The Vietnam Veterans Memorial – Presenting the Unpresentable

Abstract

A study of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, designed by Maya Lin in the 1980s. The memorial operates on multiple levels simultaneously and this is what gives it its communicative power. The memorial will be examined from both an arts and architecture context. Several interlinked aspects will be explored which include place, social context, diagram, minimalism, phenomenology and time, and materiality. These elements combine to form a dialectical image in the mind of the viewer. Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the preobjective and Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of infinite on the border of presentation are used in the analysis along with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the diagram. Walter Benjamin’s concept of the dialectical image where multiple elements are combined to form a unique separate experience is also employed. The writer is both an artist and an architect.