The Art of Forgetting

by Forty, Adrian; Küchler, Susanne

• ISBN13: 9781859732861
• ISBN10: 1859732860
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-01
• Publisher: Berg Pub Ltd

Summary

In tracing the process through which monuments give rise to collective memories, this path-breaking book emphasizes that memorials are not just inert and amnesiac spaces upon which individuals may graft their ever-shifting memories. To the contrary, the materiality of monuments can be seen to elicit a particular collective mode of remembering which shapes the consumption of the past as a shared cultural form of memory. In a variety of disciplines over the past decade, attention has moved away from the oral tradition of memory to the interplay between social remembering and object worlds. But research is very sketchy in this area and the materiality of monuments has tended to be ignored within anthropological literature, compared to the amount of attention given to commemorative practice. Art and architectural history, on the other hand, have been much interested in memorial representation through objects, but have paid scant attention to issues of social memory. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary in scope, this book fills this gap and addresses topics ranging from material objects to physical space; from the contemporary to the historical; and from 'high art' to memorials outside the category of art altogether. In so doing, it represents a significant contribution to an emerging field.

Author Biography

Adrian Forty is at the University College London

Susanne Knchler is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology,at the University College London.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii
Contributors	ix
Preface	xi
David Lowenthal
Introduction	1	(18)
Adrian Forty
Part I: Ephemeral Monuments	19	(54)
Ephemeral Monuments, Memory and Royal Sempiternity in a Grassfields Kingdom	21	(32)
Nicolas Argenti
The Place of Memory	53	(20)
Susanne Kuchler
Part II: Remembering and Forgetting in Images Past	73	(54)
Girodet's Portrait of Citizen Belley, Ex-Representative of the Colonies: In Remembrance of 'Things Sublime'	75	(18)
Helen Weston
Bribing the Vote of Fame: Eighteenth Century Monuments and the Futility of Commemoration	93	(14)
David Bindman
Forgetting Rome and the Voice of Piranesi's 'Speaking Ruins'	107	(20)
Tarnya Cooper
Part III: War Memorials	127	(70)
Remembering to Forget: Sublimation as Sacrifice in War Memorials	129	(18)
Michael Rowlands
Remembering and Forgetting in the Public Memorials of the Great War	147	(24)
Alex King
Commemorating 1916, Celebrating Difference: Parading and Painting in Belfast	171	(26)
Neil Jarman
Bibliography	197	(14)
Index	211