Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves [Hardcover]

Kirk Savage (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 1997

"A finely conceptualized, beautifully argued study of the challenges of representing the new postwar relationship of black to white."--Angela Miller, Washington UniversityThe United States of America originated as a slave society, holding millions of Africans and their descendants in bondage, and remained so until a civil war took the lives of a half million soldiers, some once slaves themselves. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves explores how that history of slavery and its violent end was told in public space--specifically in the sculptural monuments that increasingly came to dominate streets, parks, and town squares in nineteenth-century America. Here Kirk Savage shows how the greatest era of monument building in American history arose amidst struggles over race, gender, and collective memory. As men and women North and South fought to define the war's legacy in monumental art, they reshaped the cultural landscape of American nationalism.At the same time that the Civil War challenged the nation to reexamine the meaning of freedom, Americans began to erect public monuments as never before. Savage studies this extraordinary moment in American history when a new interracial order seemed to be on the horizon, and when public sculptors tried to bring that new order into concrete form. Looking at monuments built and unbuilt, Savage shows how an old image of black slavery was perpetuated while a new image of the common white soldier was launched in public space. Faced with the challenge of Reconstruction, the nation ultimately recast itself in the mold of the ordinary white man.Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves, the first sustained investigation of monument building as a process ofnational and racial definition, probes a host of fascinating questions: How was slavery to be explained without exploding the myth of a "united" people? How did notions of heroism become racialized? And more generally, who is represented in and by monumental space? How are particular visions of history constructed by public monuments? Written in an engaging fashion, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in American culture, race relations, and public art.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves is a history of race in America as seen through the depiction of slavery in sculptures and monuments. Kirk Savage, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Pittsburgh, shows that blacks were seldom depicted in sculpture until after the Civil War, at which time there was a nationwide impetus to commemorate the end of the war and emancipation. Savage considers these statues and monuments to be a lost opportunity: instead of representing a new sense of race in America, the statues featured old stereotypes, the "kneeling slaves" of the title. Far more common were statues featuring ordinary soldiers. The great irony, Savage argues in this thought-provoking book, is that black soldiers--who "were most clearly representative of a national purpose," the fight for equality--were seldom represented in celebratory monuments.

From Library Journal

Boldly investigating the meaning of race, the experience of war, and the function of the public monument, Savage (history of art and architecture, Univ. of Pittsburgh) probes the landscape of collective memory on which the art forms of commemoration in the public sphere depicted the shift from slavery to freedom in post-Civil War America, the greatest era of U.S. monument building. The author brilliantly illuminates the cultural and artistic problems in the representational battleground of public space as groups competed to construct history in the language of sculpture. His astute observations reveal not only the theoretical foundation of racism embedded in sculpture but the importance of the aesthetic dimension of racial theory. This tour de force is for any serious collection on U.S. history, art, architecture, or race relations. Highly recommended.?Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069101616X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691016160
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,315,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I began writing on public monuments and public space in the U.S. as a free-lance author in the early 1980s. My first publication was a piece in the West Coast literary magazine Threepenny Review on the controversy surrounding Maya Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Since then I've gotten a steady job in academia, but my passion for the subject has remained as strong as ever.

My first book, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America, won the John Hope Franklin Prize for best book published in American Studies in 1998. My most recent book, Monument Wars, returns to the subject of my first free-lance projects 25 years ago, Washington, D.C.

I continue to write for general audiences on why we erect monuments and what they mean to us, most recently in the Washington Post. My editorial in the Post on Memorial Day weekend 2009 weighed in on the controversy over the Presidential wreath-laying tradition at the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery. I suggested that President Obama send a second wreath to the African American Civil War Memorial in the District, and on Sunday morning a wreath from the White House unexpectedly appeared!

I am now a professor and department chair in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars brilliant stuff, April 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves (Hardcover)

GRAPHIC DETAILED WELL DIPICTED, visionary material, compelling book draws the strengths of the courage of the african american people in the face of tragedy and despair

5.0 out of 5 stars What an eye opener, November 2, 2009

By 

Book Lover (DC USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves (Paperback)

A careful and thorough look at the American people, our history and psyche, and how we memorialize the significant events of our National adventure. Mr. Savage beautifully and remarkably blends the art, politics, and public rememberence of what is surely our most significant struggle as a nation - defeating slavery.