Leave the damn statues alone

... at least, until you can come up with a general principle of which ones you object to. Cue angry rant, in no small part repeating the previous post.

I think we can certainly all agree on two extremes. First, that we shouldn't be building any new statues to people whose entire aspect was offensive to modern eyes, except perhaps in ways intending to denigrate them. No-one wants a statue of Pol Pot staring at them in a public space, or wants passing schoolchildren to see a huge statue of Stalin depicted as a happy jolly fellow with a big beaming smile while he crushes opponents with a literal iron fist*. Second, existing statues of people who led blameless lives should certainly stay.

* Or maybe they do. Sounds kinda cool, actually.

The trouble is that the middle ground between these two extremes is an absolute minefield of ghastly complications.

As far as I can tell, protestors are objecting mainly to the racist attitudes of historical figures, considering it no longer appropriate to glorify them with a public statue. No-one, as far as I know, wants to forget the past : indeed, there are calls for more history lessons, not less. And quite rightly so. As I've said before, British high school education was absolutely shite. It was a plodding, humdrum affair that utterly neglected both the spectacular advances and the atrocities of the not-so-distant British past. It was, I'd go so far as to say, shamefully bad.

So the protestors don't want to censor or forget anything. Far from it. But they seem awfully confused about the artistic nature of statues and the different moral attitudes that prevailed in previous eras.

First, does a statue in general automatically glorify its subject ? Clearly not. There is no more artistic necessity for a sculpture to glorify its subject than a painting. Does the painting of Kronos eating his children glorify cannibalism ? Hardly !

What, though, if the statue was in an open public space ? Again I have to say no. The Prague TV tower is covered in giant deformed babies with barcodes for faces, and I doubt very much this is intended to glorify mutilation. Or what about this bizarre collection ? Did the artist intend to encourage child beating ? I don't think so*.

* As to what he was encouraging, that is left to an exercise for the reader. Drugs, presumably.

A statue, to my way of thinking, does not automatically glorify or even honour its subject. The one thing it unavoidably does do is draw attention to them. Anything else is context dependent : it can glorify their whole character, or it can commemorate only their specific achievement(s) - then again it can even go the other way and raise awareness of what horrible people they were. Sculptures of the Greek myths don't automatically tell us to adopt "What Would Zeus Do ?" as a motto, because the answer would be, "turn into a swan and rape people", which is pretty much about the worst advice possible in any situation*. Static visual art can play the same function as a play, inviting the audience only to consider its subject, not attempting to persuade them of anything. Art can, and should, invite its audience to think.

* One million internet points for anyone who comes up with a situation in which this would actually be an appropriate thing to do.

The intent of the artists does not matter all that much to the the perception of the audience. For example, that time an old lady "restored" a painting of Jesus into "a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic". The moral message intended by the artist, if any, doesn't necessarily have any impact on how the art is actually perceived (e.g. a Ted Hughes poem about a hawk that was bizarrely interpreted to be about the Nazis). It's not that the interpretations are wrong, it's that they're subjective. You see a statue glorifying a racist; I see a statue honouring the man who saved Britain from the Nazis. Both are true, in no small part because human beings are fantastically complicated beasts.

Historical figures exemplify how perception changes, especially as pain fades with time. We no longer view statues of Caesar as honouring the man who boasted that he'd killed a million Gauls and enslaved a million more : we can look at these distant atrocities dispassionately as interesting historical events. Similar arguments could be applied to a myriad of historical figures. Their crimes were as bad or worse than any of the more recent figures, yet tearing down Trajan's Column would be criminally insane. If we uncover a statue of an Aztec emperor, we say, "how interesting !" despite their acts of bloody slaughter being as bad as any others in human history. An Aztec atrocity just doesn't have the same emotional resonance as a more recent, closer horrors. The statues and monuments no longer have the same impact or meaning as they once did, just as castles are now seen as fun places to visit and not terrifying instruments of oppression and torture. So even when the intent of the artist was to glorify their subject, this doesn't always or permanently succeed.

No-one has a monopoly on what an artwork means. Even at the moment a statue is created,  what to one person can feel horrendous can to others, rightly or wrongly, seem worthy of celebration. How do we decide whose enjoyment outweighs whose offence, and vice-versa ?

Frankly I've no idea. More fundamentally, no-one but no-one is perfect. As the protestors point out, Churchill was indeed a racist - pretty much everyone was back then - but he was hardly a white supremacist. Martin Luther was an extreme anti-Semite. Many suffragettes were eugenicists; so was H. G. Wells (though the concept didn't have the racial overtones it does today). Aneurin Bevan, founder of the National Health Service, called the Tories "lower than vermin". The ancient Athenian founders of democracy were proud to call themselves warlike and thought nothing amiss in owning slaves. Richard the Lionheart, Henry V and Boudicca - some of Britain's most notable military commanders all committed what today would be considered war crimes. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. Reality has few true heroes and villains, but it has an abundance of people capable of heroic and villainous acts alike.

If you want to tear down a statue, you should be able to explain four things. First, you need to justify what's special about this particular figure as opposed to a plethora of other, deeply flawed yet accomplished historical figures who held similar or identical views. Second, you need to explain what it about that particular trait that makes it different from other offensive characteristics. Third, you also need to explain how this applies uniquely to a statue and not some other form of artwork. If a statue is so offensive, why not books ? Why not TV shows ? Fourth, you should explain why removal is the best action rather than alternative measures.

Don't misunderstand - this isn't a rhetorical point. It's absolutely possible to answer these issues. For example, toppling statues of Saddam Hussein made complete sense : those were erected by a violent dictator for the sole purpose of his own aggrandizement, and no-one thought they had any other cultural value; there was a highly limited scope for interpretation. Similarly, Confederate flags or Swastikas - in virtually all instances - are open declarations of hostility, not talking points for polite discourse. I don't mean to say for a moment that just because a statue isn't necessarily aggressive that it follows that it automatically isn't, because that's clearly very stupid.

But historical figures of the distant past, to my mind, are in general altogether more complex than figures of living history. Thomas Jefferson was a pro-emancipation slave-owning racist, a juxtaposition which simply doesn't make sense to modern ideologies. Christopher Columbus, despite a number of previous attempts, was the one who made the New World really matter to the Old, but, like Vasco de Gama, was tremendously violent towards the people he encountered. Should we tear down his statues, or can we use them to mark the undeniable magnitude of his achievement without glorifying the associated death and destruction ? Surely if we can recognise the debt owed to Churchill without endorsing his bigotry, we can do the same for other, much older figures.

Protestors are not beholden to produce a detailed list of every statue or other artwork they want removed. Nor is any burden put upon to demand a perfect set of criteria that must be perfect on the first iteration and subject to no further changes : this can be a conversation, in which we revise and adjust the criteria according to the arguments set forth. But protestors do need to at least try and establish some broad principle behind their actions, otherwise their efforts are arbitrary, potentially hypocritical, and counter-productive. Many of the figures targeted are not even especially famous, thus attacks on their statues only inflame curiosity. Never mind that a few days ago this was not an issue at all, except in a few cases, which gives the whole thing a distinct whiff of, at best, stemming from different underlying factors, and at worst of being completely manufactured. How many people really feel such bitterness towards centuries-old statues of figures most people have never heard of ? Oh, and they've been there for 200 years but only became offensive this week ? Hmm.

When it is clear that a statue glorifies and is perceived to glorify an injustice, there can be grounds for removal. Alternative actions include adding explanatory plaques, which are far more educational than removal, or counter-statues. Sure, sometimes taking them down is the best option. But scrawling "was a racist" on Winston Churchill ? Nope. That's an action born of pure anger, not any righteous or informed sense of tackling injustice. Calling for the removal of statues of people based on their violent actions or bigoted views ? Nope - that would lead to the removal of practically everyone, even those perceived as heroes to those most fiercely opposed to injustice. People are just so much more complicated than that. So too is their art.