Amanda- "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe"

I thought the discussion in class the other day about the 'correct' way to find meaning in art was incredibly interesting, and sparked an immediate thought in my mind about something I recently saw on my trip to Berlin. We were talking about the question of which is more important, knowing the historical context of a work of art, and the artist’s intention or the individual viewer’s personal interpretation. I next thought about the interaction between both of these options, and the idea of the audience influencing the meaning of the work, adding to the concept the artist first had. I think this relationship between the artist and their audience is quite important in the process of all art, and essentially the point that it is created. The dialogue and the connection that is formed between an artist, a piece of art, and the audience of art is a specific link that can not be compared to anything else in the world.

A great example that I’ve come across of this interesting interaction between an artist and their audience is the holocaust memorial in Berlin. The memorial itself is composed of dozens of rows of large concrete blocks of differing heights, loosely arranged from shortest to tallest. The ground which the stones are arranged on is uneven and forms a wave-like pattern heading backwards from the front of the memorial. One of the most interesting things about the structure itself is that there is no plaque or sign stating what it is, it is just a large structure taking up about a whole city block directly in the middle of where Berlin’s business and tourist districts intersect.

This structure was only finished 4 years ago, after the city went through a long process of deciding the appropriate way of tackling such an important monument, they settled on the idea of holding a contest. The winner, Peter Eisenmen, designed the memorial in this ambiguous fashion very intently, which is why it was selected as the winner. I was told that many people interpret the stones to be tomb stones of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis, while others seem to think they symbolize the rows of mindless soldiers involved in the horror of the holocaust. I found the most interesting explanation of the work to be the gradual incline of the stones to represent a sort of bar graph of how such a horrific event came to be. Specifically, the small leaps from anti-Semitic comments and beliefs, to discrimination, all the way up to mass murders in concentration camps.



There was a lot of controversy before the memorial was created because some people thought it would be more appropriate to provide a free shuttle to one of the near by concentration camps. After much consideration, the city decided to stick with the concept of a physical monument in the city because this way everyone in Berlin had to see it, they couldn’t chose to not get on one of those buses and ignore it. By placing the monument here, the city spoke volumes about their past, present and the near future. This monument symbolizes more than all the lives that were lost, it exhibits the immense progress the people of Berlin have made and their apparent choice to pick up the pieces and rebuild, while not brushing aside their history.


It is not quite clear what was intended by Eisenmen other than the fact that he wanted to break free from the structure of traditional monuments and he everyone to create their own meaning in the memorial, which is why seeing this work in person was so fascinating to me. I think the city of Berlin and the artist, went about this with a great mindset and did a fantastic job of tackling such a hard task of creating a Holocaust memorial in the city where most of the destruction began. By letting the people search for meaning and wrestle with it themselves there is much more depth and meaning in the work. It exposes the immense power and beauty of art that nothing else could come close to touching which is, to me, one of the most amazing things to be a part of in the world.