Controversial Art

I chose to talk about the controversial piece of art, the Vietnam memorial. This piece of art is located in Washington D.C. and was created by a young college girl. After viewing the film A Small Clear Vision on this piece of art I became very interested in the controversy. I was greatly amazed at how many problems this piece of art began. One of the main problems was that this wall was going to be black. Many felt that this color showed dark bad things. Also to add to this upset, people were upset that the wall would be placed underground. Viewers would walk down to see the wall instead of it being a big memorial above ground. Another controversy that made many upset was the fact that the original board to choose this piece of art for the memorial was not constructed with any past Vietnam Veterans. When the piece was chosen veterans began to fight that it was a big black hole, that it didn't have statues like a normal memorial, that there wasn't an American flag, etc. Many were also upset about the fact that the names would be put in chronological order. The designer felt that this was the best and most logical way, but many felt different about this. Many felt that the names should go alphabetical, because it would be easier to find names of people they were looking for. The designer states that if people are there to see a certain name they will take the extra 3 min to go to the finder machine and locate where the name would be located. Another big uproar was not only that the girl that created this was very young, but yet she was also Asian and not a past Vietnam Veteran.

This piece of art did cause a great deal of uproar, but I am happy to see that this piece was eventually approved. The young girl was not trying to cause any problems with this lovely piece of art, she was trying to put effort into something that would be remembered for a life time.
I personally really likes how simple this memorial was. The fact that this war was such a big part of the history in the United States something extreme is not needed to remember the tragedy, but something simple to see the importance of the loved ones who participated in such an important event. Unfortunately, no matter what would have been chosen there would have been some controversy. Everyone had different thoughts on this piece of art, as well as any other piece of art that would have been chosen.

In this unit I learned a great deal of things that I never really put into perspective. I feel that controversial art is impossible to avoid. No matter what any artist draws, paints, sculpts, etc. there will be those people that don't approve of it. I feel that the main pieces of art the are known to be very controversial are some of the most interesting pieces of art to look at, because they cause conversation and questions between people. Every person is going to look at a piece of art differently. One may see a piece of art that makes them feel great inside, but then the person next to them may look at the same piece of art and feel very upset and hurt inside. This experience is going depend on the person and there is no way to avoid controversy in art no matter what the government or anyone tries to do.