Page 3 of 5
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2020 11:25 pm
by Herainestold
monkey wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2020 6:59 pm
EACLucifer wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:46 pm
Sadly yes. The Rober Gould Shaw Memorial was just graffitied, not torn down, but it depicts Colonel Shaw and members of 54th Massachussets Volunteer Infantry, one of the first African American infantry units. Shaw was killed during the storming of Fort Wagner in 1863, and fundraising for the statue was lead by veterans of the 54th. It's regarded as one of the first monuments to recognise the heroism of African American soldiers.
Ulysses Grant's statue was pulled down. He commanded the Overland Campaign that ultimately smashed the Confederacy, personally taking the surrender of Robert E Lee's army. As president, he suppressed the original incarnation of the KKK. Though his history isn't totally straightforward, anyone in doubt about his overall legacy on this should check out Frederick Douglass's opinion of him.
The Free Soil activist was Hans Christian Heg. His statue was torn down last night. He was a committed abolitionist activist, in deed as well as word, including sheltering a fugitive abolitionist and leading Wisconsin's Wide-Awakes. When the civil war broke out, he used his standing in the Norwegian immigrant community to raise a regiment of Norwegian migrants, with a few Danes and Swedes in it too. As a colonel, his service was exemplary, and he was in line for promotion to general when he died at Chickamauga, fighting against the Confederacy.
Miguel de Cervantes is most noted for writing Don Quixote. He also wrote some plays and poems, fought at Lepanto, and survived five years of slavery after he was captured by Ottoman pirates. No idea why, but his statue in San Francisco was torn down.
That should be enough detail to search for more information if you want. Also, not in the original post, but Matthias Baldwin - another noted supporter of abolition and philanthropist to the African American community - was also targeted with graffiti.
Ta. FInding news articles now. They're not being that helpful about the reasons why they were gafitti'd/torn down, just that they were. I agree they are not good statues to be targeted.
It does seem to be people not thinking enough (or perhaps too much and getting it wrong). For example, the Cervnates one is probably because him being Spanish at the time of expansion in the Americas is a symbol of that. I could only find articles saying his statue was graffiti'd, not torn down, but others were at the time, including Junipero Serra who definitely played a role in colonisation. A few of your examples seem to be less targeted than you suggest though, the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial was one of 16 statue type things vandalised in one night. I think that's indicative of general indiscriminate vandalism, not a thought out action. Some graffiti that I saw on that one would also suggest that, just writing "f.ck" and "ACAB" doesn't indicate much thought beyond it being an expression of anger and finding a flat surface to put it on. But still, not enough thinking.
Thankfully, as far as I can tell these instances aren't representative of of the whole. I suppose any movement which has many people associating themselves with it will have some who do it wrong. It a numbers thing.
They were all white males, whether abolitionists or not, they were colonialists and imperialists and benefitted from white supremacy.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2020 1:12 am
by Bird on a Fire
This is good. We should have more horse statues - they're an excellent symbol for the working class.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2020 3:37 am
by bmforre
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 1:12 am
We should have more horse statues - they're an excellent symbol for the working class.
From my old hometown Haugesund:
Blacksmith
Mother eagle teaching chick
Fish seller
Marilyn
Goat
Lynx
The Fishermen
Wolf
Bear
The Spreader of Merriment
... and there are plenty more.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2020 4:13 am
by basementer
Delightful.
You probably know of the statue in Budapest of Anonymous?
https://www.inspirock.com/hungary/budap ... 6145264083
We're not that good at impersonal statuary in Wellington but we do have this sorrowful chap on the harbourside leaning into the prevailing wind:
Solace in the Wind
One night the local graffiti knitters fitted him with trunks and a swimming cap in lifeguard colours...
Yarnbomb
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2020 6:15 am
by Martin_B
My old home town had this statue:
- War of the Worlds
- 136649_e738ee80.jpg (92.6 KiB) Viewed 3466 times
If this isn't a statue to the enslavement of men, I'm not sure what is!
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2020 8:00 am
by gosling
Gotta love the graffiti knitters. Here's one in my home town.
- verity-yarnbomb.jpg (43.89 KiB) Viewed 3448 times
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:53 am
by bjn
EACLucifer wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:46 pm
Miguel de Cervantes is most noted for writing Don Quixote. He also wrote some plays and poems, fought at Lepanto, and survived five years of slavery after he was captured by Ottoman pirates. No idea why, but his statue in San Francisco was torn down.
I thought it was only spray painted with symbols that look suspiciously like those of the far right.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Fri Jun 26, 2020 1:32 pm
by EACLucifer
bjn wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 10:53 am
EACLucifer wrote: ↑Wed Jun 24, 2020 5:46 pm
Miguel de Cervantes is most noted for writing Don Quixote. He also wrote some plays and poems, fought at Lepanto, and survived five years of slavery after he was captured by Ottoman pirates. No idea why, but his statue in San Francisco was torn down.
I thought it was only spray painted with symbols that look suspiciously like those of the far right.
Hadn't seen that pic, mostly going on what the Spanish embassy put out getting annoyed by the destruction of a statue of a notable Spaniard. That ccross in circle is something I've seen the far right use before. It's the kind of sh.t far right accelerationists would do, too.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 12:59 pm
by bmforre
basementer wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 4:13 am
We're not that good at impersonal statuary in Wellington but we do have this sorrowful chap on the harbourside leaning into the prevailing wind:
Solace in the Wind
One night the local graffiti knitters fitted him with trunks and a swimming cap in lifeguard colours...
Yarnbomb
More winds for him?
"The four winds" from Haugesund.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 1:13 pm
by bmforre
Boy with his boat.
Communication.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 1:23 pm
by bmforre
You may possibly get an idea that Haugesund would accept no statue of royalty?
Untrue. The first king over all of Norway was Harald Fairhair or possibly Grandhair fits better?
A girl he wanted would not accept just a local king, so he swore not to cut his hair till he had won all Norway.
Haugesund has a statue of the hair and the man:
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 1:52 pm
by bmforre
Apart from statues Haugesund has a well known monument: The Town Hall:
Here shown an ordinary day from the place in front where local produce is offered direct from growers to consumers.
On Big Days parades arrive here.
The Town Hall was inaugurated in 1931. Inspiration from Italy but new work not copying.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 2:14 pm
by bmforre
Geneva Switzerland:
"The Immigrant"
Sculpture by Ousmane Sow
Sow has done a good deal of work that is relevant to the subject of this thread.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 2:24 pm
by bmforre
This is Crazy Horse attacking at Little Big Horn.
Ousman Sow has depicted that confrontation in dramatic statues.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 2:36 pm
by Sciolus
There is a fact-shaped object that says Britain has more statues of goats than of women. (More specifically, non-royal, non-mythical women.) More or Less looked into it a couple of years ago and couldn't confirm it, but they couldn't disprove it either, and they did discover a remarkably large number of statues of goats. (But then I would consider more than one statue of goats to be a remarkably large number.)
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Sat Jun 27, 2020 2:46 pm
by bmforre
Sciolus wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 2:36 pm
There is a fact-shaped object that says Britain has more statues of goats than of women. (More specifically, non-royal, non-mythical women.) More or Less looked into it a couple of years ago and couldn't confirm it, but they couldn't disprove it either, and they did discover a remarkably large number of statues of goats. (But then I would consider more than one statue of goats to be a remarkably large number.)
There used to be many goats in the areas near Haugesund, wintering there near sea level and going to the mountains in summer. I like them.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:58 am
by Bird on a Fire
Thanks for these Norwegian statues, bmforre! Interesting to see what different cultures make statues of.
A prime example of this is
Brussels' most famous statue.
bmforre wrote: ↑Sat Jun 27, 2020 1:23 pm
You may possibly get an idea that Haugesund would accept no statue of royalty?
Untrue. The first king over all of Norway was Harald Fairhair or possibly Grandhair fits better?
A girl he wanted would not accept just a local king, so he swore not to cut his hair till he had won all Norway.
Haugesund has a statue of the hair and the man:
I'm always impressed by statues that manage to convey soft/flowing material well, like hair or drapery or the
fingers pressed into the thigh on Bernini's Rape of Proserpina. (NB that's 'rape' in the older sense of 'snatching/seizing', rather than the modern sense of sexual assault (cf Pope's
Rape of the Lock) - still problematic, but not quite so bad.)
I'm looking quite a lot like that statue these days, though I'd be very flattered if anybody called me
hárfagri.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:12 am
by discovolante
My local town's main statue commemorates a massacre against its civilians who protested against conscription in the 18th century. Take that.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 am
by Tessa K
Not far from me are these, which I've always liked (the building was originally the Black Cat cigarette factory)
We also have a pretty dull one to Richard Cobden who repealed the Corn Laws and:
In his opposition to the Opium Wars, Cobden argued that just as "in the slave trade we [the British] had surpassed in guilt the world, so in foreign wars we have the most aggressive, quarelsome, warlike and bl..dy nation under the sun." In October 1850 he wrote to Joseph Sturge that if you look at the last 25 years "you will find that we have been incomparably the most sanguinary nation on earth... in China, in Burma, in India, New Zealand, the Cape, Syria, Spain, Portugal, Greece, etc, there is hardly a country, however remote, in which we have not been waging war or dictating our terms at the point of a bayonet." Cobden believed that the British, "the greatest blood-shedders of all", had been then involved in more wars than the rest of Europe put together
Plus a really shitey one of Amy Whitehouse in the Market. It really is one of the ugliest statues I've seen. I won't hurt your eyes with it.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2020 3:18 am
by Herainestold
https://www.chicagotribune.com/midwest/ ... story.html
MADISON, WIS. — Some University of Wisconsin-Madison students of color want the university to remove one of its most iconic landmarks, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, because of what they see as the former president’s anti-Indigenous and anti-Black history despite Lincoln’s legacy of ending slavery in the U.S.
Two student organizations, the Black Student Union and the Student Inclusion Coalition, pushed for the statue’s removal in early June, days after George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody and protests erupted nationally over racial injustice.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 4:12 am
by Herainestold
Statement of Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe on Mt. Rushmore
https://twitter.com/CRSTChairman/status ... 91/photo/1
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:30 am
by Boustrophedon
Tessa K wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 am
Plus a really shitey one of Amy Whitehouse in the Market. It really is one of the ugliest statues I've seen. I won't hurt your eyes with it.
Mary Whitehouse or Amy Winehouse?
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:53 am
by shpalman
Boustrophedon wrote: ↑Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:30 am
Tessa K wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 am
Plus a really shitey one of Amy Whitehouse in the Market. It really is one of the ugliest statues I've seen. I won't hurt your eyes with it.
Mary Whitehouse or Amy Winehouse?
Paul Whitehouse, one of the creators of the Fast Show, which had
Amy Winehouse in it once.
Or maybe, the actual White House.
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 9:08 am
by Tessa K
shpalman wrote: ↑Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:53 am
Boustrophedon wrote: ↑Thu Jul 02, 2020 8:30 am
Tessa K wrote: ↑Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:26 am
Plus a really shitey one of Amy Whitehouse in the Market. It really is one of the ugliest statues I've seen. I won't hurt your eyes with it.
Mary Whitehouse or Amy Winehouse?
Paul Whitehouse, one of the creators of the Fast Show, which had
Amy Winehouse in it once.
Or maybe, the actual White House.
Casablanca
Re: Should we have statues at all?
Posted: Thu Jul 02, 2020 10:10 am
by Grumble
I must admit that there’s a statue of Cobden in Stockport (he was the MP for a time) without any information beyond his name. I was intrigued enough to look him up and learnt a little about his role in repealing the corn laws. So statues do have a role in teaching history.
