Monumental Time

"Maya Lin and the 1960s: Monuments, Time Lines, and Minimalism" by Daniel Abramson, in CriticalInquiry (Summer 1996), Univ. of Chicago, 202 Wieboldt Hall, 1050 E. 59th St., Chicago, 111. 60637.

Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in Washington, D.C., has captured America's heart with its two black granite walls rising from the earth and meeting at an obtuse angle, their surfaces etched with the names of the 58,156 American war dead. The early controversy over the minimalist, unheroic design soon subsided as "the wall" became a poignant shrine. But few realize the true nature of Lin's contribution to the memorial, or how revolutionary it really was, argues Abramson, a professor of art history and architec- ture at Connecticut College.

"The complete listing of names as well as the design's subdued horizontality, reflectivity and unheroic tone were all more or less mandated" by the memorial's sponsors, Abramson notes. Lin's one genuine innovation, he contends, was to put the names in chronological--rather than alphabetical-order, with the name of the first casualty (in 1959) on the right-hand wall next to the vertex, where it seems to follow the name of the final casualty (in 1975) at the bottom of the rightmost column on the left wall. This, Lin has explained, symbolizes the closure of the Vietnam War.

Abramson maintains that Lin's use of a time line "is altogether new in the history of monument design."

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