Abstract

Adopting a semiotic approach that is informed by insights from cognitive linguistics and cultural memory studies, this article 1) interrogates the meanings attached to uprightness in everyday language, 2) considers the significance of the vertical axis in commemorative statuary and 3) explores the potential for the re-signification of contested statues offered by their spatial reconfiguration – namely when they are laid out horizontally. Why are commemorative statues traditionally raised up on pedestals so that the viewer has to look up at them? How do monuments that question the vertical axis make the conventional meanings attached to it visible? How and why does it affect our attitude towards the portrayed person when the spatial arrangement of a statue is modified? Exploring such questions, I return to the particular case of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol throughout, examine a catalogue of English-language examples that demonstrate the powerful symbolism bound up with the vertical axis in everyday language, and look at a series of other artworks, monuments and exhibitions, including the inverted paintings of Georg Baselitz; “counter-monumentsµ to the Shoah such as the Monument to Fascism in Hamburg-Harburg; the Unveiled. Berlin and its Monuments exhibition in Berlin-Spandau; and Charles Robb’s sculpture Landmark