An illustration of the uses of opacity in commemoration.
I'm researching trends in abstraction within commemorative art and practice. In their very excellent essay (published in 2012 and republished in 2018 in the Journal of Architecture), Stevens, Franck, and Fazarkerley distinguish two different types of counter-monument, which they dub the “anti-monument” and the “dialogic counter-monument.” Along the way, they address trends in commemoration that lean towards “abstract form rather than figuration” (723), and helpfully sketch out what, following Brinda Sommer, they call the much larger category of “new monument art” (722), which includes: “coupled counter-monuments (Gegen-Denkmäler); temporary installations; abstract, decentralized, experiential and participatory memorials; spaces of communicative exchange; spaces where information is provided; and the artistic reconstruction of historical relics and sites” (722).
The formal preference for anti-monumental aspects includes works "that are patently impermanent [to] counter the aspiration to permanence of conventional monuments" (726). Anti-monuments may also include: "voids instead of solids, absence instead of presence … dark rather than light tones, and an emphasis on the horizontal rather than the vertical. Forms may be sunken rather than elevated… shifted off-axis, or dispersed or fragmented rather than unified in a single, orderly composition at a single location. They may be multiple rather than singular” (723).
I'm particularly interested in the ways that abstraction can be used to hold the visitor apart from a history that is very politically charged, as Stevens alludes to elsewhere, ‘the flatness, solidity and geometrical simplicity… prevent the viewer becoming psychologically absorbed in pictorial content and its illusory depth’ (166).
But to this list I want to add another feature to attend to in commemorative works, one that is especially apt for commemorations of resistance: that of opacity. Opacity here means an aspect of the work that renders itself unconsumable; it may involve so many redactions as to be unreadable, for example, or involve such low contrast that it can hardly be seen; it may involve misdirection or defy the user's expectations. And here I offer an illustration from my recent trip to use resources at the Schomburg library and research center in New York.
On the ground floor of the Schomburg Center in Harlem there was a very good exhibit on "Subversion and the art of slavery abolition," but I was struck by a detail that I choose to read as an instance of opacity rather than an oversight. In addition to the wall space of the circular gallery, there were four decorated columns that also showcased material relevant to the display. One of these four is plainly (to my eyes) a detail from an illustration of Nat Turner in the cave, an image that is featured as part of the exhibit in a frame among many other images, and much smaller. But the four columns are identified with a key, and, as is visible here, no column is correctly identified as this illustration related to Nat Turner.
I did make some initial efforts to contact the curator to inquire about this, but ultimately, I choose to read it as an instance of opacity that is in line with a much larger aspect of commemorations of slave resistance: one that may, for example, be about how a community protects its history from appropriation.
Sources mentioned:
Sommer, Brinda. Gesellschaftliches Erinern an den Nationalsozialismus (Berlin, 2007).
Stevens, Quentin. "Nothing More than Feelings: Abstract memorials" Architectural Theory Review 14(2), 156-72, 2009.
Stevens, Q., K.A. Franck & R. Fazakerley, 2012. Counter- monuments: the anti-monumental and the dialogic. Journal of Architecture 23(5), 718–39. 2018.
