Introduction

It is some time since public sculpture has been interpreted solely in traditional art historical terms. Even mainstream books on the subject emphasise the extent to which public monuments are imbued with meaning in relation to a broad range of values that have little, if anything, to do with the aesthetic (Choay 2001; Michalski 1998; Savage 1997). The bulk of recent research into public monuments, particularly the public sculpture of national heroes and historic figures, has been undertaken by historians, sociologists, political scientists and urban geographers who have tended to regard the works as physical manifestations of complex regional, political, religious and ethnic values. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in studies of the politics in parts of Europe where inter-ethnic rivalry and conflict erupted in the aftermath of the ‘changes’ of 1989.

The ‘Soviet Soldier’ dispute in Tallinn (Estonia) in 2007 and the destruction of towns, monuments and art works in the former Yugoslavia during the wars of the 1990s have attracted considerable attention, partly because they were both symbolic and concrete demonstrations of the underlying conflict which were easy to film or photograph for the mainstream news media. Indeed, of all the widespread destruction and killing, one of the most memorable images was the blowing-up of the old bridge (Stari Most) at Mostar in November 1993. The fact that the destruction was filmed and photographed, and its reconstruction between 1999 and 2004 laboriously documented, has kept the subject and this monument, above all others in the conflict, in the Western public eye. These outbursts of violence, however, tend to reveal extreme, if fairly crude, expressions of resentment at the symbolic power associated with monuments.

There is a long tradition stretching back to ancient and biblical times in which effigies, representations and sculpted likenesses have been attacked and mutilated to expiate hatred, to remove the latent power in the image or to expel at least the representation of an oppressor (Gamboni 2007; Besançon 2009). The most famous example in recent years was probably the toppling and mutilation of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in April 2003, as if ritually humiliating and executing the dictator himself at the site of his greatest symbolic power.