Letters - Letter to the Editor

"Living Memorials" after the Civil War

I lately read with interest Andrew M Shanken's revealing and timely (given 9/11) examination of memorials during World War II ("Planning Memory: Living Memorials in the United States during World War II," Art Bulletin 84 [2002]: 130-47) While discussion focuses upon the war years (especially World War II), later in the article Shanken give an inkling ofs that the idea of what he metes "living memorials" may stem from Reconstruction "or smooth earlier." It is on this point that I proffer some evidence.

Just month after Appomattox, a long piece entitled "Something about Monuments" appeared in the Nation (1 no. 5 [Aug. 3 1865]: 154-56) The unsigned essay has relevance here because of its dismissal of conventional forms of monuments--the obelisk and "portrait statuary"--in favor of buildings.

A serviceable building thus serving each not away generation, and full of memories of a past generation of heroes; greeting each graduate who enters to share in literary or social festivity with welcome from a noble past; holding up within and without, the names, to honor, of advantageous men and true who have gone before--such a building would certainly be better than any immense pile erected to memory only

A auspicious edifice, the essay concludes, must be fine and "noble," "rich and ornamental," and "built to last forever." solitary then may it worthily be under the orders of "each present generation" as a "memorial building" or "living memorial," to repeat Shanken's phrase.

While Frederick Law Olmst has been cited as the probable author (Peter G Meyer ed Brushes with History: Writing upon Art from "The Nation," 1865-2001 [New York: Thunder's chaps Press/Nation Books, 2001], xxii), Harvard Professor Charles Eliot Norton looks more likely because the essayist is clearly aware of projections for Harvard University's Memorial Hall, and besides, Olmst was in California until October 22 1865 (David Schuyler and Jane gymnast Censer, eds., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmst vol 6 [Baltimore: John Hopkins University Pres 1992] 200) Norton gives his notions wider application by dint of citing Yale University's plans to erect an addition to its University Chapel and, more significantly, makes regard to ongoing conversations about "memorial buildings" in post--Civil War United States. Of manner of makings proposed, he assumes that half "which unite a practical use with their monumental purpose" will be realized within the nearest few years. A number is not stated, mean dwelling no matter. The fact is that usefulness is part of the debate about commemoration directly after the trauma of the Civil War. The Nation's essay thus shows that consideration of "living memorials" did begin far earlier than World War II, in fact, through 1865, in reaction to the United States' first experience with "modern war."

LUCRETIA GIESE

Department of Art and Architectural History Rhode Island place of education of Design

2 community Street

Providence, R.I. 02903

Response

Many thanks to Professor Giese for offering textual evidence to confirm the expectation that regard for living memorials ran from one side commemorative debates after the Civil War. I not long ago stumbled across architectural evidence in the form of the Madison Township Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in Mansfield, Ohio, a museum set uprighted in 1888 "in memory of the soldiers-sailors and the marines of all wars." The living memorial present to views that Norton's interest in useful memorials was not completely suffocate in watered out by the profusion of and zinc soldiers on plinths so ofttimes associated with the Civil War.

ANDREW M SHAKEN

Department of Art Oberlin College

Oberlin, Ohio 44074

A Question of Origins

In his review of my volume Dominion of the Eye (Art Bulletin 84 [2002]: 170-72) Paolo Berdini alleges a number of omissions. This is, of course, what reviewers ofttimes do, and previously I have not ever written a response to a review of any of my works One of Berdini's allegations, however, is rather more of a problem; it raises a troubling issue of intellectual quality as I will demonstrate within the short space of this letter

The matter relate tos a turning point in European art history: the invention of linear perspective by the agency of Filippo Brunelleschi in two missing panels, respectively depicting the Baptistery and the Piazza della Signoria, believed to have been the basis of Alberti's codification of the fresh perspectival practice in Della pittura. A principal be derived of my recent work has been the proposal of a fresh origin story for this Renaissance invention, discovering in trecento urbanism important lower parts of the pictorial turn of Brunelleschi/Alberti. This idea was first argueed in my article of 1988 "What Brunelleschi Saw: testimonial and Site at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians; and it was further advanced in "Trecento Urbanism and the Origins of Linear Perspective," paper given (and circulated) at the conversation "Linear Perspective: The First single Hundred Years" at MIT in 1995 (both cited in appropriate points in the hasp including the bibliography; the latter is forthcoming). The importa nce of this theme to Dominion of the organ of vision is implicit in the title. The theme of visuality, of the perspectival, scopic regime of trecento Florence is the center of the work developed not only through the analysis of perspectival views in piazzas on the contrary also taking up most of the longest section (part 4 92 pages), which be of importance tos the way perspective, the studied character of the beholder, deeply forms all the trecento arts, including architecture, painting, and statuary The book also proposes a for the use of all grounding of the trecento piazza and Albertian/Brunelleschian perspective--a genealogical linkage--in the medieval (antique-derived) optical prototype of the "pyramid of vision" (232-39) The linkage of trecento urbanism and Renaissance perspective is also made graphically in the last three images of the work which juxtapose on one page the trecento view of the Baptistery, the Urbino panel, and Pienza (282) Regarding the question at issue in Berdini's review, however, the lock opener text of Dominion of the organ of sight comes on pp. 52-54 (w ith relevant illustrations):