The Irish Famine and the Memorials thereof

Photo from
http://www.janeholtzkay.com/Articles/hunger.html

Wandering around Providence yesterday afternoon, looking for the WWII monument, I ran across a memorial of quite a different sort. It was the city's Irish Famine Memorial, complete with bas relief, Irish pieta, and greetings from Northern Aid, etc. Now I happen to be of the Irish-American persuasion myself, so this sort of thing always interests me, and it was only the third one I've ever seen.

The first, in Boston, right in front of the Borders megabookstore, is, to put it bluntly, beyond the pale, if you get my meaning. It's a bronze cartoon and so appalling that I found I'd been misinterpreting it for years. It's supposed to be the "before and after" of Irish famine refugees in the promised land. But I thought it was middle class WASPs looking down their noses at the newly arrived starving masses, represented by a dying kid, mom, etc. Now, the most touching thing about this Segalesque statue I ever saw was a little kid putting a few cents into the outstretched hand of the dying kid in the statue. Of course, I was sans camera at the time and didn't get a chance to capture it.

The second, in Cambridge, MA, is more of the same ilk. Dying kid in mom's arms, dad on a separate plinth... you walk in between them. I climbed on the pedestal to get a good angle on the anguished maternal side and noticed that someone had stuck a goldfish cracker in the dying kid's hand.

And now this Providence piece. It actually is a Pieta, only with mom holding the nearly naked dying adult son and dad, (presumably it's dad, though I could once again be wrong) fully clothed in clean pressed worker's duds, looking out toward the power plant over in the Jewelry district.

What is it that produces these abortions by some of the most lyrical people on the planet? (So I'm prejudiced. Sue me.) Why do they go to the "bleeding Sacred Heart" school of art when it comes to representing and calling to mind a most tragic affair? Is there a way around it?

I thought about this topic all evening (obviously not enough to do with my life) and decided to A) look up Irish Famine Memorials around the US; and B)compare and contrast these with Jewish Holocaust Memorials.

So this AM I googled "Irish Famine Monuments" and found NYC's Famine Memorial in Battery Park.

Holy shit! They got it right! And now I have to trek west to see this amazing- sounding remembrance to the people of the Emerald Isle who didn't make it through the 19th century. It's really an architectural piece combining structures, rocks, landscape and text. Funereal. Basic. Tragic. It's about feeling and grief- a keening in stone.

More when I've actually seen the piece... but there is apparently hope on the famished horizon.

And, by the bye- don't forget to check my other blog- sculpturalassassination.blogspot.com for updates on the book in progress... New info on the Buddhas has nearly flattened me.