Simple Evaluation of Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall
Artist: Maya Lin
Year: 1981~1982(design submission ~ completion)
Location: Washington D.C., United States
It started as a design submitted for a memorial design competition held by US officials to commemorate the Vietnam War. Entry number 1026 was chosen as the winner. The eventual outcome is a black stone wall with a reflective surface, where the names of 57,661 fallen soldiers was carved on. The wall is V-shaped, with one side pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other to the Washington Monument. There is also a pathway underneath the memorial wall which follows the gradually ascending wall from one end to the other, where the wall descends underground again.
However, the overall simplistic design and knowledge that the designer is an Asian made both her and the monument subject towards harsh critics. She defended it, and with a compromise of setting up another more conventional memorial nearby, the design got a green light. The critics remained, yet they were short lived, dissolving altogether as the monument proved itself overwhelmingly touching for many visitors.
The over 50 thousand names of war casualties on the wall, the pathway for walking along the monument and the reflective surface of the memorial which was meant to reflect the face of the living on the names of the dead, together, they brought forth not only emotion, but also a process which John Devitt, a veteran himself in the Vietnam war, describes as “healing”.
She shows an understanding of the intense emotions —— the sorrow of war, to be precise—— which she presents and enwraps the viewers with through her work. She also understands the situation as an ethnic race in the US, which means a certain degree of unfairness in attitude from society. She even plainly stated that she would not have won the competition if the participants were not under anonymity during the initial stage of the competition.
The artist took on a different point of view while designing this memorial. While many depicted the outcome of the war, she chose to depict the cost of it. As soon as the design is first revealed to public, it created a turmoil as it was not what many had expected. Its simplistic design did not match their expectations of a grand monument of a war gallantly fought, which is in all aspects, conventional. This is adamant proof of its uniqueness.
This piece is a very astounding milestone for both the art scene and the society, as it somewhat pushed on the boundaries of the public’s views on art, and touched an issue——racism, which are at the time and now still, a very delicate issue among the different races in countries. It might be a side line event to the monument’s “healing” of a lot of broken hearts.
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