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| "Vietnam Veterans Memorial," Washington, D.C., 1982. Black granite, each wall: 246 feet long 10 1/2 feet high |
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“Vietnam Veterans Memorial”
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Lin is perhaps most well
known for her first public commission, the "Vietnam Veterans Memorial."
Conceived of when she was still an undergraduate at Yale University,
the memorial is remarkable in that it proposes neither winners nor
losers, but only the names
of the dead inscribed in a polished, black granite. A corner submerged
into the earth, the work is welcoming in its open-ended, book-like
form, and yet disconcerting to those who realize that to read the
names is to stand below the horizon - six feet under - conversing
in the space of the dead. The work is outspoken and angry in the
way in which it functions as a visual scar on the American landscape,
cutting
aggressively into the Washington Mall, and yet is dignified
for the way in which it carves out a space for a public display
of grief and pain. These emotions, necessary to the healing process,
have a place in Lin's work and are as natural as the cycles of the
earth. Attentive to the individual life of every man and woman who
died in the war, the memorial is also responsive to the individual
experience of the visitor. There is no wrong way to approach the
"Vietnam Veterans Memorial" as it makes no grand statements about
politics or American ideals. Its sole proposition is that the cost
of war is human life. Spread out horizontally (in contrast to the
verticality of the Washington Monument to the east and the Lincoln
memorial to the west), every inch and every name of the memorial
is within grasp. The two 247-foot walls of the monument expand laterally,
hugging close to the earth, depending on the landscape for support
as much as they mark it as a site for human suffering and reconciliation.
The memorials designed by Maya Lin are tactile experiences of sight,
sound, and touch. They activate a full-bodied response on the part
of the viewer, connecting us with the material aspects of their
construction as well as with the private memories and thoughts that
transform past events into awakenings in the present. It would be
stating the obvious to say that each memorial is made from stone
- the traditional stuff of monuments - and yet unlike familiar structures
such as Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument,
Lin's use of stone is supple, understated, and earthy. In two of
her projects, the "Civil Rights Memorial" (1987-89) in Montgomery,
Alabama, and "The Women's Table" (1990-93) in New Haven, Connecticut,
water rises up out of the stone and floats along the surface of
the rock. Inviting to the touch, the water in these works leaves
a physical trace on those who venture to feel the names and numbers
inscribed on stone tables. Lin's use of water also predicts the
demise of the memorial itself, as centuries of running water will
eventually soften the stone, turning it back into earth. While tied
to a particular event or group of people, each of Lin's memorials
engage broader ideas about the artistic process, geology, history,
and spirituality. Whether echoing the balance of forces common to
Chinese philosophy (yin and yang, water and stone), or a more Western
conception of mortality (from ashes to ashes, dust to dust), Lin's
memorials connect human activities and self-perceptions to cycles
inscribed in the landscape. |
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