Monumentality

a quality in art akin to the aesthetic concept of the sublime; socially significant content expressed in majestic plastic form, imbued with a sense of the heroic and epic and affirming a positive ideal. Monumentally may be present in various art forms and genres, but it is essential to monumental art. As an artistic quality, monumentality must not be equated with the concept of the monumental as it refers to a work of monumental art. Not every work of monumental art has this quality of monumentality in terms of composition.

A lack of monumentality is particularly characteristic of art that is not capable of asserting positive social values or propagating progressive social ideals among the masses. Such art is marked by stylistic eclecticism (for example, certain 19th-century monuments in some countries of Europe and the Americas).