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Jim Guleke's avatar

“I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me.”-David Bowie

"Jim Bowie! One of the few men I know who makes me nervous."-John Wayne as Davy Crockett in the 1960 film "The Alamo."

We need a Jared Diamond or a Joseph Campbell to provide us with scholarly research and writing on humankind’s apparent need to erect statues and build monuments to people and gods? Oh, wait. Elizabeth Loftus, Daniel Schacter and Alfred Adler already have.

Monumental art is an interesting topic.

I have two favorite verses on the subject:

"The pigeon pecks on the granite head / Of Caesar, dead, no more a threat / Than feathered dust upon the street." - Robert Frost, from "A Masque of Reason."

"He watched a pigeon sit alone / On a plinth where Caesar stood / And thought, 'This is how empires go.'" - W. H. Auden, from "Musée des Beaux Arts."

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Charles Wukasch's avatar

The term used to refer to Roman times was damnatio memoriae: The statues of controversial figures would be destroyed and their names erased from inscriptions. I've discussed this with one of Dr. Brands' colleagues. RE destroying or moving statues of Confederate heroes, her position is that no country honors traitors. Oh, really? There's a statue of Oliver Cromwell outside Parliament (though in all fairness, some have called for its removal). In Glenfinnan, Scotland, there's a statue in memory of

Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charley). who led a rebellion to bring the "auld Stuarts" back to the throne to replace George II ("German Georgie").

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