Vietnam Veterans Memorial

I'm continuing my look back at memorials I researched for my MFA with a study of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.


The above shot is one stretch of the wall. It was impossible to get a shot of the complete memorial because of the number of tourists visiting the site. Below is an article which I originally wrote for The College Voice in July 2006.

VVM & WWII

For my MFA I have been researching memorials around the world. My main interest is group memorials that list the names of individuals, where the individual within the group is just as important as the group itself. I have been looking mainly at war memorials, Holocaust memorials, and memorials to people who have died of AIDS. The people commemorated by a memorial, as well as the people to whom the memorial speaks, affect the design vocabulary that a memorial uses.

During a visit to Washington, D.C., I saw two memorials that provide interesting insights into the uses of memorials and their meanings. The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial (VVM) and The National World War II Memorial (WWII) are only 500m or so apart, but they occupy vastly different spaces in the American psyche. I offer a brief overview of these two memorials to see how they differ in their symbolic language and meanings. WWII is a national memorial that celebrates the American victory in World War II, remembering the deeds of all those who fought in the war, and not just those who died. The VVM, however, is aimed at the veterans of the war, not the nation, and not in memory of the war itself.


The design of the VVM reflects this emphasis. It is a wall of polished black granite engraved with the names of the dead or missing servicemen from the Vietnam War. The names are arranged in chronological order so that one can see the rise in the number of casualties as the war progressed. And that is all that the memorial has - no arches, no colonnades, no domes. It is a minimalist memorial where the emphasis is on the individuals who died. The WWII has no names of the dead, although it does have the Freedom Wall with its 420 gold stars, each representing approximately 100 dead.

This difference in the type of commemoration (names vs. no names) reflects the emphasis of these two memorials. The WWII is a celebration of life, of liberation from fascism, and for freedom and democracy. The VVM is about remembering dead comrades when the public and government seemed to wish that they would be forgotten - to pretend that the war had never happened. As one walks along the VVM’s walls, one slowly walks downwards until the walls are towering above. This is a descent into the earth, like a grave, with the black granite panels resembling tombstones. The WWII, in contrast, is mostly level with the surrounding ground, it is light and open, and the white stone arches and pillars resemble classical temples rather than a graveyard. The pond and fountain in the centre evoke the middle of a city, a place where people meet and celebrate.

The style of architecture of the WWII fits with its place on the Mall, and the axis of history there. It is between the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial, and along the same axis as the Capitol building, all built with white stone. A text engraved at the entrance to the memorial explains its historical placement:

HERE IN THE PRESENCE OF WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN,
ONE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FATHER, AND THE OTHER THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY PRESERVER OF OUR NATION, WE HONOR
THOSE TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICANS WHO TOOK UP THE STRUGGLE
DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND MADE THE SACRIFICES TO
PERPETUATE THE GIFT OUR FOREFATHERS ENTRUSTED TO US:
A NATION CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY AND JUSTICE.

So World War II was a noble war, and one that affirms America’s sense of itself as a country that has a divine mission to bring freedom to the world.
The Vietnam War clearly doesn’t fit with this view. One view is that the United States sought not to liberate Vietnam, but to prevent its citizens from exercising their democratic right to elect its own government. That, and the fact that the U.S. lost the war, has resulted in this memorial being put to the side of the main axis of history. Even knowing where it was located, I had trouble finding it in the grove of trees which surrounds it. Maya Lin, in her design, however, has attempted to connect the memorial to the history of the nation – one arm of the wall points towards the Washington Monument, and the other towards the Lincoln Memorial.

Although President Clinton signed legislation to establish the WWII Memorial in 1993, it was not dedicated and opened to the public until 2004. I can’t say whether the current administration unduly influenced the shape of the WWII, but I feel the memorial is connected to the current war in Iraq through the use of quotes engraved at various places. On the flagpoles is written:

AMERICANS CAME TO LIBERATE, NOT TO CONQUER,
TO RESTORE FREEDOM AND TO END TYRANNY

And on one of the walls is this quote from General George C. Marshall:


My feeling is that it has been designed not only to celebrate a past war, but also to link the meanings of that war with the current one. It is, in my view, a propaganda exercise designed to remind people of the values that America allegedly stands for, and the rightness of the mission to spread those values around the world.

The VVM, despite the opposition to it in the beginning, has become part of the establishment, and is firmly on the tourist map of Washington. By concentrating on only the names of the dead, Lin was able to focus the memorial away from the contentious war, and towards the sacrifices made by those in the armed forces. Her focus, however, was undermined once the project was underway by those who felt that the memorial wasn’t military enough, and was perhaps too critical of the war, even though this is what makes it successful. After the wall was completed, a sculptural tableau of three soldiers was placed 100m away, and, nearby, a large flagpole flying an American flag has been permanently erected to add further meaning to the memorial site. Of course this is an attempt to make Lin’s design fit in more with the kinds of memorial evoked by the WWII.

These added elements are, to my mind, clumsy and unnecessary, and were strenuously opposed by Lin herself. Along with the rather sorry state of the landscaping around the wall, these parts of the memorial detract from the elegance and simplicity of Lin’s design.


This brief examination of two of dozens of memorials in the U.S. capital illustrates the way that design elements shape the meanings of that which they commemorate. The two wars remembered in these memorials were different kinds of war, and needed to be remembered in different ways. The two memorials, although vastly different in style, are both successful at communicating meaning to the viewer.

Rodney Love is a Master of Fine Arts student in the School of Art.

Photos courtesy of the author.
1. Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, Washington, D. C.
2. National World War II Memorial, Washington, D.C.
3. National World War II Memorial, Washington, D.C.
4. Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, Washington, D.C.






Here are images highlighting some problems with the VVM - too many tourists squeezed onto a small path; not being able to step back to get a wide view of the memorial; poor landscaping around the memorial; tacky fencing to prevent people from walking above the memorial.




Lastly, here's a rubbing I took at the VVM.

I Am Because We Are Panels 1

I've been meaning to post these sock panels individually for awhile now. I wanted to acknowledge the people who donated socks for the I Am Because We Are installation, so I thought I'd show a couple of panels at a time with the list of the donors. These two are the first ones that I wove for this project, so the number of donors was still quite small, hence the same people's socks being in both panels. The fabric has been stretched around wooden frames. My original idea was to have them loose, but stretching them over a frame gave them a solid edge which worked better with the memorial theme that I was researching. The names of the donors have been typed onto ribbons which have been woven in with the sock strips.






This is an installation shot from my MFA grad show which includes the two panels:

Grey panel

Emmett O’Shea, Mark Jones, Natham Turner, Gavin Palmer, Phillip Black, Rex Deutscher, Marianne Little, Sue Olive, Pierre Thibaudeau, Tim Lever, Lyndal Campbell, Miki Wakatsuki, Charlie Blum, Peter Perry, Andrew Metcalfe, Alan Ashton, Sandra Eterovic, Micheal Smith, Margaret King, Sue Best, Bill Mobbs, Kay Lyon, Matthew Hall, Olivier Thibaudeau, Sandra Burchill, Robert Dreyer, Thomas wanner, Peter Black, Illona Caldow


Red, white and blue panel

Barbara Rogers, Judy Bourke, Lee Rhiannon, Lyn Dickson, Jacob Kristensen, Tim Dyce, Nazuna Tomita, Liddy Roulston, Gavin Palmer, Claire Milledge, Mark Smith, Diane Losche, Matthew Cecchin, Greg Ward, Sally Sorell, Vanjy Araujo, Tim Lever, Natham Turner, William Lo Giudice, Sharron Olivier, Hanae Satou, François Limondin, Marina Ely, Sandra Eterovic, Marcel Freer, Rex Deutscher, Kristin Headlam

Sock rope

In this post I'm showing a work which I proposed as an exhibition in Sculpture by the Sea. It was rejected by SbtS, so I thought I'd use this to reiterate the philosophy of this blog. I'm not trying to show my best work here, or the most successful, or my favourite; I'm showing ALL my work. I've destroyed some past work not because I'm embarrassed by it, or because it might weaken my brand, but because I haven't had enough space to store everything. I'm the artist I am today because of the evolution of my work, because of the work I've made as well as the work I haven't made, the artistic dead-ends, and the works that have sold and gone to appreciative homes. I'm also quite happy for someone to look at some work and say, "Meh, I don't like it," or even, "That's terrible!" I'm not editing the work, just presenting. I'm trying for an autobiographical display, rather than an aesthetic one.

So, given that caveat, what's this work all about? Part of the reason this was rejected is because it's not that well thought out. I'd been collecting socks from people for part of my MFA (click on the Socks link at the end of the post for various sock works), and still had hundreds on hand after making the work. This was an attempt to find some way of using them up. I've plaited them into a giant braid (or have I braided them into a giant plait?). The idea was that this braid would encircle Marks Park at Bondi, one of the locations for Sculpture by the Sea. I guess part of the idea was that these were socks which people had been walking in which were now to be used to delineate a walking space. Or something. I really didn't think it through too well. And the presentation wasn't that great. How was it to be held down? What would happen when it rained? Would people trip over it? I'm still hoping that I can resurrect the idea of the sock rope at some point in the future, not for this location, but in some other form, maybe a lot of shorter ropes hanging from a ceiling? The rope is chunky and colourful, but I'm not really sure what it would mean, which is why I'm blocked with the idea!

I think I stole the idea from Janine Antoni. At the end of the images of my work are two photos of Antoni's work Moor. Here's an excerpt from my book about her work:

Janine Antoni has also used items donated by individuals, but her work is concerned with the individual and the group. Antoni’s Moor, 2001, is a rope made from objects that family and friends had donated to her, all of which were listed during the exhibition. The items include
clothing, hair, Christmas lights, extension cords, towels, etc. Antoni and her assistants cut the items into strips, twisted them, then let strands of these materials twist back onto each other to create a thick rope. The work is a metaphor for connectedness. Antoni says, “A rope is an umbilical cord – it’s something that connects two things. Which, sort of, is what Moor is about. It’s about all these people, you know, my life sort of connecting all these people. The idea was to take all these very different materials, but also lives, and sort of bring them together through the rope-making process.”

In the book that was produced in conjunction with the installation, Antoni lists all the items that are in the rope, to whom they belonged, and a narrative around the object if the donor provided one:

Melissa’s dental floss is used as whipping to secure the beginning of the
rope and it is clasping Danielle’s red reversible jacket, which is black on
the other side and which her roommate Katrin from Germany gave to
her, and she never really wore the jacket and feels like it drifted into her
life the same way that Katrin did and Danielle’s jacket is entwined with a
green t-shirt of Pat’s that “could be up to fifteen years old and I have
worn it all that time so that it was almost completely worn away, and I
could not bear to part with it because it had made it so far” and Pat’s tshirt
is entwined with Glenn’s brown sweater from Old Navy that got
stretched out and “nothing from that store ever lasts” and Glenn’s
sweater is entwined with his friend Byron’s striped velour ‘Hang Ten’ shirt
and Byron is in many ways stuck in the seventies and he wants to be a
surfer and Byron’s shirt is entwined with his wife Lisa’s studio jeans worn
while making her paintings…

Moor not only “extract[s] the poetry that lies latent in all material,” but also shows the connectedness of humanity that has been my concern in I Am Because We Are. All people, regardless of how poor they may be, have some objects, even if only their clothing, that can be used to represent them.

















Janine Antoni's work Moor:



I also recently found this last image. It's an installation by Janice Appleton called there is something I need to tell you. I don't know anything about it other than this image, but it looks like a rope made of clothes connects these two outfits.

Hair dolls reconfigured

This post features combinations of the human hair and wire dolls that I've shown in a couple of earlier posts (here and here). The dolls are all individual, but I liked to show them in groups. Often there was a theme of atrocity and mass murder, but sometimes it was just about injustice done to individuals and groups by those with power. This first work was made around the time of the East Timor killings. I think there were reports of mass graves. The burnt and broken box was meant to suggest both a coffin, and a burnt-out building. You look in through the holes and come across these "dead bodies" lying in a pile. The title was If You Want to Die in Bed, Don't Care too Much for Country, I think. It's a lyric from a song from Miss Saigon, and the idea is that it's better to flee and live than fight for independence and die.


I think these next couple of piles of dolls were all called If You Want to Die in Bed... I found a box of white tiles on the street and used those underneath to attempt a cold, clinical feel.








This installation of the dolls is from the Furr exhibition. The title is Was It Worth It? It's about winning at all costs...


I called this arrangement Fall of the Rebel Angels. This was the Suspect Packages show.


This was another arrangement of Fall of the Rebel Angels. This was from my solo show Hate and Envy and Crime and Darkness and Pain at Kudos Gallery.