A monumental moment
Reflecting on the intent and power of Houston’s public art
We are not ISIS, people, are we?
Not that an early 20th century Confederate monument occupies the same moral ground as the ancient Assyrian site at Ashur destroyed in 2015 by rampaging extremists. But Andrew Schneck’s alleged attempt to blow up the Dick Dowling monument in Hermann Park Saturday night was no valiant act of protest.
Nor were the “paint-bombings” of Houston’s statues of Christopher Columbus and Martin Luther King, Jr. last week.
Historical monuments always have seemed problematic as public art. The best of them may become landmarks, but they still are symbols mired in the circumstances of their time, easily forgotten by the next generation and not nearly as inspiring in that open-to-interpretation way as, say, Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk” positioned outside the Rothko Chapel. So I’m not defending their value as fine art.
But in a city famous for its historical amnesia, monuments
must be worth something.
When the national conversation about Confederate monuments boiled over last week in the wake of the death and injuries from protests in Charlottesville, Va., the “Destroy the Confederacy” protesters didn’t choose the Dowling statue as their rallying point. They chose “Spirit of the Confederacy,” in Sam Houston Park.
Until then, I never thought much about that brooding, earthbound statue, even though I’ve seen it from afar — mostly while driving by — for my entire adult life. Never bothered to look at its name.
But now it strikes me that downtown Houston is bookended by winged sculptures from two vastly different points in time.
How beautifully ironic that the droopy-winged angel of “Spirit” looks eastward, toward sunrise. This means that, for the time being, at least, it faces the massive new “Wings Over Water,” the kinetic sculpture that has hovered since last December over a fountain outside the George R. Brown Convention Center.
“Wings Over Water” looks like giant wings in flight, with feathers aflutter but no body at the center, so it could represent a bird, a human or an angel. Whatever suits the viewer’s imagination.
In spite of mechanical issues — the joints malfunctioned and are all being replaced — people linger under the gigantic sculpture’s glow at night, dwarfed by its scale and entranced by the dazzling light and splashing water, as if they are at DisneyWorld. Even without the added kinetic rush, “Wings Over Water” can make an ordinary evening feel celebratory.
This is what public art aspires to in the 21st century.
There was never any danger that it would offend people. Nothing gets admitted to the public realm these days — be it statues or park amenities or bike lanes — without public comment.
When “Spirit of the Confederacy” was unveiled in 1908, of course, the city’s AfricanAmerican population had no voice at all. A decade later, 13 African-American soldiers were hanged without an appeals process after a riot that swept from Camp Logan toward the edge of town, not far from the statue. Maybe that event needs to be memorialized somehow now.
“Spirit of the Confederacy” was made by the Italian immigrant sculptor Louis Amateis, who didn’t carry Civil War baggage of his own — although he clearly profited from it.
Amateis arrived in the U.S. in 1883; founded the architecture and fine arts school at what would become George Washington University; and happened to be good with bronze during some frenzied decades of monument-building when Southern whites could claim they were defending more than racist attitudes.
At the unveiling of “Spirit of the Confederacy,” he told the Chronicle his angel was looking to the horizon, “thoughtful of the future of his country.”
At least he got the forward-thinking part about Houston right.
Amateis told a reporter that he envisioned ivy growing over the statue’s rough-hewn pedestal, and he wanted the whole area around it covered with cactus (he didn’t know Houston, obviously) and shrubs. A nice, poetic thought. The growth also would have covered the plaque, with its ode to “heroes of the South who fought for the principles of states rights.”
Perhaps Amateis was sensitive to the offensive message. Maybe he even felt he’d sold his soul to the devil.
Would he have been thrilled or mortified if he could have been there Sunday, when about 500 people gathered to demand the statue’s removal, separated by police and barricades from a few dozen counterprotesters?
It’s really the plaque, not the figure of the naked angel, that seems most problematic now. Except, of course, that we now understand the monument’s intent, so the whole thing is tainted. We can’t ignore it.
Houston, no more than any other city in the nation, cannot condone oppression. And as innocuous as they may have seemed during all those years when we forgot them, our Confederate statues have reached a point of no return as symbols of white supremacist attitudes. It’s like murderous half-siblings have surfaced from the murky depths of the bayou and want to come live with us.
What we do with these objects will say much about Houston as a forward-thinking city.
Perhaps they could be put into context somehow with several other, now iconic, outdoor sculptures that were once controversial.
Confederate spirits were still running the city when John and Dominique de Menil offered to match a federal grant to bring Newman’s precarious-looking “Broken Obelisk” to the City Hall reflection pond in 1969. The Menils, deeply invested in human rights issues, insisted that Newman’s masterpiece would honor the late Martin Luther King Jr. In a moment that now seems as shameful as the era of “Spirit of the Confederacy,” thenmayor Louie Welch and members of City Council forfeited the grant and rejected the offer.
Thus “Broken Obelisk” is not technically public: It sits on the private, hallowed ground of the Rothko Chapel, visited annually by pilgrims from around the world.
By 1980, the power at City Hall had shifted, and Houston funded another Luis Jimenez’s “Vaquero” through its Art in Public Places Program, with an assist from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Some of Houston’s Mexican-American community felt Jiminez’s colorful, glazed-fiberglass sculpture of a rowdy, gunwielding Mexican cowboy atop a bucking horse was the wrong piece at the wrong place at the wrong time. Tensions hadn’t fully settled after the police killing of Vietnam veteran Jose Campos Torres in 1977 and the ensuing Moody Park Riots of 1978.
Several hundred members of the Northside community petitioned to have Jimenez’ statue removed, fearing that it glorified violence and drunken stereotypes. But others wanted to keep it, and Jimenez was alive to defend himself.
So the statue stayed, and survived to become a signature piece of Houston’s public art collection.
Our reckoning with Confederate objects and names is not over, and it won’t be easy.
First, a driving tour may be in order, with stops at “Broken Obelisk” and “Vaquero” as well as “Spirit of the Confederacy” and “Wings Over Houston,” to contemplate where we’ve been, what’s next, and how soar past all of this ugly, divisive business.
Forward is always the way to go. Let’s put the explosives in our words, but keep it peaceful.