Consecration and Materiality

Abstract

This article focuses on a case of failed consecration: the Egyptian obelisk in New York’s Central Park, commonly known as Cleopatra’s Needle. The obelisk arrived in New York from Alexandria in 1880, with great fanfare. For a brief period, it was the talk of the town: a tourist curiosity and star of advertising campaigns for consumer goods. After an initial surge in public visibility, the monument’s prominence faded. Today, the obelisk is not on the list of New York’s top cultural attractions, and no longer features in media campaigns or political rallies. I ask why the obelisk’s initial popularity failed to crystallize into an enduring condition of consecration. To answer this question, I use archival data to chart the obelisk’s transfer of ownership and planned move, through its Central Park début and subsequent decline in cultural salience. The obelisk met key criteria associated with successful cases of retrospective consecration. What weakened the obelisk’s career were lack of consecrating institutions and inherently unstable material conditions. These mechanisms are symbiotically related: because no institution took responsibility for conserving and protecting the obelisk, its granite face rapidly deteriorated and frustrated attempts to attract potential consecrating institutions. The article makes a twofold contribution to the literature on retrospective consecration. First, by discussing a failed case, it highlights the linked efficacy of consecration formation mechanisms. Second, in focusing on an ancient monument, it demonstrates the role played by materials and the specific measures of consecration that obtain in the broader sphere of ancient monuments.

From artistic consecration to degradation: The case of Sven Hassel

“…Such an appreciation for aesthetics is increasingly more common (Born, 2010; Hennion, 2007; Váňa, 2020). Some argue for the role of aesthetics and materiality in the creation of “iconic depth” of art objects (Alexander, 2008) or, to the contrary, their failure to become consecrated (Greenland, 2018). Likewise, Childress et al (2017) admit that even if the belief that “the encoded contents of cultural texts may ultimately affect their evaluation and consecration” is widely held in everyday life, “it is also one with scientific merit” (Childress et al, 2017: 49).…”

“…In recent years, however, more and more sociologists show “respect for the object, acknowledgement of the relative autonomy of the aesthetic sphere and its practices and languages, and a commitment to careful readings” (Wolff, 1993: 115). They highlight the role of cultural objects’ materiality (Greenland, 2018) as well as the changing semantic contexts within which these specific objects are interpreted and judged (Santana-Acuña, 2020). According to Jan Váňa, sociology is becoming “sensitive to the subtlety and ambiguity of meanings mediated by the aesthetic” (Váňa, 2020: 182).…”