American Art after September 11: A Consideration of the Twin Towers

American Art After September 11:

A Consideration of the Twin Towers

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center had a profound effect on the American art world. The events and aftermath triggered a shift in public sensibility toward abstraction and raised dilemmas in terms of representing the human figure. Further, the representation of 9/11 recalls and amplifies the debates over modernism first advanced when Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial was selected for the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and during the ensuing controversy. This discussion will consider the ways in which Lin's elder status in this discussion showcases the role modernism plays in the commodification of 9/11. A major issue in this discussion is the function of the widespread response of public grief and anger played, and continues to play, in the valuation of art pieces following that tragic day's events. The American response involves two linked issues: the susceptibility of art to transformation because of broad public interest and the existence of archetypal images for catastrophe. The building and destruction of the World Trade Center, the role of art after the attacks, the kind of art allowed and censored, the artistic response in the New York art world, and finally, the plans for Ground Zero are all considered here to determine these points.

The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center were secured vividly in the American imagination as an unparalled attack on American shores. Within a few short hours, more than 3,000 people had been killed, many more injured. Initially, critics expected a major paradigm shift, in which ironic postmodern art would disappear from the scene.¹ The predicted "new literalism" was most prominent in the first wave of visual responses, evident in the temporary memorials to the victims. A few specific works have been particularly well received by the avant-garde, including the Tribute of Light of 2002.² More recently, several art pieces have also gained attention for the negative outcry against them as too explicit because they are figurative. The general public largely dismisses these initially executed pieces, favoring more solemn and abstract memorials in the tradition of Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial of 1982 (Figure 1). The terrorist acts were broadcast and reprinted as they were occurring and immediately afterward, so that a horrific series of transmitted and reproduced images were imprinted onto the collective sensibility. This immediacy of experience affected the way artists viewed the events and their art making since 9/11.

At first, artists were responding to the televised images of the attacks. On September 10, 2001, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was embroiled in forming a cultural committee to review funding for museums—the outcome of the outcry he prompted over the 1999 exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which Giuliani criticized harshly for displaying Anglo-Nigerian artist Chris Olifi's painting of a Madonna ornamented with sacs of elephant dung. Then, soon after 9/11, and as a result of his decisive reactions to events of the day, Giuliani became a kind of paragon of civic virtue, suggesting that patronizing a Broadway show was patriotic. He appeared on Saturday Night Live to promote New York's status as an outstanding place. His role as a defender of artistic morality was bolstered by his newfound status as quick responder to disaster and, subsequently, cultural maven. This transition in Guiliani's cultural status is a barometer of the importance the World Trade Center had as a symbol of New York City. Tourists visited the Statue of Liberty, but residents and more tourists went to the Twin Towers. They held an important position in the idea of New York.

Skyscrapers are essentially the cathedrals of our...