A Tribute That Doesn’t Transcend

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We are approaching the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and, although it is impossible to know exactly how well the proposed memorial at ground zero will commemorate or transcend its subject, I remain skeptical. The site of the former World Trade Center, where construction was begun last month on a memorial (“Reflecting Absence”) and a museum (The World Trade Center Memorial Museum) — both of which are slated to open September 11, 2009 — is an unusually complicated place. An amalgamation of battleground, ruins, mass grave, memorial, museum, and tourist attraction, as well as Freedom Tower, business complex, and commercial mall, the site will have to serve so many conflicting functions that I cannot help but wonder if any of those elements (especially the memorial) has a chance of being successful.

The main purpose of a memorial is to inspire remembrance and commemoration. Remembrance: so that we do not forget; and commemoration: so that we can come together through our memory. Yet the word “memorial,” which comes from the word “memory,” is rooted in the Latin “memor” (mindful) and the Greek “mermera” (care). The greatest memorials not only keep alive the memory of an event (which is increasingly difficult to do over time), they also keep alive the acts of being reflective and empathetic. To accomplish this, a memorial must not merely trigger actual memories in those who are personally connected to its subject.The specificity of the events and people being memorialized must yield to a higher, universal cause, so that the memorial serves not just our present but also our future.

A memorial, like a headstone, connects us to those who have passed. Yet memorials have to speak to a much larger and broader audience. Ultimately, memorials need to inspire much more than remembrance and grief. Memorials bring that which is specific and private — mourning, memory, and reflection — into the public arena. As artworks, which are not merely headstones or plaques, memorials must transcend the particular. When we view memorial art from our past, such as Picasso’s “Guernica,” Goya’s “The Shootings of May 3, 1808,” Bernini’s “Blessed Ludovica Albertoni,” or the ancient Greek sculpture “Laocoön,” we do not experience the depiction of particular people and events; rather, we explore the themes of heroism, suffering, sacrifice, and rebirth.

When memorials are personally, rather than universally, symbolic; when they rely too heavily on the inherent weight of their subject matter to carry the weight of the art, viewers are coerced into relating to the memorials through their connection to the events being commemorated — an unfortunate position that exploits personal loss. This forces viewers to experience the memorial as an outward representation of an internal struggle — as a physical manifestation of personal grief. Furthermore, it encourages them to treat the memorial as an extension of self, rather than as a public artwork.

If viewers have no personal connection to the people or events being memorialized, a memorial, if it is too shallow, literal, and illustrative, will exploit viewers into the position of voyeurs.This is a position that, putting the majority of viewers outside looking in, encourages pity, rather than empathy and commemoration. Great memorials, which poetically transform their subjects and which create a metaphoric realm open to all viewers, are much more generous and much more demanding: Transforming personal loss into universal loss, they encourage people to come together in a middle ground where grieving, no matter what its cause, is met with compassion.

Almost all of the September 11 memorials and art with which I am familiar, whether proposed or already in place, are erring on the side of the illustrative, literal, and personally symbolic. Some of them are so literal and narrow, so lacking in transformation and reflection that they move beyond artifact and verge on the irreverent.

When, days after the attack, I first visited the World Trade Center ruins, I saw people collecting dust from the site. Later, even after it was established that there had to be human remains among the particles, I encountered works of art made from that dust. Now there is “Elegy in the Dust: September 11th and the Chelsea Jeans Memorial,” a preserved, glass-encased section of a jeans store near the World Trade Center, newly on view at the New-York Historical Society.

In other instances, memorials are plagued with too much forethought and not enough professional freedom and wisdom. They are also pushed through too quickly. And in the process, too much attention is paid to public criticism. On the other hand, no Michelangelo or Bernini has stepped forward with a proposal. One wonders, though, even if he had, if in this climate his genius would end up homogenized.

Judging by the proposal, “Reflecting Absence,” the World Trade Center memorial designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker, will probably be sleek, Minimalist, and refined; but its canned, pared-down symbolism feels so self conscious that I am afraid it will also be artistically inert. With the design of “Reflecting Absence,” as with that of many other September 11 memorials, so many people — committees, artists, politicians, business people, police, firefighters, survivors, and relatives or friends of the victims — have been involved that the memorial was bound to be so intent on pleasing everyone that it has little chance of rising to the crucially important, mysterious realm of art.

Of course, this judgment of “Reflecting Absence” is premature. But a civic atmosphere, in which the experience of practically every symbol and metaphor of the memorial has been nailed down and explained, has muddied the process of New York’s memorial since its inception.And the demand that every symbol stand up and be counted has interfered with other memorials, as well, especially the “Flight 93 National Memorial” in Pennsylvania, where the design was considerably altered when a crescent-shaped grove of red maple trees was interpreted as too “Muslim” a symbol.

One of the requirements at ground zero was that every name of every victim, including the victims of the February 26, 1993, attack, be part of the memorial, a precedent set by Maya Lin’s “Vietnam Veterans Memorial.” I can certainly understand why the victims’ families and friends would require this. But this one-to-one, personal design concept (incorporated in nearly every September 11 memorial) will not necessarily make “Reflecting Absence” stronger or more successful. It works in the “Vietnam Veterans Memorial” because, for the first time and in a precise context, it transformed names (experienced individually and en masse) into something much larger — something closer to the human loss experienced in every war. The programmatic danger here is that every memorial that follows suit will relate as much to Ms. Lin’s memorial as to its own subject.

The telegraphed, this-symbol-equals-exactly-this, design scheme will be reflected in every element of “Reflecting Absence.” The footprints of the towers, as pools of water, “large voids, open and visible reminders of the absence,” Messrs. Arad and Walker state, are more or less being preserved. Waterfalls will flow downward into the pools — a symbol, unmistakably, of the falling towers; and, oddly enough, not answered with the presence of a fountain, which could be read symbolically as resurrection. Instead, vegetation, an “annual cycle of rebirth,” will punctuate the memorial plaza. Underground, an “endless ribbon” of names will “underscore the vast scope of the destruction” and there, along with the immense space, the abyss-like pools, and a curtain of water, visitors will “sense that what is beyond this curtain of water and ribbon of names is inaccessible.”

This design may still change. Not enough money has been raised to complete the memorial; the waterfalls could freeze in winter; and representatives of the New York City Fire Department and New York City Police Department insist that the names of their officers appear apart from the civilian victims, and in addition to each name, each officer’s service, rank, and assignment be indicated.

“Reflecting Absence,” though, is not just a group-mentality problem. It is a reflection of a lack of artistic imagination. One of the first memorials to be erected, Eric Fischl’s bronze figurative sculpture “Tumbling Woman” (2002), an upside down nude woman who has seemingly just hit the pavement, was found to be so literal (and, therefore, offensive) — it reminded viewers only of people jumping from the twin towers — that it was quickly draped and, a few days later, removed from its site in the lower concourse of Rockefeller Center. I believe that it was not the subject of a falling woman, though, that inspired such vitriolic response; if Bernini or Michelangelo had sculpted the figure, it would be the only memorial we required. It was, rather, Mr. Fischl’s ineptitude as an artist that, whether viewers were aware of it or not, ultimately probably angered them. Mr. Fischl was unable to transform his subject. She is a falling woman and nothing more.The awkward, illustrative legs of “Tumbling Woman” weigh down so heavily on the crude figure that she has no chance of rising — no chance for redemption — a downward thrust that will be mimicked endlessly and exponentially in the falling water of “Reflecting Absence.”


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