What is a monument?
A monument is a proposition. Someone, often but not always a government, places an object where it can be seen, and says: “This object now means X.”
X might be an event that happened here. Or it might be an event that happened somewhere else. X might be a person, or an idea. But the object said to represent it is always only a proposition, because individual people have the right (a human right, if not always a legal right) to decide: No, this does not adequately represent X.
To be blunt: it would not necessarily be hypocritical for someone who supports X to piss on a monument to X. It may simply mean they reject the proposition that this object equals X.
Separately, there is the question around whether or not the object is perceived to have value as art.
The confusion of these two separate questions often leads to social conflict. This might be seen in the destruction of good art, simply because the values of those who made it no longer align with contemporary values. Or alternatively, it might be the uncritical protection of well-liked monuments that actually celebrate Very Bad Ideas.
Another question is this: how many monuments does a society need? One big one in the centre of each town? Fewer than that, only marking the places of the most significant historical events? Or in fact, even more – whole networks of monuments scattering the landscape, and rising proud above the peak of every mountain?
Perhaps it would be reasonable for a society to say: We believe passionately in X. But we’ve inherited more monuments to X than we need or can maintain!
If those “excess” monuments are not generally deemed to have artistic value, might it be acceptable then for the society to remove some?
If we tear down a beautiful monument, it may be said that we lose art and heritage in the process. If we tear down an ugly one – what is lost? Is history forgotten? For that to be true, the monument must have played an important role in the process of remembering. Do they? Does the ritualisation of history preserve it better than, say, books do? Than schools do? Than families and oral histories do?
How does a society do its remembering, and what role do objects and rituals play? Does this vary from one society to the next? From one age to the next?
Who in a society has the power to make new monuments, and to say what needs to be remembered? Objects can outlast their critics. And in the case of those monuments that say less – those designed not as time capsules but as ritual markers – they might outlast their context too. Future societies may forget what to do with them.
At that point these objects can’t help but take on new layers of meaning: Because no matter their intended message, no matter their first ritual or social use, every monument also eventually becomes a monument to the passing of time.
I like the idea of transferring "contentious" public monuments (Bristol's Colston statue, for example) into more controlled spaces like museums, where it is possible to add context to their removal, rather than arbitrarily destroying them because they're of "bad" people.
This enables continuing discussions of and/or learning from the point in history they represent, instead of simply forgetting the past.
Do you have thoughts on the Soviet war memorial in Treptower Park, Berlin? I was in the area recently and a friend said he'd never actually seen it, so we went to take a look. It's ridiculous in scale and grandeur, represents a complicated and difficult time in Germany's past, is maintained at considerable expense out of a (perhaps) misguided sense of loyalty, and on the whole I really can't decide how I should feel about it.