And then there’s the new Martin Luther King statue in Boston
The perfect statue for our times.
Is it “a big old dong“?
Is it a turd, or the portion of the anatomy from which a turd might emanate?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s hard to understand how, even without those sordid connotations, a statue of arms with only torso remnants, minus heads or bodies, could be anything but grotesque.
The photo of MLK and his wife, Coretta, on which the sculpture was supposedly modeled, is actually quite nice and might have made a lovely sculpture (I can’t embed it for copyright reasons, but it’s at the link).
And here’s some modernesque (post-modernesque, that is) jargon from the sculptor himself:
When we recognize that all storytelling is an abstraction, all representation is an abstraction, hopefully it allows us to be open to more dynamic and complex forms of representation that don’t stick us to narrative that oversimplifies a person or their legacy, and I think this work really tries to get to the heart of that.
Well, most people aren’t sticking to the oversimplified narrative. The sculptor might end up wishing they had.
Modern sculpture is as awful as modern architecture.
Ok, sure Mr Sculptor. Brings to mind: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
? W.C. Fields
As far as being open to more dynamic and complex forms of representation that don’t stick us to narrative that oversimplifies a person or their legacy, the Boston sculpture reminded more than one person that MLK’s marriage to Coretta was anything but simple: the man was unable to keep his “big old dong” inside his trousers: “David Garrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Martin Luther King Jr., has unearthed information that may forever change King’s legacy. . . . King was once thought of as a saint beyond reproach. After his death, it eventually emerged that he was a womanizer. . . . Garrow writes that King may have fathered a daughter with Dolores Evans, a girlfriend of his who is still alive and living in Los Angeles. The memos also detail the closeness of his relationship with Dorothy Cotton, a longtime associate of King’s in Atlanta and director of his organization’s Citizen Education Program. It appears that the two were romantically involved.”
More about King’s infidelities (including witnessing a rape) at the link: https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-be-able-to-view-king-in-the-same-light-118015
So perhaps the sculptor wanted to keep the female represented in the sculpture as faceless as possible.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s hard to understand how, even without those sordid connotations, a statue of arms with only torso remnants, minus heads or bodies, could be anything but grotesque. — neo
Good question. The only important question.
What the heck was a black sculptor up to when creating a bizarre memorial like this for a truly great black leader and his wife?
I say this was no mistake. Hank Willis Thomas, the creator, is not a sculptor but a black conceptual artist specializing in racial “black body” themes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Willis_Thomas
So yes, Thomas is black, but he is also a transgressive postmodern artist. He is playing by postmodernist rules to shock the bourgeoisie, even if that includes mainstream blacks.
I say he is rubbing the public’s nose in forbidden black sexuality while everyone must hold their tongues, lest … racism!
Kinda brilliant in its way, but I suspect it’s an overreach, given that even blacks are disgusted.
Épater la bourgeoisie!
Pretty sure Dr. King, a Republican, would have preferred the statue of Lincoln removed from the spot had remained in place of this.
Excuse the possibly unpleasant biological images in one sentence of my above comment.
huxley, given your rapidly increasing knowledge of French, a double entendre was in the cards sooner or later.
This statue is just the latest signpost of how utterly lost we are as a nation, a culture, a civilization.
Boston is home of an earlier signpost of a culture losing its way, just a few blocks north. That would be City Hall Plaza, an windswept open space in the middle of the city, home of ugly brutalist government buildings. An egregious example of “urban renewal” where the lively but admittedly seedy Scollay Square was torn down sixty years ago to make way for something “modern.”
Well, one could certainly grumble, rant, even fulminate about it, one can certainly understand that…
As for me, I think it’s an almost perfect representation of what the Democrats have done with MLK’s dream….
Case in point:
“Biden Used MLK’s Old Pulpit To Lie And Even Sleaze Up To A Little Girl”—
https://blazingcatfur.ca/2023/01/17/biden-used-mlks-old-pulpit-to-lie-and-even-sleaze-up-to-a-little-girl/
(It’s not only Biden—it’s Warnock. How in anyone’s worst nightmare should he be a pastor in MLK’s former church?)
…and then there’s this outrage:
“Eight injured, one critically, in mass shooting at MLK Day event at Florida park”—
https://nypost.com/2023/01/16/8-people-shot-in-mass-shooting-during-mlk-day-event-at-florida-park/
But tell me true: Is anyone really surprised by ANY of the above?
File under: I have a meme….
They chopped off the heads and called it art.
I am reminded of the American Cultural Center in Lusaka, Zambia. It is named the “Martin Luther King Junior Cultural Center,” and a bronze bust of MLK stands in front.
That bust was commissioned from an African-American sculptor in the seventies, but it appeared no one checked the sculptor’s qualifications or examples of his art, and try as I might, I could not see Dr. MLK represented in the bust. In fact if I had not been told who was represented by the bust, I would never have guessed it was MLK. But the commission was clearly politically correct.
Like everything that comes out of the Left/Dem/Commie regime that seems to be running most of the Country these days, this political sculpture is just in your face ugly.
It has no redeeming social or esthetic value whatsoever. It exists only to prove who is in charge of everything including Art. Criticize at your own risk.
Disgraceful, appalling, depressing.
All the denizens of woke said it was beautiful until a little boy pointed out it was a penis. The little boy could see it was penis because it had no clothes.
I do not understand modern art. If they wanted to memorialize the photo, make a statue of the photo?
Well thank god the Sculptor is black.
Imagine the outcry if this work of dreck had been produced by a white person.
Apparently some young boy CORRECTLY blurted out what the sculpture really looked like. If not for this boy, the media, and certainly art critics would be exclaiming what a beautiful work of art it is.
Maybe if the sculptor is placed “upside down” it will look a lot better.
The artists’ statement seems Kamalaesque.
The sculpture illustrates that the meaning of ‘intersectional” is literally ‘dismembered,’ the same as section, resection, dissection, bisection and vivisection.
So, to me, the art could represent people drawn, quartered and decapitated in the public square, a punishment formerly reserved for treason.
Transgressive art is art that aims to outrage or violate basic morals and sensibilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgressive_art
_____________________________________
Are you not outraged?
_____________________________________
Are You Not Entertained? | Gladiator (2000)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbBiXPVKuTA
The artists’ statement seems Kamalaesque. –fullmoon
The more I look at the sculpture, then at the statement, the more Hank Willis Thomas seems like one clever SOB.
________________________
…hopefully it allows us to be open to more dynamic and complex forms of representation that don’t stick us to narrative that oversimplifies a person or their legacy, and I think this work really tries to get to the heart of that.
________________________
Yes, let us not forget that St. MLK was a ferocious womanizer, if not a sexual predator. And let us enjoy making fools of everyone too.
This is the most successful piece of transgressive art since the “Piss Christ” and the “Elephant Dung Madonna.” Willis has made his name in the circles he cares about.
Mission accomplished.
I like representational art, but I am fussy about what is represented. Esther @11:56 a.m. has it: “Dismembered.”
I’ve always believed that art exists to convey emotion in a way that other media can’t. The emotion I feel when looking at that thing is disgust. Is this the emotion that should be connected with MLK and his wife?
The “front” of the sculpture with Martin’s hands on Coretta’s back is pretty clearly what it’s intended to be. It’s the “back” of the memorial that’s the problem, and sculptures like this aren’t supposed to have a “front” and a “back.” It wouldn’t be surprising if the artist is indeed not a trained sculptor: a sculptor would have realized that sculpture is a three-dimensional art that has to be viewed from different angles.
I’m not going to say that all modern sculpture and modern architecture are bunk or junk, but much writing about aesthetics is airy and vague and meaningless. Faulting artists and aestheticians for not knowing what they’re talking about or for not having anything to say is like faulting sociologists for repeating the obvious or jumping to the wrong conclusions or having a bad prose style. At this point all those things are assumed. If you’re an artist, words aren’t your forte, and if you’re an aesthetician, you’re trying to put experiences and processes which defy verbalization into words.
if the artist is indeed not a trained sculptor: a sculptor would have realized that sculpture is a three-dimensional art that has to be viewed from different angles. –Abraxas
Willis is not a sculptor. He is a conceptual artist and photographer, specializing in black racial statements. I assume he had others doing the sculpture part under his guidance.
I believe he knew exactly what he was doing. This is not an “Oops! We never thought someone would look at it from those angles.”
If viewers are outraged or repulsed or upset, that’s what Willis had in mind.
A public art sculpture would normally go through many rounds of approvals, a process entailing loads of sketches and scale models, not to mention grant proposals.
Then there is the great cost and the many stages of fabrication at a foundry. It’s not like an artist whittles tons of bronze and everyone is surprised.
Esther:
Most (not all, but most) of King’s descendants apparently approved.
I think there were a few layers to it.
There were those who got the “joke” and were pleased with it.
There were those who got the “joke” and were too afraid to complain.
There were those who didn’t get the joke and were dazzled by the credentials of the others.
There were those who were too busy to bother figuring anything out.
Not too long ago, 2015, a British climate change group put a commercial on television which showed *schoolchildren* being blown up in great gouts of red blood.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/school-children-blown-up-for-not-fighting-climate-change-in-controversial-ad
Graphic. Horrible. And widely denounced, even by some climate change advocates.
Yet that commercial went through the whole creative cycle of writing, rehearsing, filming, editing and reshooting as necessary with dozens of people involved.
No one raised their hand and asked, “Um…is it really a good idea to kill children graphically on television?”
Supposedly it cost $10m.
or that horrible baalenciaga campaign, honestly everyone involved should have been cancelled,