Charlottesville Stonewall Jackson statue dismembered, transformed into 'monstrous mutant' to combat 'white supremacy'

The famous statue of Stonewall Jackson astride his horse that was torn down in Charlottesville, VA following the contentious "Unite the Right" rally in 2017 has been repurposed as fodder for an anti-historical art exhibit in Los Angeles. American painter Kara Walker, whose silhouettes and other works "expose the ongoing psychological injury caused by the tragic legacy of slavery," dismembered the statue and put it back together as something called Unmanned Drone.

The piece is exhibited as part of "MONUMENTS" an art exhibit that the LA Times says "topples white supremacy." The exhibit doesn't so much "topple white supremacy" as it erases the history of the Civil War's aftermath. It features many Confederate sculptures that were torn down, removed, or vandalized during the furor over anti-racism throughout the first Trump administration. Many statues were torn down although some were elected to be taken down by local legislators.

Such was the case with Charlottesville's Stonewall Jackson monument. The bronze sculpture, sculpted by Charles Keck, stood in Charlottesville's historic district from 1921 until it was voted to be removed by the city council in February 2017. The council also elected to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Neither was removed until 2021, prior to which both had been vandalized. 

The statue was donated by a philanthropist to the city of Charlottesville in 1921 and when it was removed 100 years later, the city donated it to The Brick art center in LA. The intention of the city in donating Confederate statues was to reveal "their history as symbols of white supremacy," says Via Art of the gift to The Brick, formerly LAXART.

The Brick then turned it over to Walker who disassembled it entirely, creating something that bears no resemblance to the original. The Robert E. Lee statue has also been taken apart the "remains" of it "spread across a low pedestal." 

The LA Times says with adoration that Walker's Unmanned Drone is "a monstrous mutant" and that the exhibit featuring repurposed confederate statues is "vitally important" to counter a small, private exhibit in Denton, NC, called Valor Memorial Park, housing removed Confederate statues. The idea is that because some of the Confederate statues were removed to a private location, the full expulsion of Confederate history was not yet achieved.

Though leftist political violence has been increasing for 10 years, the LA Times' piece honoring the exhibit claims that "Ghastly homages to white supremacy, often suffused with the anti-democratic demands of Christian nationalism, have been on the treacherous rise for a decade." No examples are given of what these are.

Indeed, many city centers have new statues honoring much more recent history and values, such as Kehinde Wiley's Rumors of War in Richmond, where Confederate statues once stood. Or Thomas J. Price's overweight black woman statue Grounded in the Stars. The art world doesn't tolerate non-conformity to their progressive, leftist ideals.

"It's thrilling," the LA Times writes. That glowing review was accompanied by others in The New York Times, the New Yorker, and The Guardian, all of which seemed to think that reckoning art and art history was a great way to own the cons.

The exhibit claims to "historicize" the national debate about the public portrayal of American history through monuments, but the discussions in the exhibit do not appear to have any place for the view that it could be acceptable to commemorate the losing side of the American Civil War. Many of those monuments that were erected in the early 20th century were raised to engender pride a fallen South so that those men and women whose ancestors lost the war could feel that their history was not forgotten but rather was an integral part of America's legacy.

The "MONUMENTS" exhibit seeks to tell America once and for all that portions of its history must be eradicated, wiped out, forgotten, retold by those who were not there, who grew up in a different time and place. It is a thorough attempt to proclaim that portions of American history are just too icky to be remembered as they were thought of at the time by those who lived in it and in its aftermath.

A left that began the retconning of American history movement with the simple ask that all aspects of American history—from the brutal days of slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow—be remembered with honesty to the experiences of those who went through them has now determined that the experiences of others and their memory be erased from the historical record for good.