With all the current tsuris over the removal of statues, it occurred to me to ask, ‘Why do we need statues of any famous people at all?
I mean ok, some of them are quite pretty works of art, but they don’t really tell you anything about history or about the person who is the subject of the statue. Sure, the plaques associated with the statues give you a few lines of text, but that’s not the whole picture.
People are flawed, that’s the nature of being human. Even the greats of human history almost always have some rather unsavory aspects to their character. A statue of Winston Churchill, for example, might cite his accomplishments as an author and statesman, but it’s unlikely to bring up that he was a eugenicist and seriously considered a genocide in Ireland as a solution. Or Boudicca (who, bizarrely, is ‘honoured’ with a statue in the city she burned to the ground) and her phony chariot with scythe blades on the wheels.
Statues - of anyone - aren’t history. They are history mythologized. Why do we need them?
Boru
I mean ok, some of them are quite pretty works of art, but they don’t really tell you anything about history or about the person who is the subject of the statue. Sure, the plaques associated with the statues give you a few lines of text, but that’s not the whole picture.
People are flawed, that’s the nature of being human. Even the greats of human history almost always have some rather unsavory aspects to their character. A statue of Winston Churchill, for example, might cite his accomplishments as an author and statesman, but it’s unlikely to bring up that he was a eugenicist and seriously considered a genocide in Ireland as a solution. Or Boudicca (who, bizarrely, is ‘honoured’ with a statue in the city she burned to the ground) and her phony chariot with scythe blades on the wheels.
Statues - of anyone - aren’t history. They are history mythologized. Why do we need them?
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
