SASHA GRISHIN AM FAHA
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Grishin's Art Blog (GAB)

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GAB 54 (Grishin’s Art Blog number 54)

14/6/2020

5 Comments

 

Topple the monuments and burn the books

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Statue of Akhenaten in the early Amarna style
The pharaoh Akhenaten, the great tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty in ancient Egypt, advanced a form of monotheism and promoted a huge revival in the arts and, on his death, his statues were smashed and his triumphs defaced by his successors.
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Greek gravestone, woman with her slave, 1st century BCE, Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California

The early Christians toppled the statues of Greek and Roman gods, and of the tyrants who enslaved them and made their fortunes from their labour. Most of the Romans whom we see in art were slave owners. In the process, the Christians destroyed the masterpieces of classical antiquity whose maimed fragments make up today's blockbuster exhibitions.

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Early Christians toppling Greek and Roman pagan sculptures and their temples

The Renaissance historian Giorgio Vasari in 1550 lamented that the early Christians, "ruined or demolished all the marvellous statues, besides the other sculptures, the pictures, mosaics and ornaments representing the false pagan gods; and as well as this it destroyed countless memorials and inscriptions left in honour of illustrious persons who had been commemorated by the genius of the ancient world in statues and other public monuments ... their tremendous zeal was responsible for inflicting severe damage on the practice of the arts, which then fell into total confusion."

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Leonardo da Vinci, Study for Sforza monument, c.1485-c1490, metal point on blue paper, probably acquired by Charles II, Royal Collection Windsor
A grandiose equestrian monument to the tyrant Sforza was completed in clay in 1493 (with the horse over seven metres long), but a few years later it was used for target practice by the French troops occupying Milan and thus the world lost the most significant sculpture by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci. Most of the treasure house of French medieval sculpture and the original stained glass windows at the Basilique Cathédral de Saint-Denis, the Royal Abbey, was destroyed following the French Revolution of 1789.

The Buddhas of Bamyan in Afghanistan were blown up by the Taliban in 2001, mainly as a protest that money was being offered for their restoration while there was famine in the country. After the Russian Revolution, statues of the tsars were toppled by the Bolsheviks, while after the denouncement of Stalin's personality cult by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, statues of Stalin were toppled. In the process, some of the finest Russian and Soviet monumental sculptures were destroyed.

I was annoyed on one occasion when the prominent German painter, sculptor, stage designer and art professor Jörg Immendorff said to me that they should open a Third Reich museum in Berlin. Knowing his anti-Nazi sympathies, I realised only later that what he was really saying is that you need to come to terms with your history, rather than simply negate it. In his schooling, it seemed to him that nothing happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and that the toppling of sculptures and the burning of books leads to a temporary amnesia. You can only confront the dark corners of history by turning a light on them - they will eventually die through exposure to the truth and it will be a lengthy process, but they cannot be obliterated through force.

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Statue of Edward Colston by John Cassidy, formerly in The Centre, Bristol, erected in 1895, toppled in 2020

The destruction of the Edward Colston statue (1895) in the centre of Bristol on June 7, 2020, I suspect, is hardly a cause for celebration. As not known by many outside art circles, the sculpture was a major artwork by the Irish working class artist, John Cassidy, who I think may have been assisted on this commission by Mr J. Ashton Floyd. Cassidy, who spent most of his life in Manchester, in his monumental sculpture celebrated the merchant philanthropist who endowed schools, alms houses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. Colston was a merchant trader, and in 1680 became a member - and between 1689-90 - a Deputy Governor, of the Royal African Company that traded slaves to the Caribbean and the Americas.

The company had been established by King Charles II and his brother the Duke of York (later King James II) with many notable investors, including the philosopher John Locke and the diarist Samuel Pepys. Colston left the company in 1692, but unlike Locke, never renounced slavery and continued as a Tory Member of Parliament. It is unclear how much money he made from the slave trade, most of his wealth came from his other merchant activities, but what he and much of his society did was reprehensible and needs to be condemned. However, the toppling of his sculpture has already caused a backlash from some in British society with statues of Black cultural figures in Britain defaced or toppled.

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Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London

Should major artworks of bad people be destroyed? The 'Topple the racists' group in the United Kingdom has produced a map of UK statues and monuments "that celebrate slavery and racism" and that need to be toppled. These include Horatio Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square (a hero, but nevertheless a supporter of slavery), Cecil Rhodes, Henry Dundas, Robert Clive, Francis Drake, Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain James Cook and Lachlan Macquarie. Winston Churchill, as a racist, has been added to the list and his monuments have been defaced and are now being protected by police. Statues of King Leopold II in Belgium have been attacked, as has Christopher Columbus in America, together with any number of Confederate statues scattered throughout the country.

In Australia, with this reasoning in mind, anything connected with Captain Cook, Lachlan Macquarie and much of the cream of colonial society should be targeted, their statues toppled, their books burnt, and places, streets and suburbs named after them, renamed. The monuments along Anzac Parade in Canberra could also be targeted as well as any memorial that mentions the Boer War. From more recent history, Jo Bjelke-Petersen and Robert Menzies surely are also ripe for the chop.

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Demonstration to remove Captain Cook sculpture, Hyde Park, Sydney June 12, 2020

This historical revisionism may be good for the heart and produces a warm inner glow that comes with the settling of old scores, but will only stir the possum of racism in society and, along the way, destroy a good deal of nationally significant art. Also, as history has shown us time and time again, tides do change and when the other mob sweeps into power, they will topple the statues and burn the books of earlier liberators.

It is painful and unpopular to speak of tolerance, particularly if you come from a population that is being murdered, vilified and excluded and when you have a knee placed on your throat that is choking you to death, but sometimes history has to be confronted, highlighted and condemned rather than toppled, disguised and santitised. Make more monuments, make more art to drown out the voices of our dark histories. White Australia does have a Black history, we should celebrate this Black history rather than try to sanitise colonial history.

5 Comments
Stephen link
15/6/2020 12:45:21

Well said, Sasha: create new art, don’t destroy old art just because it doesn’t meet various ideologies. These issues are so complex, varied and convoluted and include humans that are likewise as complex etc.
humans evolve and ideas and ways of life change and although we may not think like the way we thought in the past- often the people depicted in the sculptures had no access or ability to access other ways of thinking. It just ends up pure vandalism. I’ve had my sculpture vandalised (not because of my actions or thoughts, ha ha🤣) and it’s a horrible feeling: Someone wilfully destroying a created thing. Creativity in all things should be appreciated and applauded.

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Richard Tipping link
15/6/2020 14:36:42

I visited the ancient marble town of Carrara in Tuscany in 1984 and visited many mason's stone workshops. In one of these a very large marble figure was standing front-in to a corner, with its face obscured by a bag. I asked who this figure was. "El Duce. Mussolini. Who knows, maybe one day we can sell it." Presumably the dictator is still public resurrection in that dusty white shed.

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Deb Sara link
19/6/2020 18:20:31

I agree with your concluding statement, Sasha. My view relates the Victoria Square ( or Park?? Not sure) and Anzac Square, both in Brisbane. These "parks" are wonderful historically authentic cohesive statements. Trees and gardens and statues. Statue of Queen Victoria in first and of wounded soldiers etc in Anzac Square which also houses the flame of remembrance. In the latter are some Bottle Trees. Whole thing an installation of sorts, and wonderful for its time. And still wonderful in many ways but no room to expand here. Victoria's little patch of earth has a more British garden. Let's have more gardens and accompanying sculptures but let's please not destroy these old patches of Brisbane. Brisbane lost so much of her historical buildings in the Joh era. These parks with defining sculptures are some of what is left. Add more contemporary ones, where and when appropriate (a good one at Mt Cootha Gardens in Brisbane of an astrologer from historical past) and don't destroy. Don't try to white wash. Let it be and discuss.

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Rozlyn de Bussey link
21/6/2020 15:00:49

Truly, a well evaluated subject to discuss so eloquently regarding international history Sasha, although there is so much more to Australia's history that has still to be recognised and acknowledged legally.
Just to add another to your collection of invaders to this country is, I think off the top of my head William Bligh who sailed with Cook to Australia on Cooks third journey here, it was a time when Australia was occupied by over 2 million Indigenous people.
Genocide is exactly what had happened here in Australia and after the traditional owners were decimated the people who were also subjugated to those same horrendous atrocities were poor white / multicultural people who also suffered alongside with what was left of the traditional owners of this country.
Law reform does come to mind however from my little experience to change one part of one law in Australia many years ago took over 13 years to accomplish.
Yes, we do need those sculptures to help all people evaluate global history and hopefully legal changes will be made, perhaps not in my lifetime. We can always live with hope.

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Pete Winstanley
6/7/2020 09:06:51

Greetings from England. Thought you might be interested in the letter which I have just sent off to my local paper, the Durham Advertiser. I came upon your blog by chance - I was looking for images of the Evgeny Chubarov sculpture in Moscow's Park of the Fallen Heroes, which took me to your February 2017 post about it.
You have taught me that too little attention is paid to the artistic merits of these sculptures, and the sensibilities of the sculptors and/or their friends and families.
You may not have heard of Charles Vane Tempest, or his statue in Durham, but there's more about him, and the sculptor, Raffaelle Monti, here:

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/opinion/leader/4501885.hoss-trading/

My letter:

"I agree with Paul Spence (Advertiser letters, July 2) that in many cases the way to deal with statues of controversial historical figures is to provide information boards , outlining both the achievements and the misdeeds of the individual concerned.
This is certainly needed in the case of the "man on the hoss" - the statue in Durham Market place of Charles Vane Tempest, 3rd Marquis of Londonderry, a ruthless mine-owner who opposed legislation to prohibit children under 12 from working in the mines.
Here's what "Horrible Histories" author, Terry Deary, had to say about him:
"When the miners went on strike [in 1844], he said "get out of your cottages!" because they were tied houses, and "If anybody in the shops dares to supply the striking miners, you're out too." But who created all the wealth? It was the miners! Where's their statue?"
I would like to see a statue of a miner with his family in the Market Place, maybe in front of the Market Tavern, where the Durham Miners' Association was founded in 1869.
However, I sympathise with the people of Bristol who took matters into their own hands and pulled down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston after years of fruitless campaigning for its removal.
We put statues on pedestals to honour and venerate historical figures - to literally "look up" to them. In some cases the honour is entirely undeserved.
There is no demand to "erase" history as Mr Spence suggests. On the contrary, we need to remove the whitewash, and take an honest and dispassionate look at all aspects of Britain's colonial past.
Iraqis do not need a statue of Saddam Hussein to remind them of the atrocities he committed, and Russians do not need statues of Stalin all over the country to remind them of his murderous purges.
Perhaps we could take a lesson from the Russians. Many of those old Stalin statues, along with many other dismantled monuments of the Soviet era, are now exhibited in an open-air sculpture park in Moscow. So Stalin, removed from his pedestal - off his high horse, you might say - is now displayed next to a memorial to the victims of Stalin's totalitarian regime - a monument by Evgeny Chubarov comprising a wall of sculpted stone heads imprisoned behind iron bars."
Pete Winstanley

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    GRISHIN'S ART BLOG

    Sasha  Grishin  AM, FAHA is the author of more than 25 books on art, including Australian Art: A History, and has served as the art critic for The Canberra Times for forty years. He is an Emeritus Professor  at the Australian National University, Canberra; Guest Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Honorary Principal Fellow, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Melbourne.

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