‘Perhaps street art is simply a more resonant form for a generation not so beguiled by Great Men: less burdened with classical allusions, less permanent, more dynamic, more democratic.’ [1] Reflecting on Alex von Tunzelmann (2021) Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History London, Headline Publishing Group
Statues make history in the most active sense – in being campaigned for, erected and interpreted through living ceremony or institutional setting and in being poulkled down, defaced, their ‘body’ parts severed, and their dislocation. The most obvious of the lessons from this very entertaining and rich book is this very point. The four stock arguments for preserving them against all odd are all easily dismantled, pulled down even more quickly than some of the more reinforced structures we meet in the book. These arguments are that attacking statues:
- Erases History;
- Over-reacts to persons who were very much men of their time, with the views common at that time;
- Militates against the due processes of law and order; and, finally;
- Starts us on the ‘slippery slope’ to mass destruction of historical artefacts.
These arguments depend on a view of history that is made from above and is a consensual rather than conflictual process – the very kind of process, for instance, that made Cecil Rhodes and his casual racism, very much a bone of contention even at his own time. Statues of Lenin appeared against Lenin’s own wishes and in order to enforce a version of his thought that was very much the child of Joe Stalin and intent on reformulating the role of the Communist Party in history. Statues often imposed a system of oppression that might have previously been seen as illegal, as in Nazi Germany for instance. History is, after all, not the statue, or its meaning in isolation from other topics that matter to people, per se but the processes which facilitate its maintenance or otherwise.
Von Tunzelmann’s idea that street art is more honestly a means of demonstrating that has never been clearer than in the vandalisation and the consequent reaction on street and media of a mural in Withington, south Manchester, made to honour Marcus Rashford’s work on campaigning for free meals for school children which was defaced when he failed to score in a penalty shootout in a major national football game for England’s national team.
What matters here is the process of street expression that never stops or is bound up entirely in the work of art or work turned into art but the participation in a happening, whose meanings are multiple; with any consensus achieved being provisional and temporary.
This book is a joy to read and illuminates so much about how and why, for instance, the debate over statues attached to the lost cause of the Confederacy have raised such passion that encapsulated responses to US states who used them together with legislation (the infamous Jim Crow laws) and religious symbolism to foster white supremacist thinking and emotion.[2] The best exemplification of how statues can be manipulated as a token of an attempt to construct the real from the images of fantasy comes in the examination of Jean Baudrillard notion of ‘hyperreality’ in the two desert wars against Iraq. For instance, whilst the Western media saw the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue (made to look much easier than it was) as the result of a popular rising of hatred against Saddam Hussein’s rule, in fact it looked at the time as if world media might show the crowd giving up on a failed job. Hence Lieutenant Colonel Brian McCoy of the 3rd Batallion 4th Marines ‘radioed a senior officer, who authorized him to involve troops directly in pulling down the statue. When a US corporal shinned the statue a US flag at one point was pulled across the statue’s face: ‘This was the wrong image: one of American imperialism’. Within minutes another Marine Lieutenant, who happened to possess an Iraqi flag, passed that through the crowd to replace the ‘Stars and Stripes’ as if from a spontaneous upwelling of anti-tyrannical national feeling.[3]
In this case, it looks as if history, far from being either erased (not an argument used by the Western allies this time) or even created was actually simulated. Likewise the statur raised to Edward Colston in Bristol by the Victorian publisher, James Arrowsmith, who said that Colston was ‘enshrined in the great heart of posterity’ found it impossible on the several times he tried to raise sufficient funds for a memorial, even amongst the Colston charitable societies, raising only 20% of required funds on a first round.[4]
The very funniest quotations in this book, now that he has gone, come from Donald Trump, whose statements now seem incoherent not just because they fail to obey the most ordinary grammatical rules: ‘… and i see what’s happening and they’re ripping down things they have no idea what they’re ripping down’.[5] A Conservative political action Conference actually commissioned a statue of Trump by artist, Tommy Zegan (see below). However, i will not expect it to grace Washington yet nor for Trump’s declared intention to grace Mount Rushmore to be realised any time soon.
All the best
Steve
[1] Alex von Tunzelmann (2021: 207).
[2] Ibid: 163
[3] Ibid: 128
[4] Ibid: 182
[5] Trump in 20920 on Fox News cited ibid; 18.
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