Is mountain carving desecration?

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I was upset when the Taliban destroyed the ancient Buddhist monuments from the mountain sides, and there is some appeal to the Mount rushmore sculpture and the Crazy Horse sculptures, but I'm not sure if these beautiful age-old mountains ought to be carved up for the sake of relatively short-term historical heroes. Isn't this a form of desecration?

http://www.rmi-realamerica.com/images/sd_crazyhorse.jpg

[img]http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1650000/images/_1654085_buddhas.jpg

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coluber wrote:

Isn't this a form of desecration?

To those who hold mountains as sacred, yes.

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Do you think that in a thousand years anybody will care about T. Roosevelt, Lincoln, Jefferson, or Washington or Crazy Horse for that matter?

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I think that in a thousand years, if there are archaologists, then people wil care about the people who cared about T. Roosevelt, Lincoln, Jefferson, or Washington, and Crazy Horse way back when, a thousand years ago.

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Coluber,

How do you feel about the ancient pyramids? Lots of stone was carved up and relocated into a big pile of rocks with lots of precious objects to honor short-term historical heroes.

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Not to mention Michelangelo's David and many Greek sculptures before.

But I get what I think you are thinking. I've reacted some time ago, possibly berserkly, about an airplane making art in the sky...
and I tend to react to some land art folks as messing up with nature which has its own dignity.

Thus I've come around to appreciating those who play (art to me involves a sort of play, no matter how seriously it is described) in an ephemerall way, like the dreaded Christo(s).

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Humans have been carving mountains for ever. It's a matter of which mountain, who's view and what the carving is all about.

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Mountains are created when tectonic plates push against each other. The wrinkles in the crust are mountains. The Alps and the Himalayas were at one time sea beads as sea shells have been found embedded in the rocks.

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So? You want there to have been no marble statues ever?

I have mixed feelings myself, but if you don't want any piton or scratching in a cave, please be explicit.

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I think LlittleK has put it right:
"Humans have been carving mountains for ever. It's a matter of which mountain, who's view and what the carving is all about."

I don't mind if we carve a tunnel into an "ordinary" mountain, but I would frown on the mutilation of a culturally-defined sacred mountain, not because the mutilation would offend the mountain or the sacred beings who reside within. My objection would be to its offense against the people who believe in the sacredness of the site.

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ossobuco wrote:

Not to mention Michelangelo's David and many Greek sculptures before.

But I get what I think you are thinking. I've reacted some time ago, possibly berserkly, about an airplane making art in the sky...
and I tend to react to some land art folks as messing up with nature which has its own dignity.
Thus I've come around to appreciating those who play (art to me involves a sort of play, no matter how seriously it is described) in an ephemerall way, like the dreaded Christo(s).

We had a very, shall we say, spirited discussion in art history class a couple weeks ago about land art... It was one of the few times that people in class seemed really awake and involved, so you have to give those earth works guys a bit of credit for that much, I guess! I don't care for it myself, though.

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I don't want to get off subject, but I must appreciate a comment by Osso about the serious playfulness of art. I think it is one of the great insights of both eastern and western philosophy that everything is ULTIMATELY without a purpose beyond themselves. Every event is absolute, i.e., its own fulfillment. The teleological notion that the Cosmos has a goal diminishes the value and significance of the present. The metaphors that best describe this is the playfulness of dance, games and, to me, painting. Since my retirement I've tried to live a life in which more things are done for their intrinsic value as opposed to the kinds of extrinsically significant things I had to do when working. It's a matter, of course, of the ratio between the two sorts of activities.

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JLNobody wrote:

I think LlittleK has put it right:
"Humans have been carving mountains for ever. It's a matter of which mountain, who's view and what the carving is all about."

I don't mind if we carve a tunnel into an "ordinary" mountain, but I would frown on the mutilation of a culturally-defined sacred mountain, not because the mutilation would offend the mountain or the sacred beings who reside within. My objection would be to its offense against the people who believe in the sacredness of the site.

I guess what bothers me is the permanency of the mountain carving. Skywriting is there for minutes and The Cristo's art for weeks, but carve a mountain and it stays that way for many thousands of years, well after the relevance of the image carved has lost any historical significance. And who knows what technological progress may arise to enable us to willy-nilly carve mountains in a very short time for the most superficial reason. We might end up with mountains carved in the shape of giant Walmart letters or McDonald's arches. Maybe we'll have the head of Arnold Schwartzenager peering down upon Carifornians.

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Have you looked at Michael Heizer's work? There's some land carving of his I both like and have slight qualms about. As a landscape architect, I've gotten over the years to be less and less interested in any kind of massive regrading both for ecological reasons and aesthetic ones - and more of a live lightly on the land person. I carry that idea regarding mountains too.

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Well, here's part of Heizer's project, which, qualms to the wind, I like a lot.

http://grammarpolice.net/archives/images/heizer_city.jpg

I have an extensive Michael Kimmelman/New York Times article on the project, which is called 'City', but to give the link now requires a fee for anyone to see it, and my copy is resting in my old computer so not accessible for copying parts of.

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This is a good question Coluber.
I'm way too torn to give an opinion. Confused

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coluber2001 wrote:

Do you think that in a thousand years anybody will care about T. Roosevelt, Lincoln, Jefferson, or Washington or Crazy Horse for that matter?

My answer to that....

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled hp and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
.And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias - Percy Blysshe Shelley

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Is mountain carving desecration?

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