Monument values
In a famous study about the 'cult of monuments', first published in 1903, Alois Riegl (Austrian Art historian and a member of the Vienna School of Art History) distinguished between two kinds of monuments: intentional and unintentional.
An intentional monument is
"a human creation, erected for the specific purpose of keeping single human deeds or events (or a combination thereof) alive in the minds of future generations" (Riegl)
Intentional monuments are concerned with commemoration, or prospective memory. In every present, they "recall a specific moment or complex of moments from the past", and thus make "a claim to immortality, to an eternal present and an unceasing state of becoming" (Riegl). Riegl believed that all of antiquity and the Middle Ages knew only intentional monuments (Riegl).
According to Riegl, unintentional monuments, which are much more numerous, are remains whose meaning is determined not by their makers, but by our modern perceptions of these monuments, i.e. by retrospective cultural memory. Riegl added that deliberate monuments can also become 'unintentional', when they were built for the benefit of contemporaries or immediate progeny only but survive much longer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment