Monuments occupy a controversial place in nations founded on principles of freedom and self-governance. It is no accident that when we think of monuments, we think of statues modeled on legacies of conquest, domination, and violence. The Monument’s End reveals how the artists, architects, poets, and scholars of the early modern Netherlands contended with the profound disconnect between the public monument and the ideals of republican government. Their experiences offer vital lessons about the making, reception, and destruction of monuments in the present.
In the seventeenth century, the newly formed Dutch Republic dominated world trade and colonized vast overseas territories even as it sought to shed the trappings of its imperial past. Marisa Anne Bass describes the frustrated attempts by figures such as Rembrandt van Rijn and playwright and poet Joost van den Vondel to reimagine public memory for their emergent nation. She shows how the most celebrated age of Dutch art was more an age of bronze than of gold, one in which the pursuit of freedom from domination was constantly challenged by the commercial ambitions of empire.
Exploring how the artists and intellectuals of this vibrant century asked questions that still resonate today, this beautifully illustrated book discusses works by contemporary artists such as Spencer Finch and Thomas Hirschhorn and offers new perspectives on monuments like the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and events such as the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Marisa Anne Bass is professor of the history of art at Yale University. She is the author of Insect Artifice: Nature and Art in the Dutch Revolt and Jan Gossart and the Invention of Netherlandish Antiquity and the coauthor of Conchophilia: Shells, Art, and Curiosity in Early Modern Europe (all Princeton).
"A fascinating study of how we think about monuments."—Mark Lynch, Inquiry
“In a time when monuments need to be reconceptualized and the recording of histories needs to be interrogated, this book provides a thoughtful perspective on what it means to call into question the tenets that have informed our current memorial landscape. Investigating the prevalence of violence, oppression, hypermasculinity, and singularity in monuments, Bass encourages readers to consider how these themes prevail globally. She questions what if, instead of being a testament to power and authority that ultimately needs to be dismantled and opposed, monuments were representative of the collective will of people?”—Jha D Amazi, Principal and Director of the Public Memory and Memorials Lab, MASS Design Group
“The Monument’s End is a sustained tour de force. Marisa Anne Bass’s knowledge of contemporary monuments—their particular aesthetics and their fate—is as impressive as her knowledge of the seventeenth-century monuments that constitute the book’s core. At every point, the book makes history relevant to our own time. This will be a landmark work.”—David A. Freedberg, author of Iconoclasm
“The Monument’s End is a highly original work—a study that moves beyond the monuments to consider public reception, appropriation, and reaction throughout the lifetime of the monument. Based on a wide array of original sources and modern studies, Bass’s approach is novel and imaginative.”—Henk van Nierop, author of Treason in the Northern Quarter: War, Terror, and the Rule of Law in the Dutch Revolt
“Marisa Anne Bass’s new book is a visually lovely, intellectually original study, offering an important argument about the politics and culture of the Dutch Republic.”—Martin van Gelderen, author of The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555–1590
