I totally agree (I similarly receive strange looks when I talk about great monuments) but would make my point a little more specific with regard to art/public monuments. Far too many are focused on making some particular point right now and not enough is focused on evoking awe or the sublime. That's the kind of feeling I would be aiming for with my funding.
Excellent column, Frank. Entirely agree with you. Monuments that endure are created with a sense of history and belief in the future. At the moment those factors are missing. Some well constructed monuments might help us shake that.
Right now it looks like short-term thought is the zeitgeist. I sincerely hope influencers are the apex of this trend. Maybe after the failures of the current model, which will fail, we can move back to longer-term thinking.
Monuments require the belief that we can matter to the future and that the future will happen at all. Right now, I am not sure everyone believes these things.
An example of a current project in long-term thought followed by action is the Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona. Gaudí, the architect, knew it would never be completed in his generation or the next generation. The current goal is to complete it by a century after the architects death.
We need more long-term thought followed by long-term action IMHO.
Thanks, and this is exactly my point. I think we need to think long term. I think our short-termism is really a problem and we can't even see it because we value everything in the short term.
And I love the Gaudi cathedral! I've seen it and it's amazing and unique in all human architecture. It's entirely what I think we need more of, although people's disinterest in such things is exactly why it's privately funded through donations and taking so long.
I usually agree with you Frank, but I'm sorry I don't agree on this one. I don't want to spend tax dollars on building monuments for a couple of reasons.
First, I don't think there exists a national consensus anymore - we are a divided populace - so who would decide what that Monument is? To pick just one example: CPB/PBS - half of the country strongly believes these should be funded by the public's tax dollars, the other half strongly believes the exact opposite.
Second, I believe that monuments reflect/project power and a national statement. I am firmly committed to the decentralization of the country through federalism. I am much more interested in the building up of local communities, local traditions, local families, arts, crafts and economies than I am in having the public trust fund national monuments.
No worries, this is why I said this is an opinion that I'm surprised everyone always hates. But as I said, I don't think we should spend tax dollars! I completely understand why democratic governments will not, and should not, be doing this. Although I would like public projects not to be ugly brutalist concrete blocks that look like they belong in the Soviet Union.
I'm talking about the ultrarich, institutions, and big corporations. I wish they would try to leave a legacy by building something lasting. I think they reason that they don't is because the culture attacks them for it. But I think it make us all poorer and leaves a major hole in value.
The Mongols would disagree with you. The Great Khan was the Giver of Laws who united the Mongol tribes into a single nation, and those two monuments to his spirit have endured for 800 years.
The Mongols also conquered and controlled countries that did build monuments.
I think the example I look to are the lost civilizations of South America. Most are so gone we only have small pieces of their culture and the tails of explores who saw them and wrote about it. The pieces are in the form of lost cities that crop up from time to time.
I suppose if you're a Mongol his legacy is more than any other Mongol! But the Mongol Empire itself left no great works behind, or literature, or any reason for anyone to study them other than raw conquest.
There seems to be something else about the Mongols. The Mongols were the, short lived, Yuan Dynasty of China. They didn’t create monuments but they participated in systems that far outlived them.
If a group, like the Mongols under the great Khan, has mainly military capital but not cultural capital they want to become take over another group that has extensive cultural capital, like China. The Yuan dynasty conquered the Song dynasty that was arguably one of the cultural high points in history that we know about.
When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul it suddenly becomes the capital of the Ottoman Empire. They wanted the cultural legacy of the Roman Empire.
Thus, establishing monuments is more about solidifying the cultural capital of a society for the future.
I agree. I would say the portion of the Mongol Empire that became the Yuan dynasty merely borrowed and integrated into Chinese culture, more than created anything unique for itself.
I totally agree (I similarly receive strange looks when I talk about great monuments) but would make my point a little more specific with regard to art/public monuments. Far too many are focused on making some particular point right now and not enough is focused on evoking awe or the sublime. That's the kind of feeling I would be aiming for with my funding.
Excellent column, Frank. Entirely agree with you. Monuments that endure are created with a sense of history and belief in the future. At the moment those factors are missing. Some well constructed monuments might help us shake that.
Thanks Jim! Really appreciated.
Right now it looks like short-term thought is the zeitgeist. I sincerely hope influencers are the apex of this trend. Maybe after the failures of the current model, which will fail, we can move back to longer-term thinking.
Monuments require the belief that we can matter to the future and that the future will happen at all. Right now, I am not sure everyone believes these things.
An example of a current project in long-term thought followed by action is the Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona. Gaudí, the architect, knew it would never be completed in his generation or the next generation. The current goal is to complete it by a century after the architects death.
We need more long-term thought followed by long-term action IMHO.
Thanks, and this is exactly my point. I think we need to think long term. I think our short-termism is really a problem and we can't even see it because we value everything in the short term.
And I love the Gaudi cathedral! I've seen it and it's amazing and unique in all human architecture. It's entirely what I think we need more of, although people's disinterest in such things is exactly why it's privately funded through donations and taking so long.
I usually agree with you Frank, but I'm sorry I don't agree on this one. I don't want to spend tax dollars on building monuments for a couple of reasons.
First, I don't think there exists a national consensus anymore - we are a divided populace - so who would decide what that Monument is? To pick just one example: CPB/PBS - half of the country strongly believes these should be funded by the public's tax dollars, the other half strongly believes the exact opposite.
Second, I believe that monuments reflect/project power and a national statement. I am firmly committed to the decentralization of the country through federalism. I am much more interested in the building up of local communities, local traditions, local families, arts, crafts and economies than I am in having the public trust fund national monuments.
No worries, this is why I said this is an opinion that I'm surprised everyone always hates. But as I said, I don't think we should spend tax dollars! I completely understand why democratic governments will not, and should not, be doing this. Although I would like public projects not to be ugly brutalist concrete blocks that look like they belong in the Soviet Union.
I'm talking about the ultrarich, institutions, and big corporations. I wish they would try to leave a legacy by building something lasting. I think they reason that they don't is because the culture attacks them for it. But I think it make us all poorer and leaves a major hole in value.
The Mongols would disagree with you. The Great Khan was the Giver of Laws who united the Mongol tribes into a single nation, and those two monuments to his spirit have endured for 800 years.
The Mongols also conquered and controlled countries that did build monuments.
I think the example I look to are the lost civilizations of South America. Most are so gone we only have small pieces of their culture and the tails of explores who saw them and wrote about it. The pieces are in the form of lost cities that crop up from time to time.
I suppose if you're a Mongol his legacy is more than any other Mongol! But the Mongol Empire itself left no great works behind, or literature, or any reason for anyone to study them other than raw conquest.
There seems to be something else about the Mongols. The Mongols were the, short lived, Yuan Dynasty of China. They didn’t create monuments but they participated in systems that far outlived them.
If a group, like the Mongols under the great Khan, has mainly military capital but not cultural capital they want to become take over another group that has extensive cultural capital, like China. The Yuan dynasty conquered the Song dynasty that was arguably one of the cultural high points in history that we know about.
When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and renamed it Istanbul it suddenly becomes the capital of the Ottoman Empire. They wanted the cultural legacy of the Roman Empire.
Thus, establishing monuments is more about solidifying the cultural capital of a society for the future.
I agree. I would say the portion of the Mongol Empire that became the Yuan dynasty merely borrowed and integrated into Chinese culture, more than created anything unique for itself.