Anti-monumentalism
The term counter-monumentalism first appeared through the compositions of, linguist and Jewish studies scholar, James E. Young in describing the works of German artists dealing with the memory of the Holocaust.
[2] According to Young, anti-monumentalism stems from “a deep distrust of monumental forms in light of their systematic exploitation by the Nazis, and a profound desire to distinguish their generation from that of the killers through memory.” Young considers these counter-monuments to go against the traditional principles of monuments, for example, by challenging "prominence and durability, figurative representation and the glorification of past deeds.
"[3] Anti-monuments challenge "the power of traditional monuments to suggest completeness, or a false sense of closure" or ideals like beauty by purposefully creating alternate public experiences and forms.
[2] According to artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, anti-monumentalism also "refers to an action, a performance, which clearly rejects the notion of a monument developed from an elitist point of view as an emblem of power.
From a twenty-first-century point of view, however, the memorial landscape looks more complex: personal interaction, while still at the center of commemoration, has been reassessed, and is not necessarily seen as the best or only tool to engage humans with their history.
Fundamental inversions also include voids instead of solids, absence instead of presence (as with the Aschrott Fountain and Harburg’s disappearing Monument against Fascism), dark rather than light tones, and an emphasis on the horizontal rather than the vertical.
Anti-monumentalism questions, surprises and engages the visitor instead putting up distance, insisting on sobriety and respect from the spectator such as what conventional works do.
Referred to as the 'Invisible Monument', this anti-monument exists to highlight the crimes against Jewish people committed by the Nazis and is situated in the eponymous Platz des Unsichtbaren Mahnmals (English: Place of the Invisible Memorial) in Saarbrücken, Germany.
[17] The artists has created a traditional monument, that is constructed with hundreds of miniature figures, both male and female, holding up an empty pedestal.
Senator Jim Webb expressed shock: “I never in my wildest dreams imagined such a nihilistic slab of stone.”[21] James Watt, secretary of the interior under President Ronald Reagan, initially refused to issue a building permit for the memorial due to the public outcry about the design.
Catesby Leigh writes in her book Anti-Monument: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Its Legacy that it is a "hyper-reductionist strand of modernist art that takes abstraction to an extreme"[23] It is also without ornament, nor explanation.
The non-representational form of the work allows for multiple interpretations, and that it is "dialogical" in nature as it contrasts to the prevalent forms of memorialization in D.C.[3] Pritika Chowdhry is an artist of South Asian descent who presents her work as anti-memorials depicting inhuman violence taken place specially in South Asian history at various points of time.
