Yesterday I didn�t get a chance to mention this interesting article from the Op Ed page of the NY Times. It was written by Eric Fischl, the artist responsible for the �Tumbling Woman sculpture that caused such furor a year ago. The article discusses how we deal with tragedy and what role(s) art and memorials have in the process.

I get the feeling from both this article and from the press surrounding the removal of �Tumbling Woman� from Rockefeller Center (almost as soon as it had been installed) that the artist was completely unprepared for the political fallout that surrounded his work. He himself made what he thought was a heartfelt memorial to his own personal loss as well as those of others and he seems not to understand that many have trouble with his work. �If we cannot face what happened, how can we move past it,� he queries in the article in yesterday�s Times.

What is even more interesting to me, however, are some of the other statements he makes about art. The specifics of his discussion are rooted in the public questioning of the quality of the proposed 9/11 monuments announced this week. But the issues are valid in any number of artistic situations and time periods. Fischl suggests that one of the reasons the memorial designs were unsuccessful had to do with the anxiety of influence � performance anxiety brought on by the inevitable comparisons with Maya Lin�s 1982 Viet Nam Memorial, considered by many to be one of the most effective memorials (if not the most) ever built. He also suggests that perhaps the nature of a memorial to 9/11 is not well-suited to the aesthetics of the designers � �maybe their modernist sensibilities could not tolerate the messiness of what happened that day.� I myself am not convinced by this particular argument. I�m not sure that modernism precludes memorial � Maya Lin�s wall being the best example I can think of.

Then Fischl launches into the question of art�s role in this process: �Part of the outcry I heard against my sculpture last year was that it was art, and art belongs in museums, not public spaces. But what, then, is the purpose of art?�

What indeed. There is this idea that art should be above politics, above ugliness, above �the messiness of what happened that day.� Art that everybody sees should be pretty. Art that might be more difficult should be in a museum where those who do not wish to confront it can easily avoid doing so. Fischl is naively dogmatic in his attempts to combat this point of view: �Art has always served to bring form to what is experienced but cannot be seen. It recreates things that have happened and moves them forward into a new light. It brings order to chaos and clarity to confusion.�

I would venture to say that some art does these things. But for me at least � and I am no art historian, merely an avid art consumer � some art seems designed to do the opposite � to take what seems to be ordered and reveal it as chaos, to cause us to question the validity of our experiences, to bring form to what cannot be experienced.

The question he should be asking is �What is the purpose of memorial?� The function of a memorial is not the same as the function of any work of art. A public memorial is supposed to be accessible (both physically and philosophically) and meaningful to a large group of people (I won�t say everyone, as we all know that�s impossible) as a way of paying tribute to those whose lives have been lost. It�s a remembrance. Fischl states in his last paragraph, �I�m not sure we are ready to finalize the design of the memorial.� I think he may be right. The criticisms about �Tumbling Woman� had to do, in the main, with the fact that we are not yet ready to see something like that. I don�t think we (as a collective) are ready to remember. Or at least, we don�t want to remember the same things. How can we remember our heroes without remembering the circumstances that enabled their heroism? How can we remember what we wish to forget?

In the case of Maya Lin�s memorial, many more years had gone between the time when the lives of soldiers were lost and their names were inscribed on the wall. They were also primarily soldiers, not civilians, although the nature of the draft at that time may negate any potentially mitigating effect that distinction might have. Moreover, the lives that were lost were lost in a far away place, decades before CNN et al. made it possible to watch a war in our living room. Those of us who see a 9/11 memorial, even without any direct connection to any of the deceased, even without having been there, are likely to be reminded in the most graphic of terms and images of �the messiness of what happened that day.�

The eloquence of Lin�s wall is its complete lack of messiness. The circumstances that gave rise to the names carved on the wall are not represented in anyway. There are only names and a smooth black surface. What we are left with is the memory of lives, not deaths. Each of these names was a living, breathing, human being. We are left to wonder who they were, what they did, how they came to be a name on the wall.

The Oklahoma City memorial is not as spare, but offers a similar tack with its field of empty chairs.

I have not, to be honest, paid too much attention to the proposed designs for the 9/11 memorial, but it seems to me the difficulties stem from several sources all of which reveal conflicts in the answer to the question, �What is the purpose of this memorial?� The first problem is what is the subject of the memorial? Are we mourning the loss of buildings? The loss of American power? The loss of individuals? Lin�s memorial is most clearly the latter, and to me that is the appropriate answer for any such memorial. But from all I�ve read of the 9/11 proposals, it seems like the loss of American power as symbolized by the loss of the WTC buildings is more important. The memorial is supposed to represent the strength of the American nation. But if that�s its main purpose, is it really a memorial? Finally, who is this memorial intended for? Families of victims? Everyone? Firefighters? People who used to work in the WTC?

The designs lack clarity, but mostly they lack vision and understanding. Perhaps Fischl is right. Perhaps it is too soon.

0 people said it like they meant it