For several years now I have pursued an interest in Italian experience during the Great War. If you have explored my website you might have see the gallery entitled “Presente!” on holiday with friends in the Dolomites we made a point of visiting the important memorial on the summit of Monte Grappa today. As a suitable way of remembering the war it seemed to us to be greatly inferior to the local museum we had seen previously in Friuli.
Driving back to our accommodation I fell to reflecting on why this might be. I think that the answer lies in the fact that this grand, official, state memorial gives far less access to the personal experience of those touched by war. Grand public statements actually seem to stand in the way of our getting close to what war might mean. The local memorialisation we encountered in the Friuli town of Arta Terme, and the village of Timau, coounicated so much more of what war might have meant.
State sponsorship of the arts, quite clearly, does not ensure the best art, as I am sure we all recognise from other contexts.