{"id":16895,"date":"2022-06-16T20:58:55","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T20:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artjournalstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=16895"},"modified":"2022-06-16T21:10:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T21:10:44","slug":"monuments-as-monsters-michael-rakowitz-and-erin-l-thompson-in-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?p=16895","title":{"rendered":"Monuments as Monsters: Michael Rakowitz and Erin L. Thompson in Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery columns-2 is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\"><ul class=\"blocks-gallery-grid\"><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"667\" height=\"1000\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-667x1000.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph of a sculpture in a gallery in the shape of an anthropomorphic monster, composed of repurposed objects including a wooden bell form used by a foundry, mantelpieces, wooden lion\u2019s feet from furniture, and small marble and bronze sculptures on which the artist has written.\" data-id=\"16891\" data-full-url=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-scaled.jpg\" data-link=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?attachment_id=16891\" class=\"wp-image-16891\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-667x1000.jpg 667w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-333x500.jpg 333w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-133x200.jpg 133w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-1366x2048.jpg 1366w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-720x1080.jpg 720w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-560x840.jpg 560w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1A-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 667px) 100vw, 667px\" \/><figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-item__caption\">Michael Rakowitz, <em>American Golem<\/em>, 2022, mixed media including repurposed sculpture, dimensions variable. (Artwork \u00a9 Michael Rakowitz; photograph provided by Rhona Hoffman Gallery).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><li class=\"blocks-gallery-item\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"662\" height=\"1000\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-662x1000.jpg\" alt=\"Image of the cover of a book titled Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments, by Erin L. Thompson, illustrated with a stylized crumbling monument.\" data-id=\"16888\" data-full-url=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-scaled.jpg\" data-link=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/?attachment_id=16888\" class=\"wp-image-16888\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-662x1000.jpg 662w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-331x500.jpg 331w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-132x200.jpg 132w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-1017x1536.jpg 1017w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-1356x2048.jpg 1356w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-720x1087.jpg 720w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-560x845.jpg 560w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/1B-scaled.jpg 1696w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 662px) 100vw, 662px\" \/><figcaption class=\"blocks-gallery-item__caption\">Erin L. Thompson, <em>Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments<\/em> (W. W. Norton, 2022) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019ve followed the work of Iraqi-American artist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelrakowitz.com\/\">Michael Rakowitz<\/a> since I saw pieces from his ongoing project <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelrakowitz.com\/the-invisible-enemy-should-not-exist\"><em>The invisible enemy should not exist<\/em><\/a> mixed with antiquities in an exhibition in the gallery of New York University\u2019s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. While I had been working on understanding the legal regulations governing the repatriation of cultural heritage, Rakowitz had been using Arabic-language newspapers and food packaging to replicate artifacts stolen from the National Museum of Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The resulting sculptures were colorful, charming, and powerful. They prompted me to think about what was important about the original antiquities. How did the conflict between Iraqis and foreign collectors over ownership reflect both larger historical violence and more intimate uncertainties about identity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rakowitz\u2019s subsequent works have ranged from a re-creation of an ancient <em>lamassu<\/em> destroyed by ISIL [the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant] at the site of Nineveh for a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelrakowitz.com\/the-invisible-enemy-should-not-exist-lamassu-of-nineveh\">Fourth Plinth commission<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelrakowitz.com\/return\">exporting the famously delicious dates<\/a> of Iraq to Brooklyn to explore the effects both of punitive international sanctions and the expulsion of Rakowitz\u2019s grandfather, alongside many other Iraqi Jews, from the country in 1947.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rakowitz\u2019s latest project, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rhoffmangallery.com\/exhibitions\/michael-rakowitz4\">The Monument, the Monster, and the Maquette<\/a><\/em>, is now on display at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago. The work analyzes the role public monuments have played in the formation of American society, while also asking questions about how they\u2014and America\u2014might change. Once again, Rakowitz and I are navigating similar ground\u2014in different yet complimentary ways: I have just published a book on these topics, <a href=\"https:\/\/wwnorton.com\/books\/9780393867671\"><em>Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Monuments<\/em><\/a>. When I heard Rakowitz had read it while preparing his project, I asked him to speak with me. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">                                                                                               \u2014Erin L. Thompson<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:52px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Not Controversial but Cruel<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Erin Thompson:<\/strong> How did you come to be interested in monuments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Michael Rakowitz:<\/strong> I always tell this story about going to the British Museum at age ten, after my grandmother died. She was the last person in our household who could recall life in Baghdad. My mother took us to the Assyrian galleries and showed us the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishmuseum.org\/collection\/galleries\/assyria-lion-hunts\">reliefs of King Ashurbanipal hunting lions<\/a>. She explained to us that it was the first comic book in human history and that it came from the same place where my grandmother was from\u2014where we were from. There\u2019s nothing cooler for a ten-year-old than hearing that his people were responsible for the first comic book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These monuments were initially propaganda for the king. They praised the brutality of his conquests. Yet 2,500 years later, as we watched the destruction of places like Nineveh and Nimrud, these reliefs were vessels for our grief. Initially, they belonged to a king, but eventually, they became work that belonged to the people. They become something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have always been interested in this magic of art history, where artworks change their position over the years. But I began to think that we shouldn\u2019t have to wait 2,500 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In my graduate program in public art at MIT, I studied with Krzysztof Wodiczko. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.krzysztofwodiczko.com\/public-projections\">projects things onto monuments<\/a> so that they can reappear for us. The novelist Robert Musil wrote that \u201cthere is nothing more invisible than a monument,\u201d but Wodiczko did things like use projections to turn the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonsnext.com\/\">equestrian statue of George Washington<\/a> in New York\u2019s Union Square Park, which most people just walk past and ignore, into a portrait of a disabled Vietnam War veteran, with Windex and a squeegee (1986\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/778428\"><em>Homeless Projection: A Proposal for Union Square<\/em><\/a>, revised in 2012 as the <a href=\"https:\/\/moreart.org\/projects\/krzysztof-wodiczko\/\"><em>War Veteran Project<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> Have recent events changed your thinking about monuments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> Monuments were suddenly not so invisible after 2017\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sah.org\/publications-and-research\/sah-blog\/sah-blog\/2017\/09\/13\/confederate-monuments-and-civic-values-in-the-wake-of-charlottesville\">Unite the Right<\/a> rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Commentators were always talking about the meaning of the images: depictions of Robert E. Lee, depictions of Stonewall Jackson, depictions of Columbus. But as a sculptor, I wanted to know more about the role of the artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/13\/us\/charlottesville-rally-protest-statue.html\">Lee monument<\/a> at the center of the deadly conflict in Charlottesville was made by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nga.gov\/collection\/artist-info.2272.html\">Henry Shrady<\/a>. I researched his life and found out that the commission he had gotten in 1902, before the Lee statue, was for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aoc.gov\/explore-capitol-campus\/art\/ulysses-s-grant-memorial\">Grant Memorial<\/a> outside the US Capitol Building. This probably got him the Lee commission in 1917. It seemed like the two commissions were America in miniature: a country that fights on both sides of itself. It raised the question for me of what keeps one statue standing when another is taken down. Is there a shadow of the sculpture that\u2019s been removed in the sculpture that remains?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These questions got me to look more closely at etymology of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/etymologeek.com\/eng\/monument\">monument<\/a>.\u201d It\u2019s derived from the Latin <em>monere<\/em>, which means both \u201cto remind\u201d and \u201cto warn.\u201d From the same root, you get words like demonstrate and remonstrate, which means \u201cto make a forceful reproach\u201d\u2014to protest. And you also get the word \u201cmonster.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so, I started to think about monuments as monsters. Throughout history, humans have believed that monsters were sent from above to warn us about something. So, you could think of the removal of a monument as a completion of the sculpture: as a way of defeating the monster by creating the opportunity for us to understand it as a warning. At least, as a warning to certain people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> I wrote an article about how the Charlottesville Lee statue was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.harpersbazaar.com\/culture\/features\/a37991658\/ghosting-the-confederacy\/\">erected as part of a eugenicist campaign<\/a> to criminalize interracial marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> Yes, I read that. It\u2019s an incredible piece of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> Do you think the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/07\/09\/us\/charlottesville-confederate-monuments-lee.html\">removal of that statue<\/a>, which finally happened in 2021, was a removal of its warning to people\u2014its claim that we should not cross various boundary lines?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> Yes, of course, but the removal did a lot of other things, too. The monument also served as a more general warning for the Black people in Charlottesville, to make them feel as though they were still living under the same kind of regime that allowed for the emergence of the Confederacy\u2014and, really, for the whole failed social experiment of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Something that really resonated with me in your book is its discussion of the effect on people of living with monuments. For example, if someone from an Indigenous background or a colonized country walks past a statue of <a href=\"https:\/\/chicago.suntimes.com\/city-hall\/2022\/3\/28\/23000625\/columbus-statue-grant-park-return-protest-police-injured-public-safety-plan-lightfoot-onesti-arrigo\">Columbus here in Chicago<\/a>, they get the message that they are somehow lesser than him. His commemoration comes at the expense of people whose pain isn\u2019t as visible in the day-to-day, as we go about our business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> People often use the word \u201ccontroversial\u201d to describe monuments. I love controversial art. Monuments like those of Columbus are not controversial, but cruel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Something you wrote about in your book is what it communicates to a young person to grow up in a city where their monsters are present. Where monuments celebrate atrocity by reinterpreting it as progress. Part of what\u2019s gained from removing such monuments is that people who were oppressed by a belief system don\u2019t have to see the concretized forms of this belief still regaled and cared for in the present. They no longer have to psychologically, emotionally, and physically navigate around the monuments that serve as anchors for oppressive beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Unpleasantness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> I often think about how monuments have the privilege of boredom. The messages they communicate, say, about white supremacy, are so much part of the social status quo that they\u2019re nearly impossible to notice, and thus nearly impossible to question. Monuments give these messages an embodied inevitability, in the same way that you so easily lose track of your own breath or heartbeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> Yes, monuments become the lungs of the city, performing the involuntary action of breathing the oxygen of settler colonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism that gives life to these oppressive ideals. And not just in public spaces: during my project, I\u2019ve begun to see how many pieces of the work of the monuments\u2019 sculptors ended up in American living rooms. For example, my paternal grandmother had a little porcelain statue by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chesterwood.org\/lincoln-memorial\">Daniel Chester French<\/a> and another by Antonin Merci\u00e9, who made the <a href=\"https:\/\/smarthistory.org\/lee-monument-richmond\/\">Lee statue in Richmond<\/a>. They got me thinking about what kind of reckoning must also happen in private space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> How did these offspring of monuments inspire the work in your show?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"alignnormal\"><div id=\"metaslider-id-15456\" style=\"max-width: 1000px; margin: 0 auto;\" class=\"ml-slider-3-19-1 ml-slider-pro-2-18-1 metaslider metaslider-flex metaslider-15456 ml-slider ml-slider-lightbox-1-11-3 lightbox-disabled ms-theme-blend has-thumb-nav\">\n    <div id=\"metaslider_container_15456\">\n        <div id=\"metaslider_15456\" class=\"flexslider\">\n            <ul aria-live=\"polite\" class=\"slides\">\n                <li data-thumb=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-150x100.jpg\" style=\"display: block; width: 100%;\" class=\"slide-15459 ms-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1702\" height=\"2552\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A.jpg\" class=\"slider-15456 slide-15459\" alt=\"A photograph of a detail of a sculpture in a gallery in the shape of an anthropomorphic monster. The photograph shows the figure\u2019s torso, which is composed of repurposed objects including a wooden bell form and a circular bas-relief. On the bell form, the artist has written \u201cwooden mold from Meneely Bell Factory in Troy, NY. In 1850, the foundry cast a fell for the First Methodist Church of Atlanta. It survived the Civil War, though most of Atlanta\u2019s bells were melted down to make cannons for the Confederate Army.\u201d On the circular bas-relief, the artist has written \u201cArt Deco bas-relief by Leo Lentilli, depicting the bronze horses atop St. Mark\u2019s Basilica in Venice, looted from Constantinople in the 1200s. Lentelli completed the Lee Moniument in Charlottesville after sculptor Henry Shrady\u2019s death.\u201d\" rel=\"\" title=\"2A\" style=\"margin: 0 auto; width: 50.0195924765%\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A.jpg 1702w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-333x500.jpg 333w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-667x1000.jpg 667w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-133x200.jpg 133w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-1366x2048.jpg 1366w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-720x1080.jpg 720w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2A-560x840.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1702px) 100vw, 1702px\" \/><div class=\"caption-wrap\"><div class=\"caption\">Michael Rakowitz, <em>American Golem<\/em>, 2022 (detail), mixed media including repurposed sculpture, dimensions variable. (Artwork \u00a9 Michael Rakowitz; photograph provided by Rhona Hoffman Gallery).<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n                <li data-thumb=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-150x100.jpg\" style=\"display: none; width: 100%;\" class=\"slide-15460 ms-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2559\" src=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B.jpg\" class=\"slider-15456 slide-15460\" alt=\"A photograph of a detail of a sculpture composed of repurposed objects. The photograph shows one of these objects, a marble bust of a young girl, on whose face and chest the artist has written \u201c\u2018Portrait of a Young Girl\u2019 by Thomas Ball, who also sculpted the Emancipation Memorial. Known as the Freedman\u2019s Memorial, it was paid for by formerly enslaved people and depicts Lincoln \u2018freeing\u2019 a kneeling, enslaved African American person while holding the Emancipation Proclamation. Ball initially hired a Black model but fired him because of \u2018the unpleasantness of being obliged to conduct him through our apartment.\u2019 Ball then used himself as a model but was eventually persuaded by the commission to work from a photograph of a formerly enslaved Black man named Archer Alexander. In a dedication speech for the memorial, Frederick Douglass said: \u2018Truth compels me to admit\u2026 Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man.\u2019 Douglass noted that Lincoln was motivated more to save the Union than to free slaves and that he \u2018strangely told us that we were the cause of the war.\u2019 In December 2020 the Boston Art Commission voted unanimously to remove the city\u2019s copy of the statue after a public debate determined it reinforced a racist and paternalistic view of Black people.\u201d\" rel=\"\" title=\"2B\" style=\"margin: 0 auto; width: 50.0293083236%\" srcset=\"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B.jpg 1707w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-334x500.jpg 334w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-667x1000.jpg 667w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-133x200.jpg 133w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-1025x1536.jpg 1025w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-1366x2048.jpg 1366w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-720x1079.jpg 720w, http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/2B-560x840.jpg 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1707px) 100vw, 1707px\" \/><div class=\"caption-wrap\"><div class=\"caption\">Michael Rakowitz, <em>American Golem<\/em>, 2022 (detail), mixed media including repurposed sculpture, dimensions variable. (Artwork \u00a9 Michael Rakowitz; photograph provided by Rhona Hoffman Gallery).<\/div><\/div><\/li>\n            <\/ul>\n        <\/div>\n        \n    <\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:36px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> I\u2019m creating a monster. My new sculpture, <em>American Golem<\/em>, cobbles together different objects and materials that have been imbued with the power given to monuments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These objects include a bronze ingot stamped with marks showing it came from the Royal Bavarian Foundry of Munich, Germany, which cast many American monuments, including <em>The Spirit of the Confederacy<\/em>, sculpted by Louis Amateis, which, as you wrote about, has been relocated to the Houston Museum of African American Culture. They also cast the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aoc.gov\/explore-capitol-campus\/art\/columbus-doors\"><em>Apotheosis of America<\/em><\/a>, designed by the same sculptor, inside the Rotunda of the US Capitol Building. (They\u2019re nicknamed \u201cthe doors to nowhere,\u201d because they don\u2019t open\u2014they just installed them against the wall.) I\u2019ve written about these connections directly on the ingot itself, to create an intimacy of knowledge: the same bronze that\u2019s in front of you has been removed in Houston but still stands in the Rotunda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another object is a really spooky bust of a girl by Thomas Ball, the artist of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reneeater.com\/on-monuments-blog\/2020\/7\/1\/on-the-removal-of-statues-freedmens-memorial-to-abraham-lincoln\">Freedmen\u2019s Memorial<\/a> in Washington, D.C. For that one, I use the quote from Ball\u2019s autobiography you included in your book, where he wrote that he fired the model he was using for the enslaved man in the memorial because of \u201cthe unpleasantness\u201d of having a Black person in his studio. You have to understand things like that to understand the legacy of these artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The idea of writing on these objects came from things like the base of the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, which became an incredible aggregation of the vision and resiliency of a community who transformed the monument by wrapping it in truth. My work often involves writing on drawings or vitrines, to do away with the institution\u2019s ventriloquizing of objects\u2014to have my hand tell people something different about what\u2019s in front of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m putting together the objects I\u2019ve written on into a golem. In Judaism, a golem is a beast made from clay, which is activated by the Hebrew word for truth, <em>emet<\/em>, and defends vulnerable communities. These stories originated in times of pogroms in cities like Prague\u2014the golem is almost like the first superhero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Introduce a Contrast Agent<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> Now I\u2019m thinking that all monuments are golems created from stone or metal and commanded to go forth and spread a message, but usually one that benefits those already in power. But when the writing on a monument is altered, as it was on the Richmond Lee monument base, to defend a more complex truth, or to call existing authority into question, then it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wtvr.com\/news\/local-news\/why-richmonds-robert-e-lee-monument-base-is-being-removed\">can\u2019t be allowed to stand<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> That\u2019s really interesting. I hadn\u2019t thought about it that way. Yes, all monuments are monsters. But it\u2019s not the ghetto that\u2019s being protected. It\u2019s the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My dad is a physician. My first toys were anatomical models, like a transparent human body where you could take out the brain, take out the kidneys\u2014I never put them back properly. When scientists want to know how a circulatory system works, they introduce a contrast agent. I think that art can do that, too. Our monuments tell us where we\u2019re living. They don\u2019t reveal history\u2014they reveal the present. They tell us that we\u2019re still fighting the Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As for my own work, I\u2019m not interested in proselytizing. I don\u2019t want to reduce complexities. I want to render our contradictions in high relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> I agree that art can point out the inequalities in a system. But I\u2019m frustrated that putting something like a monument into the category of art can have a noxious effect when people say we shouldn\u2019t remove a monument \u201cbecause it\u2019s art,\u201d as if this argument trumps all others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> Under some conditions, the usual saying is true: \u201cwhere they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings.\u201d But you must also remember that, in other conditions, it is the writing of books that means that then people will burn. That\u2019s why, when I read your piece about the link between eugenics and Charlottesville\u2019s Lee monument, I thought, absolutely, we have to get that statue out of here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Rubble We Can Dance On<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> I recently saw a drawing <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SajadJiyad\/status\/793525205738151937\">reinterpreting an Ashurbanipal relief<\/a> by dressing an Assyrian archer as an Iraqi soldier and showing his horse trampling an Islamic State flag, apparently made to celebrate the recapture of Mosul in 2016. In the United States, many people have both denied the propaganda use of monuments and the fact that it\u2019s very human to reinterpret monuments, as the Assyrian example shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> Your book demonstrates that this type of reinterpretation has always happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> Which leads into the questions I want to ask you: Is reinterpretation of monuments more about shaping viewers\u2019 attention than it is about shaping marble or bronze? Do you think that you\u2019re shaping attention in the same way as the sculptors whose monuments you\u2019re now analyzing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> I\u2019m much more interested in what I would call the maquette. There is so much contained in preparatory sketches and models that is somehow vaporized in a final design. A maquette can hold all sorts of different propositions from different people about what can happen in public space. For me, this conversation is the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>ET:<\/strong> I have long admired the ability of your work to shake apart our certainties, especially by showing how the way we perceive things is indelibly linked to larger cultural and social happenings. For example, in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelrakowitz.com\/the-ballad-of-special-ops-cody\">The Ballad of Special Ops Cody<\/a><\/em>, you show how our perception of ancient Sumerian sculptures can\u2019t be separated from conflicts in the modern states that now contain the sites they were excavated from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>MR:<\/strong> One of the things I find the most exciting about being an artist is the ability to reorder and reorient\u2014to look at history and start to think about the potential for it to be something else. Something I loved about your book is that you\u2019re the only other person that I know who reveres the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-34594262\">Darth Vader statue<\/a> in Odessa, made from a repurposed Lenin monument. I\u2019ve made a vellum drawing of it for the current show, with a bottom layer that indicates what it used to be. It indicates a little bit of the mischief and humor we can access and mobilize when dealing with monuments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m not saying that everything must turn into something else as we move forward. But there\u2019s some rubble we must repair, and some rubble we can dance on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:28px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator is-style-default\"\/>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:29px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.artcrimeprof.com\/\"><strong>Erin L. Thompson<\/strong><\/a>, who&nbsp;holds a PhD in Art History and a JD, both from Columbia University, teaches at&nbsp;the City University of New York. Her work analyzes the ways in which the deliberate destruction of art has sometimes harmed and sometimes benefited communities. Her book, <em>Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of American Public Monuments<\/em> (W. W. Norton, 2022) traces the turbulent history and abundant ironies of our monuments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelrakowitz.com\/\"><strong>Michael Rakowitz&nbsp;<\/strong><\/a>is an Iraqi-American artist working at the intersection of problem-solving and troublemaking. He is the recipient of the 2020 Nasher Prize and was awarded the 2018\u20132020 Fourth Plinth commission in London\u2019s Trafalgar Square. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including MoMA, MassMOCA, the Palais de Tokyo, Tate Modern, and the Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smashing statues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":16902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kia_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conversations",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/artjournal.collegeart.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}