Greetings, greetings. I write again from my couch, my after hours desk since the armchair is for work hours and the dining table is a carnival of mask sewing and letter writing. I should give you a proper update on COVID-19 (it's bad) but I can't just now because I've had a question rattling around in my head for a few days and last night my subconscious presented me with an answer.
Right now across the U.S. and parts of the globe, the outrage for how people of color have been treated is manifesting in many ways, including in the form of response to public art, or visual culture if you will. And it is happening in so many places and in so many ways it is hard to keep track, but most notably the statue in Richmond Virginia of Robert E. Lee has been the spectacular canvas for uncommissioned public art (some call it graffiti) as well as project images at nighttime. This statue, just this afternoon of July 1, 2020, has been taken down.
In the past weeks, several public sculptures of conquerors/colonialists/lost causes/racism have been taken down in public acts of protest. The dialog on social media has been fascinating as people advocate/complain/try to digest/explain. The comment that has stuck in brain though: Did you ever learn anything from a statue? Forgive me poster of this question, I'll try to track you down but I foolishly relied on my ever overburdened brain bank to remember who posed the question. The question really stuck with me though--I've been mulling it over for a few days because part of the question also involved the aspect of what did you learn from the statue itself, not from any signage or plaques on/nearby?
So first, shaking down the memory bank. Sculpture. Have a seen a sculpture recently? My most recent specific "going to a sculpture"activity was waaaayy back in early C19 times, before the shelter in place order, when a good friend and I agreed to meet for a walk on a rainy afternoon on a nearby famous campus and she famously said "I'll meet you at the Gates of Hell." This particular nearby campus is known for being awash in Rodin, so we had plenty of sculptures by him to review, including aforementioned Gates of Hell.
But what did I know of that giant sculpture, and did I really stand to interpret it, before immediately seguing into gossip with my pal and steering her toward what I wanted to see, the Arizona garden? Reader, I did not.
So I had to work my brain a little harder. Sculpture, sculpture. Fountains probably don't count in this in moment, and I've only seen the Trevi fountain in pictures, anyway. Sculpture....and suddenly I was awake at 2 a.m. and rush of memories came back in surprising detail.
My first year at San Jose State University was luckily the same year that the monumental sculpture of Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos was unveiled on campus. I had not known prior to accepting the position at SJSU that the world famous image of Smith and Carlos and Peter Norman on the medals podium, Smith and Carlos barefoot, each with one hand gloved and raised in protest, heads bowed as the national anthem played, was a watershed image in civil rights and university history. But I was there that fall day on campus when this huge, literally larger than life sculpture by Rigo23 was unveiled and the two men who had taken their moment of triumph on the world stage to speak for others were there to see it, almost 40 years after. Interestingly, the presence of the sculpture on the campus was due to student activism--initially when the student athletes, who were part of the famed Coach Bud Winter Speed City track team, returned to campus, they were not warmly welcomed by parts of the community by their actions were defended by President Robert Clark.
But to get back to the statue--to see this representation of the two Black athletes, the details true to life through the use of 3D scanning technology to create the ceramic tiles mounted on a steel frame and the faces made of bronze. If you look closely at pictures or get to see it in person--what do you see? It is more than raised fists--it is the button they are both wearing for the Olympic Project for Human Rights, it is also the fact they are barefoot, taking their shoes off to represent the poverty and injustices faced by Black people in the late 1960s. I know these details because I was there to see the statue unveiled, to hear both men talk about their lived experiences, and then to have it be part of my work life landscape, a gathering place, a destination, a reminder.
As Maureen Margaret Smith writes in her article "Frozen Fists in Speed City" the sculpture represents many things to many people. For the University as an entity, the opportunity to show delayed respect to students that went on to become civil rights icons, and in that moment of commitment would lose countless financial opportunities for sports celebrity. I recommend reading the autobiographies of both John Carlos and Tommie Smith for how they have negotiated their legacy and their current work.
I can't let this discussion go by without mention of Dr. Harry Edwards, whose name I did not know that fall day in 2005, but would come to know in 2016 when this organizer of the Olympic Project for Human Rights came to campus to initiate the process of donating his archives to the SJSU Library. Nowhere on the sculpture do you see the name Dr. Harry Edwards, but he played a pivotal role not only in this protest but in protests that have happened in the past fifty years where people who use their bodies to play the sports, win the races, make the points are not respected off the field.
Ok, I'm a little tired and I'm not doing justice to this topic at the moment, revisions to come in the next draft. But think about it--what have you learned from a sculpture?
Further reading:
Beyond Bronze https://sjsunews.com/article/beyond-bronze
Smith, Maureen Margaret. "Frozen Fists in Speed City: The Statue as Twenty-First-Century Reparations." Journal of Sport History 36, no. 3 (2009): 393-414. Accessed July 1, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/26405221.
Fifty years later, Peter Norman’s heroic Olympic stand is finally being recognised at home.
https://theconversation.com/fifty-years-later-peter-normans-heroic-olympic-stand-is-finally-being-recognised-at-home-102112
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