Controversy over the new Boston MLK/CSK Monument; have you seen the sculpture?

[Micca]

Doesn't look like much of anything to me.

 

[anniemae]

Well....I didn't want to mention it, but a few have so I will go ahead. There is one angle that is really bad, like x-rated bad. I could not believe when I saw it, as another poster said, I would not feel comfortable posting it here. I absolutely died reading the comments of that photo though.

 

[FQLover]

I heard the artist interviewed on "Here and Now" on NPR last week. He seemed so excited about getting to honor the Kings with this sculpture. He wanted to commemorate "love," both that they had for each other and that should be part of our relationship to all of our fellow humankind.

He really wanted to design a piece that could be walked through, walked around, touched, etc. rather than being positioned high up on a pedestal and removed from the viewers. He also talked about how the top of the sculpture is open to the sky and the heavens/spiritual realm. It sounded intriguing.

Having looked through Red Angie's photos, I am disappointed and have to say I don't like it. I think that Brian (up thread) is right--that this just got too conceptual and it is not translating to viewers in the way that the artist planned/hoped that it would.

 

[GAN]

Well....I didn't want to mention it, but a few have so I will go ahead. There is one angle that is really bad, like x-rated bad. I could not believe when I saw it, as another poster said, I would not feel comfortable posting it here. I absolutely died reading the comments of that photo though.

Hold Everything! Let me look again.....

 

[Mle8308]

I'm here in Boston and I can tell you it's getting a lot of questionable looks. The comments on the local news stations pages have been hysterical but NSFW, same for Twitter! The $10 million price tag is a little hard to fathom. From most angles it did not translate well - at all.

 

[Mysterian]

Maybe it will be like Chicago's Picasso, it grows on you.


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At least Picasso and Cubism are well-established. This is my first time seeing this Picasso statue and I get it.

But this Embrace statue is too ambiguous. I did see a photo of the artist with a small-scale model of the Embrace, and perhaps the large scale of the final piece affects the view more drastically from certain angles.

 

[wvjules]

What is x-rated about it?

 

[Mle8308]

What is x-rated about it?

Google it.

 

[BrianL]

What is x-rated about it?

Nothing really, it just looks kinda "weird" from certian angles. An arm might look like something else to some people.

 

[wvjules]

Google it.

I see nothing x-rated about it.

 

[Mle8308]

I see nothing x-rated about it.

Then that's a good thing. People have commented about it viewed from certain angles.

 

[QueenIsabella]

When I saw an aerial view, I thought, "I get it". Unfortunately, not many people will see it from the air. The ground view is...not to my taste.

 

[HopperFan]

Doesn't look like much of anything to me.

When you look at the MLK side you see his arms/hands crossed over, his suit sleeve and how you would embrace around someone's neck although there is no someone there. The whole focus is his hands and arms. It is a hug.

When you look at Coretta's side you see her hands and arms (def female with bracelet) with no connection to each other, but they are holding up what appears to be a part of a man's anatomy. There is no semblance of a hug, no impression of a hug or any part of another person other than ... the part.

I get the whole abstract hug but the artist used normal appropriate looking hands/arms BUT two different interpretations and honestly looks like two different statues and meaning.

When I saw an aerial view, I thought, "I get it". Unfortunately, not many people will see it from the air. The ground view is...not to my taste.

YES, aerial it looks nice because each side has a connection to the other.

Even from MLK side it's not bad because you see a hug and it's really beautiful even if you don't see her. But as you look at shots from around other sides you completely loose the "connection/hug" that is a big part of the description. It's like the story changed to You see two hands holding something and there is no connection to a hug or MLK.

 

[NotUrsula]

What is x-rated about it?

How to say this politely ... Because the artist did not texturize the bronze in the areas that are meant to represent MLK's arms & shoulders (he was wearing a suit jacket in the photo), the surface looks identical to the areas that are CSK's arms, which were bare because her dress in the photo had short sleeves; it looks like skin. From one angle, this gives the unfortunate impression that what was supposed to be MLK's shoulders are actually a bare thigh. If you look at the photo, her arms are wrapped around his reaching upward, but if you are mis-interpreting the arm as actually a thigh, this logically places her head at an unfortunate angle in relation to the "thigh". And that's the least icky interpretation. Some people are seeing that "thigh" as something altogether worse, but the scale is really off for that, because the part in question is bigger than her arms.

PS: I do think that the worst of the misinterpretation could be remedied by texturizing the panels meant to be MLK's jacket sleeves and the backs of both their shoulders, to make the surface more clearly resemble cloth, rather than skin.

 

[anniemae]

What is x-rated about it?

There are two views that are questionable. One is the arm looking like a part of a male's anatomy. The other you have to google. It is a shot from the air. Megyn Kelly has about a 6 min video discussing some of it.

 

[BlueStarryHat]

I don't see how this honors Dr. King and Mrs. King. There is nothing to grasp onto to recognize either of them in the piece, and I'm someone who likes most contemporary art.

 

[AndreaA]

Yeah, it’s hideous.

 

[Micca]

You know that sculpture will be there long after all of the critics are gone(including all of us here.) And the artist made 10 mil on the project. We, clearly, are the ones missing out

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

There's abstract and then there's stuff like this. I feel bad for the artist in the sense that he was excited and wasn't expecting feedback like this but how did it get this far into production without someone saying "erm this doesn't quite work" I mean that both in what could be viewed as explicit and what it is meant to represent. I get no reference to them and really no embrace at least not in a warm and fuzzy contemplative way.

 

[NotUrsula]

I have a feeling (based on photos I saw of it under cover in the artist's studio), that because of the size of the thing, he probably only got a good distanced look at the work in progress from the front, the MLK hands side, and got too close to the details to be able to see the unintended larger effect. The folks who cast the metal panels only saw the parts they worked on, not the final construction, but you would think that someone on the crew that installed it on the final site would have mentioned the long-range appearance of the back of it to *someone*, if not to the artist himself. If it's a case of "not my job" then it was really unfortunate.

Due to its size and cost, I can't see a situation where it is melted down and started over or significantly re-formed, but because so many people are perceiving something sexually explicit in the form, I can see the city making a strong effort to mitigate that aspect, probably by redoing the landscaping around it so that passerby can only really approach it from the front (the MLK hands side); thus hiding the bad angles with trees or raised earth & retaining walls.