Large Concretized Monument to the Twentieth Century: We Mock a Sculpture and It Mocks us, Too

Brown University students may disagree on many things, but it seems that their hate of Rebecca Warren’s Large Concretized Monument to the Twentieth Century is universal. From the moment it was installed on the Main Green in 2021, the sculpture has only known rejection and mockery. Students initially made creative interpretations of the incomprehensibly abstract artwork, one noting its similarity to “a duck smoking a joint” in the Brown Alumni Magazine and another to “an ant wearing Balenciaga shoes” in the Brown Daily Herald’s Post Magazine. However, the Brown student body quickly realized the inescapable truth that the Large Concretized Monument to the Twentieth Century is organic in a different way: students were  quick to nickname the sculpture Poo-no as they mourned the blue bear sculpture lovingly known as Blueno that was removed in 2020 and perceived its replacement’s upsetting resemblance to fecal matter. Unfortunately for the bronze sculpture, which is made by distinguished sculptor Rebecca Warren and has been displayed in locations as honorable as the New York City Civic Center and London’s Chiswick Park, the excremental associations have remained. As recently as this past October, The Rib of Brown comedy newspaper published the article “BREAKING, Shit-spicions confirmed: Fox News reveals Poo-no statue an elaborate prank,” jokingly blaming the channel often intrigued with Brown’s progressiveness for the appearance of the artwork that not even Brown students can understand: “Who could have predicted that a bronze shit-shaped commentary on what we put on pedestals is in fact bronze shit put on a pedestal?”

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Warren’s 2007 Large Concretized Monument to the Twentieth Century is precisely meant to be “a bronze shit-shaped commentary on what we put on pedestals”: Dietrich Neumann, an art history professor at Brown and a chair of Brown’s Public Art Working Group, describes it as comprised of “vaguely humanoid–globes'' that are “grotesque [and] hyper-voluptuous” with a “rough, knobby” texture. The Brown Arts page for the sculpture continues to say that the shape and name of the piece—Warren calls it a “monument”— “[assert] that the twentieth century was characterized by a narrow-minded view of identity, gender, and the capabilities of women.” In a visceral, sensual, and “female coded” display of the burden of the male gaze, the piece “[sags] in response to the weight of our look” while still conveying effort and determination by insisting on the “possibility for the future to be more expansive and equitable.” 

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For many, this elaborate analysis of Warren’s sculpture is, fittingly, bullshit. It is a pretentious, ridiculously profound attempt at creating meaning where there seemingly is none. While some laughingly see it as a show of pseudo-intellectualism suitable for the stereotypical Brown student (see the Rib’s article), others are more seriously offended by the show of snobbery. In a 2021 BDH op-ed, a student called the sculpture a large concretized monument not to the 20th century, but “to the pretentious, select and inaccessible.” It appears that Poo-no has failed in its primary purpose as a piece of public art, alienating students from an institution that does not understand them. Professor Neumann has encouraged students to think past the sculpture’s crude ugliness to “realize that there’s something more to it than what meets the eye”; however, despite the Public Art Working Group’s intentions to let profound significance reveal itself and interesting debates unfold between the perplexed and the passionate, this sculpture has not done much to intellectually stimulate students. And while its raw shape and Giacometti-inspired, unrefined texture are intended to be a refreshing break from the cliched “bronze men sitting on benches” typically found in public spaces, this visual profundity is also lost on those who have to face the sculpture every day.

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Without beauty and without comprehensible meaning, the lump of bronze doesn’t seem to offer us much beyond an outlet for hatred and mockery. Any alternative interpretation of the sculpture I try to come up with makes me feel like I am embodying the pseudo-intellectualism stereotypical of a Brown student myself, but I have thought of one that I am not ashamed to reveal: we mock Poo-no, but what if it mocks itself too? Rebecca Warren notes that “[she wanted her sculpture] to look like [it]’d been made by a sort of pervy, middle-aged provincial art teacher who'd taken [her] over.” Saying that her art resembles that of a “provincial art-teacher” is hardly an acknowledgement of high taste and, while it does not take away from the haughty interpretation of Warren’s abstract sculpture or its title (by art connoisseurs or by Warren herself), it seems to reveal something about the humor of the piece that its proponents have neglected to analyze further. When made by a “pervy [...] art teacher,” the Large Concretized Monument to the Twentieth Century’s “hyper-voluptuous” and “sagging” display of the male gaze feels like more than a pretentious work by an artist distinguished and praised to the point of complacency. It is self-mocking rather than self-satisfied, aware of how repellent it is both visually and intellectually as the presumed product of a degenerate middle-aged man who will always be an art teacher and never an artist. In this light, the artwork becomes amoral, ahistorical, and unable to be judged by our artistic standards. Perhaps then the Large Concretized Monument to the Twentieth Century mocks us too for being naive enough to think it was supposed to be good art. It mocks us for trying to understand it, for trying to find the essence behind the presumptuous explanations we have been given, when it may not be meant to be anything more than mediocre. 

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Optimistically becoming aware of the self-awareness of the hated sculpture will likely not change much in the way we view it. We will still hate it as we walk past Friedman Hall every day, not even flinching in the slightest appreciation for the artwork’s subtle slyness. At the end of the day, it is a massive bronze sculpture made by a capable and celebrated sculptor whose works are valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars: it is meant to be high art. But knowing that there is in fact “more to it than what meets the eye” may make us think more of it, at least when we are not looking directly at it. We may laugh with a bit more love, and who knows, when it is removed in the spring of 2026 (Poo-no is fortunately loaned), we may even miss it.

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(Cover Image: Rebecca Warren’s Large Concretized Monument to the Twentieth Century (2007), via Skarstedt Gallery)

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