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Monumental Lies:Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past
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AN URGENT REPORT FROM THE FRONTLINE OF THE CULTURE WARS
How the past is memorialized can have a dangerous influence on the future. Monumental Lies exposes the truths buried at contested heritage sites and demands that we safeguard the material evidence of history from both malign defenders and over-enthusiastic erasure. Robert Bevan challenges us to rethink our relationship with our contested spaces, from colonial statues and the physical legacy of fascism, to fake post-conflict reconstructions and ethno-nationalist narratives about beauty and tradition. He questions symbolic power and symbolic changes and explains why wording on a plaque is never a substitute for tackling problem monuments through artistic transformations at scale.
A Financial Times Best Book of 2022
Reviews
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This useful book connects a number of apparently disparate stories about statues and monuments and considers the various ironies of their representation and significance, past and present. A recommended read.
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Robert Bevan's passionate, timely polemic is a much-needed antidote to all the horror stories about 'woke' protesters tearing down monuments. The true threat to our built-up environment, he argues, comes not from the Left, but from governments who employ all the powers of the state to re-write history in their image. It is at times a truly terrifying read.
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Wide ranging and rigorous, readable and profound, this superb book argues that if we can no longer trust the tangible world around us to tell the truth, then we are in trouble. Bevan offer us solutions arguing that we need to look at ways we can layer our monuments and our city that turns sites of honour into sites of shame, that change the meaning of the past without losing altogether the vital evidence of that past from the public realm.
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This close reading of the city is a potent response to the culture wars because it deals in precisely the historical honesty that culture warriors have no stomach for. Righteous but always nuanced, Bevan is the perfect guide to the way urban iconography distorts history and entrenches power.
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A book that makes you sit up ... powerful
, Country Life -
From statues of slave traders to pictures of medieval town centres offered as evidence of "cultural superiority", architecture and public art are everywhere in a coarsened discourse. Robert Bevan...navigates the territory delicately and brilliantly
, Financial Times, Best Books of 2022 -
One of the most compelling progressive voices in the heritage world ... Using his nuanced knowledge of architectural history, he is attempting to unpick some of the myths and straight lies deployed when architecture is weaponised.
, Tribune -
Bevan astutely argues that those who manipulate our cultural past are shaping our future, making the case that historic buildings have become battlegrounds for right-wing and nationalist political arguments.
The Art Newspaper, Top Books of 2022 -
Knowledgeable and thought-provoking
, Apollo -
Topical, thought-provoking, knowledgeable about the uses and abuses of culture wars.
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Monumental Lies could hardly be better timed ... Bevan's book is the result of many years' research and contemplation, and is thorough, extensive and provocative ... brilliant
, Building Design -
A book on cultural patrimony and historical architecture from Bevan's perspective is necessary ... searching and wide-ranging
, The Art Newspaper -
Blistering ... [a] hugely rewarding book that provides a considered and unexpected commentary on the built environment amid the culture wars
, Times Literary Supplement -
A fascinating and very wide-ranging ... rich in detailed discussions of both the artistic and architectural issues and political contexts of many different problems across the contemporary world.
, Counterfire -
Powerful ... a must-read book for everyone interested in the questions of heritage representation, diversity and the city, and the way to move forward after painful and violent pasts.
, Urban Studies -
Monumental Lies is a highly absorbing and deserving read, and recommended for anyone with an interest in what the built environment says - or avoids saying - about history.
, Urban Design Journal