Word: monumentalize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Once designed to keep Mongolian nomad warriors from breaching the frontiers of the ancient Chinese princes, the wall stands as a monument to Chinese diligence and labor and the most basic drive of all rulers -the push for unity, the defense of China's frontiers against outside invaders. Unlike any other in the world, the wall has a vitality of architectural rhythm that gives it a sense of endless movement. It seems to be a slow-moving dragon, the bricks its scales, undulating in the sunlight. Even Richard Nixon's banal description of its might fails to mute...
STOP BUSING, WALLACE CAN. The first of the 3,261 cars in the caravan to complete the trek followed the designated route past the Washington Monument, the White House and the Capitol. Slowed by a slushy snowfall and wrong turns, the motorcade ended ineffectually in a traffic jam that stretched 25 miles back along Interstate...
...Oldenburg came as close as he ever got to actually building a monument when a group of Yale graduate students asked him to design one for "the second American revolution." They had been inspired by the New Left's guru Herbert Marcuse, who, having seen Oldenburg's drawings, announced that "there is a way in which this kind of satire, or humor, can in deed kill. I think it would be one of the most bloodless means to effect a rad ical change." Oldenburg's response took the form of a vast red lipstick which telescoped...
...lipstick provided Oldenburg with other, related images, such as his proposed monument for Marilyn Mon roe, Lipstick with Stroke Attached, 1971. It looks flat, decorative and in nocuous - until one notices that the gleaming "stroke" of red-sprayed met al, lying flat on the floor, could also be the reaping blade of a scythe...
...dealing with Oldenburg's unbuildable projects is to see them as monstrous parodies of this situation. In 1965, he dreamed up a monument for upper Central Park in the form of a giant teddy bear: this woebegone and helpless image was, for Oldenburg, "an incarnation of white conscience; as such, it fixes white New York with an accusing glance from Harlem but also one glassy-eyed from desperation. This may be why I chose a toy with the 'amputated' effect of teddy paws-handlessness signifies society's frustrating lack of tools...