"This is not, as some of our detractors say, an attempt to erase history, but rather to kind of tell a fuller version of it by using the materials from the past that have caused a lot of pain."

Said Jalane Schmidt, a University of Virginia religious studies professor and co-founder of Swords into Plowshares, quoted in "How artists want to use a melted Robert E. Lee statue to heal a wounded city/The bronze ingots left over from a Confederate statue that once ignited violence will now be part of a new work of public art" (WaPo).

Here are 2 things that have been presented as tellings of a fuller version of our history:

I'd call the first one The Leaning Tower of Slinky. The second one seems inspired by the snack food Bugles.

Whatever you think of Robert E. Lee, his statue was a traditional realistic bronze representation of a man. These repurposing of the bronze will stick Charlottesville with sad ugly awful public art.

"Mr. Trump first proposed a Garden of Heroes during his first term, at a time of widespread protesting over the murder of George Floyd in police custody."

"Protesters had toppled statues of Confederate generals and leaders, and in some instances vandalized monuments to national icons like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Trump denounced those actions as attempts to 'erase our values' and he signed an executive order authorizing the monument garden. The election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president interrupted those plans, but since Mr. Trump took office for a second time, he has taken the project up again in earnest.... Should Mr. Trump leave office without finishing his signature projects, the next administration would be faced with choices about whether to finish them or abandon them.... 'I don’t think it’s like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, where it was this great project of Gaudi and people said, "No, we must finish this,"' [said Ken Lum, a sculptor, professor and Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design]. 'I think there’s going to be a lot of debate in terms of, "We don’t need to finish this. Maybe we should even take it down."'"

From "Trump’s Vision for ‘Garden of Heroes’ Keeps Getting Bigger and Higher in Cost/Plans for the project include formal gardens, reflecting pools and plazas alongside the statues of 250 notable Americans, according to documents obtained by The New York Times" (NYT).

Makes me think of that high-speed train in California. We don’t need to finish this. Maybe we should even take it down.

Anyway, here's the list of the 250 heroes for Trump's "garden," complete with bios seemingly presenting the argument for why they rank as the top heroes.

"President Trump has put Columbus on a list of statues he wants included in his proposed National Garden of American Heroes. This week he said 'We’re back, Italians'..."

"... after he signed a proclamation for Columbus Day, a federal holiday he has called for celebrating after some cities and states have either replaced it or supplemented it with celebrations of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. 'Before our very eyes, left-wing radicals toppled his statues, vandalized his monuments, tarnished his character, and sought to exile him from our public spaces,' the proclamation reads...."

From "Beheaded and Sent to Watery Graves, Columbus Statues Get New Life/More than 30 monuments to Christopher Columbus were toppled or taken down in 2020. Now some are being restored, and finding new, usually less-public homes" (NYT).

So is it to be all about the plinth?

That's the last line of the previous post, the one about the possibly oversized statue of Trump and Epstein, which got toppled yesterday. (I thought statue-toppling was the signature of the left, but apparently not.)

I got the feeling plinths have loomed large enough in the archive of this blog to want to prompt Grok to review all my plinth-related posts and to structure the material for me to write a long essay — or book! — about the last 21-years of notable plinths. Giving this post my "unwritten books" tag, I will reprint Grok's outline of my long years of plinth observation [below the jump].

ADDED: I was able to find all the relevant posts. I had a distinctive search word, "plinth." Grok was able to summarize all the posts individually. That wasn't too helpful, because the posts were relatively short, and I wrote them, so I'd rather rely on my own writing that to decipher the machine's paraphrasings. But Grok did not discover any mysterious interconnections among the various plinth-related incidents — plinthcidents, if you will. 

If it wasn't viewpoint discrimination but actually some violation of the terms of the permit, I think they would have articulated the violation...

... so that we wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's viewpoint discrimination. But with the failure to to articulate the violation, I think we are entitled to presume it was viewpoint discrimination. No jumping required.

That's my response to "Park Service removes statue of Trump and Epstein from National Mall/The statue, the latest installation by an anonymous group of artists critical of the president, was supposed to be on display until 8 p.m. Sunday" (WaPo)(gift link):

The National Park Service removed a statue of President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands from the National Mall early Wednesday morning, a day after it was placed there. 'The statue was removed because it was not compliant with the permit issued," Interior Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Peace said in an email. She did not respond to follow-up questions about how or why the statue was not in compliance or if the department had provided the required 24-hour written notice before revoking the permit....

Carol Flaisher, a D.C.-based location manager, filed the permit application with the National Park Service on behalf of the artists who created the statue. She said that in over 40 years of working with the Park Service arranging installations and filming, she has never had a permit revoked.

The permit issued to Flaisher says: “Superintendent may revoke this permit at any time after providing 24 hours’ written notice to the Permittee setting forth the reasons for the revocation.”

Yeah, it's a stupid statue. But now the stupidity of the government has turned it into a monument to freedom.

ADDED: Reading more of the article, I see: "In a video of the statue’s removal provided to The Washington Post, a National Park Service official can be seen saying that the installation is 'out of compliance' because it is several feet larger than stated in the permit. The video was taken by a security team member who had been assigned to monitor the statue as required by the permit."

If that's the answer, why didn't Interior Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Peace put that in her original email response to The Washington Post? Why did she not respond to the follow-up questions if there is such an easy answer? If she cared about the First Amendment or if this really was the true answer, why wasn't she eager to provide it?

I see that "Flaisher said there was a height discrepancy because the base of the statue was not included in the permit approval. But she said no objections were raised when the statue was placed on the Mall, and she was never informed there was an issue."

So is it to be all about the plinth?

"In 2011 the museum had problems with a 4-14m installation called Peanut Butter Platform by Wim T Schippers."

"Unsuspecting visitors stepped in the thick layer of peanut butter smeared on the gallery floor at least three times. They were given a clean-up bill."

From "Child damages €50m Rothko in ‘unguarded moment’ at museum/The abstract painting will undergo restoration works after it was scratched at the Boijmans Van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam" (London Times).

If the peanut butter people had to pay for peanut butter "clean-up," does that mean the parents will pay for the restoration needed after this "number of visible scratches in the unvarnished paint layer... caused by a child who scratched the underside of the work in an unguarded moment"?

"Scratched the underside"... I'm trying to picture that. I'm guessing the child did not scratch the front surface or the back of the painting, but the bottom edge of what was an unframed painting.

I ask Grok: "Did Rothko leave paintings unframed and paint the edges (the part 90° from the surface plane)?"

Answer: "Yes, Mark Rothko often left his paintings unframed and painted the edges of the canvas (the sides at 90° from the surface). He typically wrapped the paint around the edges to create a seamless, immersive experience, emphasizing the painting as an object rather than a framed window. This approach complemented his large-scale, abstract works, where the edges were integral to the viewer's encounter with the color fields. However, practices varied slightly depending on the piece and period, with some works later framed for exhibition or preservation purposes."

Perhaps the child was fascinated by the seamless, immersive experience and became a tad too immersed.

AND: Astoundingly, Rothko painted a peanut butter sandwich!

"This is America showing itself because it was never in you in the first place. So why am I upset that you're upending something..."

"... that was never in you in the first place? I'm not saying that we shouldn't be upset. We definitely should be upset. But why are we-- we can't be upset at people that it was never in them in the first place to even care about somebody else."

Said a black woman, heard in episode 857 of "This American Life," "Museum of Now."

She is commenting on the removal of the 2-block-long, 50-foot-tall words, "Black Lives Matter," that had been set in concrete in a street near the White House.

Prompted by the question, "Is this more honest, actually, that they actually are ripping this up?," we hear her struggling in real time to understand why the de-installation of the motto wasn't upsetting her or wasn't upsetting her that much.

One might say the original installation was propaganda and pandering. Jackhammering it out of there said something accidental and authentic.

"I have a visceral reaction against, against the attacks on those statues. There were heroes in the Confederacy who didn’t have slaves..."

"... and, you know, I just, I just have a visceral reaction against destroying history. I don’t like it. I think we should celebrate who we are. We should celebrate the good qualities of everybody. … If we want to find people who were completely virtuous on every issue throughout history, we would erase all of history...."

Said RFK Jr., quoted in "RFK Jr. had a ‘visceral’ reaction to tear-downs of Confederate statues/Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on a podcast that he doesn’t think 'it’s a good, healthy thing for any culture to erase history'" (WaPo).

"I think if work is asked to be accommodating, to be subservient, to be useful to, to be required to, to be subordinated to, then the artist is in trouble."

Said Richard Serra, quoted in "For Richard Serra, Art Was Not Something. It Was Everything. He was known as the Man of Steel. But the sculptor was also an eternal poet, reshaping our perception of space, says our critic" (NYT).

The Times critic Michael Kimmelman begins:

... Richard Serra died yesterday....

 It continues:

"If it turns out it was racially motivated, then obviously that is a deeper societal issue and it certainly would make this a much more concerning theft."

Said Bob Lutz, director of League 42, a youth baseball group named after Jackie Robinson's jersey number, quoted in "Jackie Robinson statue found burned, dismantled in Wichita trash can" (WaPo).

The statue, which had stood in a park, was cut off at the ankles, toted away in a pickup truck, subjected to a fire, and left in pieces. It appears to be a bronze statue, so I don't think it's accurate to say it was "burned."

I hope this incident was not an expression of racial hostility. On the "bright" side, I remember an attack on statue here in Madison carried out by people who did not seem to understand the significance of the person depicted in the statue. 

"The Satanic Temple of Iowa says a statue depicting the pagan idol Baphomet, part of its controversial display in the Iowa Capitol, had been destroyed."

The Des Moine Register reports.

The installation, permitted under state rules governing religious displays in the building, has come under debate and criticism of by Iowa and national politicians. Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis on Tuesday joined a chorus of Republicans calling for its removal while others in the GOP said that, though it is offensive, it is a protected form of free speech....

"Last Saturday in a small foundry, a man in heat-resistant attire pulled down his gold-plated visor, turned on his plasma torch and sliced into the face of Robert E. Lee."

"The hollow bronze head glowed green and purple as the flame burned through layers of patina and wax. Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground."

I'm reading the New York Times version of the story of the melting down of the Charlottesville Robert E. Lee statue.

The Washington Post had its piece up first, with similar ornate prose — "dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.... a flash of bluish white light and orange sparks... seven long gashes into Lee’s severed head" — and I blogged it yesterday here. 

I avoid re-blogging something I've already blogged, but that precept doesn't save me from blogging the NYT piece, "The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace."  The WaPo article was written by reporters who observed the cutting and melting. The NYT's writer, Erin L. Thompson, also a first-hand witness, is a professor of art crime who has written a relevant book — "Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments" (Amazon link/commission earned).

So, though I am loath to read any more prose featuring deep gashes and glowing globs, I'm interested in Thompson's take on the ethical problem of destroying a work of art. We're talking about a statue that was already removed from its original position of honor in a public space, that could be moved somewhere else, perhaps to private grounds, to a museum, or into storage. In this case, a choice was made to melt the statue — Robert E. Lee and his horse — with some idea of using the bronze to cast a new sculpture, conveying the anti-Robert E. Lee point of view.

"SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. SOUTH — It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too."

"So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly 'Unite the Right' rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.... With a flash of bluish white light and orange sparks, a trio of foundry workers carved seven long gashes into Lee’s severed head. 'It’s a better sculpture right now than it’s ever been,' one of the metal-casters said. 'We’re taking away what it meant for some people and transforming it.'"

Flowery prose in The Washington Post celebrating the destruction of a work of art — "Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace Melted down in secret, the divisive Confederate monument will be turned into a new piece of public art."

"[O]n Saturday the museum went ahead with its plan in secret at this small Southern foundry, in a town and state The Washington Post agreed not to name because of participants’ fears of violence... They made arrangements for Lee to be melted down while they started collecting ideas from city residents for that new sculpture.... Some [of the witnesses to the melting] said the statue was being destroyed. Others called it a restoration. Depending on who you asked, the bronze was being reclaimed, disrupted, or redeemed to a higher purpose. It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one...."

"What is real to me is a painting to you. The artist was depicting history, but it’s not his history to depict."

Said Maia Young, a second-year student, quoted in "In Vermont, a School and Artist Fight Over Murals of Slavery/Created to depict the brutality of enslavement, the works are seen by some as offensive. The school wants them permanently covered. The artist says they are historically important" (NYT).

As for the lawsuit: "The case turns on language in the federal law that says artists can seek to prevent modification of their work if the change would harm their 'honor or reputation.' The law school says that covering the murals, even permanently, is not a modification if it leaves no mark."

The murals are, of course, anti-slavery, but they are intended to make viewers feel bad. Should the students have more control over when they need to think about disturbing things? It's one thing to teach about slavery, another to have a big slavery mural always on view. But it seemed like a good idea to the people in power at the law school in 1993.

A second-year student, Yanni DeCastro said, "If someone is saying to you, 'How you’re depicting me is racist,' for you to live in your own ignorance, and further aggravate the situation — now you’re showing us who you are."

"Live in your own ignorance" — it's what we all do, one way or another. 

Why was this thing in a position to be knocked into and shattered? Seems like a publicity stunt and it's working.

I'm reading "Art Fair Visitor Breaks a Jeff Koons Balloon Dog Sculpture/A woman accidentally knocked over a bright blue dog sculpture at Art Wynwood in Miami, causing the $42,000 artwork to shatter, witnesses said" (NYT).

The small, $42,000 version of the famous dog art isn't unique, is it? Aren't there as many of these as the artist chooses to authorize? Placing the damn thing unsecured on a pedestal in a gallery where people walk all around it answers those questions. The only unanswered question is whether they actively sought this publicity.

The NYT article doesn't ask my questions. It's padded with cute crap about sweeping up the shards and selling them as if the destruction is more art — unique art, publicized in the NYT.

The Koons balloon sculptures look like they're made of balloons, but, as the breakage attests, they're not. Nevertheless, I'm giving this post my "balloon" tag, because balloons have been in the news lately, and there's a frisson of delight in the variation on a theme. 

ADDED: "Erased de Kooning" was interesting — 70 years ago. Shattered Koons is bullshit.

"Modernist furniture was burned, portraits defaced, sculptures decapitated and ceramics smashed. Carpets were found soaked with water..."

"... from the buildings’ sprinkler systems, as well as with urine. The rioters — die-hard supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his election defeat — marred the iconic marble ramp leading up the presidential palace with scratches... Into a historic wooden table at the Supreme Court they carved 'Supreme are the people'.... Among the artworks destroyed was a 17th-century clock made by Balthazar Martinot.... A 60-year-old bronze sculpture of a flautist by Bruno Giorgi was also trashed... Vandals pitched rocks through the canvas of a mural by Emiliano Di Calvalcanti. The presidential palace said in its statement that the painting, 'As Mulatas,' is valued at some $1.5 million.... 'The damage was not random, it was obviously deliberate,' Rogerio Carvalho, the presidential palace’s curator, said in an interview while sitting before the disfigured painting. The work 'was perforated in seven places using rocks taken from the square with a pickaxe. Which is to say, there is a movement of intolerance toward what this palace represents.'"

From "Brazil rioters destroyed priceless artistic treasures in assault on capital city" (NY Post).

AND: In other attack-on-art-news: "As Russians Steal Ukraine’s Art, They Attack Its Identity, Too/Russian forces have looted tens of thousands of pieces, including avant-garde oil paintings and Scythian gold. Experts say it is the biggest art heist since the Nazis in World War II, intended to strip Ukraine of its cultural heritage" (NYT).

"[S]he disappeared from public life, in 1980, leaving London for the small seaside town of Bournemouth, where she was known as Mrs. Lightband..."

"... she made anonymous appearances in the city to pass out Bibles at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. She felt a calling to protect the public from the sinfulness of her own writing by burning her manuscripts, actively preventing republication in her lifetime, and destroying evidence of her career. There are tales of her systematically checking out her own books from libraries across England in order to burn them in her back garden.... Of course, most writers hate their own writing.... Many writers stop writing entirely....  Tonks... became allergic to all books, not only her own, refusing to read anything but the Bible...."

From "The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books/Rosemary Tonks achieved success among the bohemian literati of Swinging London—then spent the rest of her life destroying the evidence of her career" by Audrey Wollen (The New Yorker).

"He did, in 2001, go round to his sister’s house to watch a documentary about himself on the TV — he didn’t own a TV himself — but he didn’t enjoy it..."

"... and his only comment was that the music was too noisy. By this point he never listened to rock music, just to jazz and classical music, usually on the radio. He was financially secure — Dave Gilmour made sure that when compilations came out they always included some music from Barrett’s period in the group so he would receive royalties, even though Gilmour had no contact with him after 1975 — and he spent most of his time painting — he would take photos of the paintings when they were completed, and then burn the originals. There are many stories about those last few decades, but given how much he valued his privacy, it wouldn’t be right to share them. This is a history of rock music, and 1975 was the last time Roger Keith Barrett ever had anything to do with rock music voluntarily."

From Episode 157 of "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" — "'See Emily Play' by The Pink Floyd."

The destruction of art is a longstanding topic on this blog, and destroying one's own art is very special subsection of that topic. It's one thing to destroy artwork that, back when you made it, you'd intended to exist forever and perhaps hoped would be treasured by others, even long after your death. It's quite another thing to devote yourself to creating new work while intending all along to destroy it. 

It makes me think of Tibetan monks making a mandala out of sand and then destroying it: 

 

"Drink wine and look at the moon and think of all the civilizations the moon has seen passing by."

The fall of a tyrant. Ayatollah Khomeini was a man who used religion to terrorize people. The regime in Iran continues his legacy. The regime in Iran must fall. #MahsaAmini #mahsaminiمهساامینی https://t.co/ZXIOG8y7zo

— Asra Q. Nomani #FreeFromHijab 🐾 (@AsraNomani) October 14, 2022

"Over the course of a week last summer, a number of street art pieces appeared in seemingly random parts of Norfolk and Suffolk."

"The artworks were eventually verified by Banksy, but the fate of each piece varied drastically. What has become of them - one year on?"

BBC asks.

The answer is there are a lot of protective screens. But here's how the graffiti art looked when it went up and was fresh and surprising:

 

ADDED: I think they should have been left unprotected. Let them live and die like other graffiti.