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Description: |
Controversies about the sites, meanings, and relevance of memorial structures in the public sphere have once again summoned the age‐old issue of the monument. This course is interested in monumentality as both a cultural polemic and a methodological problem. Aside from looking at architectonic presences, what does monumentality – understood as a historical condition, as a value system, as an aspiration, as a felt presence, a mode of art making – mean for the current practice of art and architectural history? We will extend beyond the traditional scope of the monument understood as a building or thing, to examine diverse forms and modalities, including: urban infrastructure, grassroots memorials, the filmic image, natural topography, the portable object, the remains of war, dispossession, and persecution, as expressions of, and reactions to, monumentality. |