Reflecting on Reflecting Absence

by Dianne Durante
March 2007

• Essay

• Whom to contact about the WTC memorial

• Directions to sculptures mentioned

• Related essays by Dianne Durante

• Copyright notice

When Henry Kirke Brown's equestrian statue of George Washington was unveiled in 1856, only a few elderly spectators at Union Square could have remembered seeing the event it commemorated: "Evacuation Day" in 1783, when the commander in chief rode down Broadway to reclaim New York after seven years of British occupation. The multitude who did not remember, however, could visualize that triumphant procession by looking at the sculpture. From the set of Washington's shoulders, the carriage of his head, the gesture of his hand, even the behavior of his horse, spectators could grasp what the artist and those who sponsored the sculpture thought about Washington and the American victory. Now, a century and a half later - when few New Yorkers know what Evacuation Day was - Brown's Washington still radiates courage, dignity, calm, victory.

As an art historian, I tend to look at sculptures as long-term investments. Hence even though the competition for the design of the World Trade Center memorial ended in 2004, I'm still distressed by the choice of Reflecting Absence as the winner. It has so appallingly little to say to the millions who will visit the site in coming years, or to our great-great-grand-children 150 years from now.

Here's why. Reflecting Absence's main elements are two large reflecting pools, a couple dozen trees, and lists of victims' names. Landscape architecture such as trees and pools can create beautiful vistas, but it conveys no message about those who died on 9-11.

A list of names is also by its nature limited. Proper names are neither meaningful nor evocative for those who know nothing about the lives and characters of the people named. Broadcast the name "Derek Jeter" in Yankee Stadium and you'll get shouts of approving recognition. Broadcast it in the capital city of Kazakhstan and you'll get perplexed silence.

Representational art, on the other hand, is a universal language. If the actions and characters of human figures are competently portrayed, such art has an emotional impact that transcends space and time. Think of Leonardo's Mona Lisa or Munch's The Scream. Their impact remains strong despite the fact that both were produced by men who didn't speak English or know what a USB port is. Nearer to home, think of the Firemen's Memorial on Riverside Drive. Although the firefighting equipment and the costumes in the central relief are long out-dated, we can immediately grasp the message: the urgency and danger of firefighters' work.

If you doubt the efficacy of representational art as opposed to proper names and landscape architecture, take someone who's unfamiliar with New York memorials to see the Firemen's Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the New York Police Department Memorial. The Vietnam and NYPD memorials are landscape architecture and words. Ask your companion which work makes them feel more strongly about the people being memorialized. Unless you happen to have invited someone who can find a relative's name among the lists of the deceased, I guarantee the Firemen's Memorial, with its dramatic representational art, will win hands down.

Reflecting Absence isn't offensive - but why should we settle for a multi-million-dollar placeholder when we could have an expressive representational work of art?

What should the expressive artwork express? I believe it ought to focus on us rather than them: on the lives of the victims, rather than the despicable acts of the terrorists.

I would like to see two separate pieces of representational art as WTC memorials. The first should celebrate the tremendous courage of the rescue workers. It takes infinitely more bravery to face death when you want to live than when you're eager to die.

The second memorial should be to those who worked day after day at the World Trade Center. They were heroes of another sort, and the memorial to them should be a celebration of the fact that most Americans - and especially those who succeed and prosper in New York - survive by their own efforts, mental and physical. Ayn Rand wrote:

Productive work is the road of man’s unlimited achievement and calls upon the highest attributes of his character: his creative ability, his ambitiousness, his self-assertiveness, his refusal to bear uncontested disasters, his dedication to the goal of reshaping the earth in the image of his values.

When Muslim fundamentalists attack the World Trade Center and other exemplars of Western civilization, that's what they're attacking: our use of our minds to improve our lives on earth. By rebuilding on the WTC site, we are endorsing and celebrating America's this-worldly, can-do attitude. That's what we need to commemorate when we erect a memorial to the men and women who died at the WTC because they worked there.

Whom to contact about the WTC memorial

If you share my dismay at Reflecting Absence and want something more expressive at the WTC site, send letters to Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Spitzer, and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Directions to sculptures mentioned

George Washington at Union Square, 14th St. between Union Square West and Broadway.

Firemen's Memorial, Riverside Drive at West 100th St.

New York Police Memorial, Stuart Crawford, 1997. Walk north on the esplanade along the Hudson River to the southeast corner of the North Cove. The Memorial is tucked in a corner at the west end of Liberty St., just before you reach the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden. For illustrations, click here and scroll up. 

New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Peter Wormser and William Fellows, architects; John Ferrandino, writer, 1985. From Battery Park, walk south and then east on State St., which turns into Water St. The Memorial is in a small park on the right, just past Broad St. at Coenties Slip. For illustrations, click here and scroll up. 

Related essays and articles by Dianne Durante

On Washington at Union Square and the Firemen's Memorial: Outdoor Monuments of Manhattan: A Historical Guide, Essays 13 and 45.

For description and further discussion of the Washington at Union Square, see "Getting More Enjoyment from Art You Love," The Objective Standard, A Journal of Culture and Politics, vol. 1, no. 2 (Summer 2006).

For a comparison of other Manhattan war memorials to the proposed WTC memorial, listen to the podcast "Battery Park War Memorials and the World Trade Center Memorial."

Copyright notice

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Copyright (c) 2007 Dianne Durante. All rights reserved. Contact: comments@forgottendelights.com