgaria you will find lots of entertaining photos.
@Tethys #25:
Something like this? https://www.google.com/search?q=Banksy+of+Bulgaria&rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwixs5rnlfnVAhUn7oMKHZBTBn8Q_AUICigB&biw=967&bih=548
Just a reminder that you can link to a Google image search and warn that most links have lots of ads.
@ragdish:
Columbus in terms of cruelty, immorality, and general evil is right up there with the other prominent of names of history such as Hitler, and Stalin. Look it up dumbass.
ragdish
Please stop being a dick.
Gandhi’s statue was erected to honor him for his non-violent contribution to the liberation of India.
Lee’s statue was erected to honor him for his violent defense of the enslavement of black people.
Despite Gandhi’s flaws and Lee’s virtues, the distinction should be fucking obvious.
P.S. I chose Lee as comparison because that’s where the recent unrest started. For Columbus, pleas follow lotharloo’s advice.
I agree Gandhi was flawed, who isn’t, but I doubt Lee had any virtues except, perhaps, being a decent officer.
He probably “treated his slaves well” which is claimed of every slave owner that people want to revere. Obviously that isn’t a real virtue, though. The “decent officer” bit is even claimed to be wrong by a few, so he may have had no virtues. Hell, his father in law said all his slaves should be emancipated “within 5 years” of his death, and Lee worked many of them to death over those 5 years, some I’m sure quite literally.
Columbus was also a remarkably incompetent navigator who was extremely lucky that he accidentally collided with the Americas. He was a typical European coloniser, one atrocity after another.
I’m not sure if it’s true, though it likely is, but I read that he actually wrote that beating slaves was beneficial to them. So, I guess he was an all-around shitty person.