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The more often I see photos of this sculpture, and the more often its impact plunges into my sensibilities, the more I understand what the sculptor was doing. I'm beginning to find this to be a brilliant grip on the the horror and revulsion I felt on that evening (half a world away). Isn't that precisely the effect that artists are supposed to be so adept at capturing?
I would ask the detractors, what images of the event, what visual samples of that day, do you think would be more graphic, and instructive? Are you also offended by photographs of Auschwitz, because that was an unpleasant aspect of the war? The protest is often lodged that "we'll remember, you don't have to show us." So why 2,000 years later the paintings of manger and crucifixion scenes? Why the Eden banishment paintings from 14th, 15th, and 20th Century artists who are never criticized for their negative portrayal of the human condition? Why all that silly poetry? Why the reprintings of the prurient Sappho and Rumi? Apparently we don't remember. Yet nothing we do hasn't been done before.
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