The Tear Of Grief

The Tear of Grief also known as the Tear Drop Memorial.  Ever heard of it?  Probably not.  Despite my personal interest in sculptures, provided they are not abstract, I'd never heard of it until a friend of mine posted an article about it on Facebook.  Considering what it was created in memory of, you'd think most people would have heard of it, but I think the "issue" of what country it came from became the focus.  Officially called To The Struggle Against World Terrorism, this 10 story sculpture was created and given to the United States as a gift from Russia as a memorial to the victims of 9/11.  Located in Bayonne, New Jersey it consists of a 100-foot-tall, 175-ton bronze-clad tower with a huge open crack running down the center.  Suspended within the crack is a forty-foot stainless steel tear drop.  Engraved on the eleven sides of the marble base are the names of those people killed on September 11th in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania as well as six other who were killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  As you can see in the picture, the memorial is in a bit of a remote location, deliberately placed there so as to have Manhattan as the back drop and to be in sight of where the World Trade Center once stood.

So why doesn't anyone know about this sculpture?  From what I was able to find, besides being in a remote location where its not exactly obvious, just about every part of the sculpture from its beginning to its dedication has been surrounded by controversy.  Much of the controversy seems to stem from the fact that it was coming from Russia and that its creator is renowned sculptor Zurab Tsereteli.  There was also controversy surrounding what the monument stood for.  It is officially considered a statement about world terrorism, but it was originally called the Tear of Grief and was meant to be a 9/11 memorial.  However, many considered the memorial to be simplistic, cliche, and even insensitive and protested against the project.  The monuments stance was finally changed to help gain public approval which it succeeded in doing, allowing the project to continue.  Another controversy centered on the fact that an outdated list of names was used when engraving the base of the sculpture and the names of 43 people were included who had been deleted from the official record between October 2003 and January 2004 due to the fact that their deaths were not proven.  Yet another controversy, though a more minor one it seems, is the fact that because of the sculpture's location, it has taken Lady Liberty's long held place as the first sculpture seen as boats sail into New York Harbor.

From my point of view, this is piece of art is a beautiful memorial to those who lost their lives on that day nearly 13 years ago.  Its unique, thought-provoking, a gift from a country that we once considered our enemy.  I find it sad that not only is this piece of work mostly forgotten and relatively unknown, but also that it seems the general opinion of it is negative.  As I said before, the creator of the sculpture was part of the reason there was such controversy surrounding it.  One of Russia's greatest sculptors, he is known for his enormous, often controversial sculptures.  Some people considered the sculpture to be a "self-aggrandized piece of pompousness."  But one of the things that I found interesting in doing some research is that Bayonne, the area where the sculpture stands, could only pay $40,000 for the cost of the sculpture.  Rather than giving up the project, Tsereteli ended up spending $12 million of his own money to complete the sculpture.  To my mind, that doesn't seem exactly pompous.  That and the fact that he wanted the sculpture placed where it now stands despite knowing that it was a very remote area, again just so that it would have Manhattan in the background.

One of the saddest things to my mind is when art is tucked away in some corner and forgotten with no one to appreciate it, to marvel at its beauty.  For it to slowly fade away and no one notices or cares.  What makes this situation even sadder is that this was a gift from a country that we once warred against, a country that still deals with terrorist attacks to this day, a gift from a man of that country who saw our pain and offered this gift as a memorial for one of the darkest days of U.S. history.  Now tucked away and forgotten rather than appreciated, admired for its beauty and uniqueness.  Gifts are meant to be appreciated, art is meant to be appreciated, I think its about time that this piece of art was taken out of the corner and acknowledged.