please empty your brain below
I look forward to a monument depicting the Saharan and East African slave trades that were equally brutal and continued for a much longer period.
The really interesting question to ask is why there is so much attention paid to the Atlantic slave trade and very little to the others.
I agree with you, totally
Andy: What's specifically Atlantic about this?
Arlo: I think you are reading that sentiment into my comments. I wrote that other slave trades were "equally brutal" implying that I believe the Atlantic trade was brutal. A substantial grass roots movement in Britain (including some of my ancestors who were Quakers) also understood how evil this trade was and campaigned to stop it.
Which in the case of the Arabian slave trade route was far more brutal than the Atlantic trade. The mortality rates on some routes put the terrible Atlantic trade numbers into some perspective. Plus the majority of slave were traded and stayed in Africa. Where most had a short terrible life.
But as others pointed out it was the British, and the French, who made a huge effort over several generations to end the trade. Successfully. The only nations involved in slaving who did. Compare with the Spanish, Portuguese or dare I say it, the Ottomans.
Will the Tate Modern ever host a monument to the many thousands who died of tropical diseases while in the West Africa Squadron actively suppressing the slave ships during most of the 19th century. Those where the people who actually ended slavery as a reality. As did the British and French colonial troops in Africa.
Why do I think not. Does not fit the current cultural narrative of the "creative" classes. Slavery was a great evil. And we, the French and the British, were the ones who ended it. For this we should be justifiably proud. Men like William Wilberforce were the true greatest Britons.
"I see somebody did X. Why did they not do Y?"
Only tedious to the affectedly sententious perhaps. To those of us who are familiar the politics of public art and institutions responsible for it the subject is actually quite interesting. Because politics it is, from start to end.
Public art is probably the best and most concrete illustration of the beliefs and mores of the current power elites. Those who control where money is spent on new cultural artifacts. There are quiet a few thick meaty academic tomes on how this has played out over the last 800 plus years in Western Art.
So talking about the various alternatives not taken is a very useful way of highlighting the very deliberate and partisan politics of the decisions actually taken.
Saying all that the work in question looks like it would not have been out of place as the water feature in the formal gardens of some tin pot dictators Summer Palace. A Bokassa or Amin perhaps. It has all the finesse, grace and elegance of a garden gnome menagerie. The usual fate of all art that merely panders to the current political fads
Original point proved. I think.
Accept my apologies for automatically typing the most common Irish spelling. The one I am most familiar with. Transliterations as Gaeilge and as Béarla are notoriously eccentric. Given that there are only 18 letters in the alphabet. Plus fadas (accents). My forename has at least five spellings. My surname just as many. All correct.
So its a slan agus beannacht Ciarán for the moment. That's the correct original spelling by the way. Or about as correct as it gets in Irish. Flann O'Brien being the Patron Saint of Irish Orthography.
(which has been the most common Irish spelling for years and years).
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