Confederate Monuments

I reviewed MONUMENTS, a knockout show of Confederate monuments and contemporary artists’ responses at the Brick and L.A. MOCA.

Alas, then, that the nine statues in “Monuments” have been abandoned, like Scarlett O’Hara’s Tara, to mortifying occupation. At MOCA, where all the works but Walker’s are exhibited, you’ll find Jefferson Davis lying on his back, still streaked with pink paint from protests, raising an arm—Will anyone help me?—toward a group of Klansmen photographed by Andres Serrano. In another room, an enormous statue of Lee and Jackson, with “BEWARE TRAITORS” scrawled in huge letters across its base, is paired with a replica of the car from “The Dukes of Hazzard,” by Hank Willis Thomas—a Dodge Charger, emblazoned with a Confederate battle flag, which here stands totalled on its head. Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee has undergone the most viscerally satisfying transformation, into neatly stacked piles of bronze ingots. (They will be recycled for a future work.)