Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each feature by whether it belongs to the TRADITIONAL monument grammar or to a COUNTER-monument.
Groups: Traditional grammar · Counter-monument
- A form cut into the earth rather than raised above it
- A surface that reflects the visitor looking at it
- A column that sinks into the ground as it is signed
- A named individual raised on a plinth
- An inscription stating who and why
- Bronze or stone, chosen for permanence
Hints
- One grammar elevates and settles; the other lowers and unsettles.
- Anything requiring the visitor's participation is a counter-form.
Show the answer
Traditional grammar: A named individual raised on a plinth, Bronze or stone, chosen for permanence, An inscription stating who and why
Counter-monument: A column that sinks into the ground as it is signed, A form cut into the earth rather than raised above it, A surface that reflects the visitor looking at it
Why
Every item in the right-hand column is a refusal of a specific item in the left. That is what makes them counter-monuments rather than modern monuments: each one is answering a particular element of the grammar rather than restyling the whole.
Practise The Monument and the Counter-Monument
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Sculpture I is free to start.
More questions on The Monument and the Counter-Monument
- Why does a counter-monument refuse permanence and elevation rather than simply adopting a modern style?
- Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial lists the names in the order the deaths occurred rather than by rank.
- Which responses to a contested monument exist besides retaining or removing it?
- Traditional monuments are designed to do the remembering for the viewer, whereas counter-monuments transfer…
- In what year did the Harburg Monument against Fascism complete its descent into the ground?
- Complete the account of commemoration.
- Arrange these responses to a contested monument from the least to the most intervention in the object.
- A counter-monument that becomes a beloved permanent landmark has, on its own terms, partly failed.