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There's absolutely no doubt that the piece is incredibly disturbing. Anyone capable of viewing it at site without at least welling up with tears would be a stoic person indeed. I was in on the early footage on 9/11, showing the people jumping from the buildings and hitting the ground, before the networks and cable stations began to pull those scenes, and it was the horrible of horribles. (I was overseas at the time, so the cut-off of the graphic footage was a bit delayed, I suppose.)
I gather that many of the objections relate to the issues as to the naked representation of the woman, or the horrendously inexplicable circumstance visited upon her, one that people don't wish to be reminded of. "Let's get those picket fences whitewashed!"
I've been several times to the Vietnam Memorial on the Washington mall, and the guys in camouflage fatigues, placing letters and flowers and unopened beer bottles and medals and crying their hearts out, are at Maya Lin's artistic creation that at one time one of the project's art commissioners labeled a "black gash of shame." That the designer was of Asian descent had obvious effect in such judgments. I've never yet seen anyone walk up to the much "neater and cleaner" (no names of dead, no body parts, no written letters) statues of the soldiers coming out of the rain forest, and express the same kinds of emotions displayed in the reflections of that brutally cold black wall engraved with the names of 50,000 dead, that "shameful" monument despised by the few -- nay the one. What a tribute that wall has become for Lin's vision, and against the deficit of vision in that one and his council.
The sculpture is horrific, as was the event. I know I'll take heat by saying that I think it's a useful counterpoint to the portrayal of all the professional heroes whose nobility is being rightly honored in the aftermath of this tragedy. Surely hundreds of civilian, nonprofessional heroes unsung also perished in the collapse of the Towers. Hundreds more perished not wanting anything more heroic in their lives other than going home to their families again. Where now are their statues and portraits, the reminders of what they endured? Perhaps this one was intended to remind us of how incredibly inhuman -- and at the same time, certainly human -- was this exacted retribution for perceived wrongs. Shall we pretend that no one leapt from those Towers, in the face of that terror? And that no artists were moved by that profound event?
I'm not sure how this discussion fits into a portrait artists' site, but isn't it too serious a subject for anti-SUV campaigns right out of the gate? I think the guys at CarTalk are covering that. My Tahoe is back in the shed for another year and I'm riding a motorcycle -- a suicide wish, if ever there was one -- in Taipei. My SUV in storage doesn't have an American flag sticker in the window (though one flies from my deck in the midwest, and has for years), but it does have a Boy Scouts of America decal (it's hauled a lot of Scouts and camp gear over the years) and county, state, and national park passes, a resident pass for the Cape Cod Tunnel (a joke.) It would have a sticker for Nude Beach Parking on the Cape, but my daughter -- then a very few miles distant from all the 9-11 events -- stole it for her Taurus.
Personally, I think those Taurus owners are the reason for the Middle East troubles and the decline in morals in this country, and I'm getting suspicious of drivers of "early year" Asian and Scandanavian models with all those "Save the Earth/Air/Children/Forests" types of bumper stickers holding them together and patching the rust spots.
Artists are starting to get my attention, too, and I think something should be done about them.
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