Boston unveils a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King.
A grandson, Martin Luther King III, said he thought "the artist did a great job. I'm satisfied."
A cousin called it "an atrocity," "a joke," and a "masturbatory metal homage."
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They are talking about a sculpture by the artist Hank Willis Thomas. It was unveiled on Boston Common last Friday in time for the Martin Luther King holiday. It is intended to be a tribute to Dr. King, who met his wife in Boston. The artist said he was inspired by a photograph of the two of them embracing. The massive bronze sculpture drew more criticism than praise. One sees arms and hands, but no heads. Depending on the angle, one gets a sense of embracing thighs, not arms.
Of course, the correct, fair-minded thing for me to do is to resist commenting on a piece of art I haven't seen. That is especially true since I am influenced by comments of other people who also haven't seen it, and they are influenced by yet others who haven't seen it. It is ignorant opinion-mongering to the third power.
Yet this is the nature of public art. Public art is both an object and a participatory performance by its audience. The comments, mine included, are part of the public art. Rudolf Giuliani made a fuss in 1999 criticizing "The Holy Virgin Mary," a painting that mixed paints and elephant dung. Outrage over a public museum's display of Robert Mapplethope's photographs of the New York S&M scene caused a ruckus about obscenity. The art object doesn't stand alone. It has context.
So I will play along, and share my slap-dash first-impression opinion of "The Embrace." The sculpture looks weird to me. The headless arms are confusing. I suppose I expected to feel awe of some kind. Instead, I feel "What??" The installation seems oddly inappropriate when considered as a tribute to Martin Luther King. He was all about justice, not sensuous love.
The sculpture set off my political alarm bell. It cost $10 million. Someone will catch hell for wasting public money, I thought. It was paid for by a non-profit group, The Boston Foundation. Whew. A bullet dodged.
I know I need to temper my knee-jerk reactions to new public art. I remember my very first thoughts when seeing the design of the Vietnam Memorial. The design won a competition. It was a black wall set into side of a berm, with names inscribed on it. That's it? I had spent a decade of my life in turmoil and protest over the war. I remember thinking it was minimalist to a fault. Then I visited the Memorial. Then I understood. I felt the power of it as a somber reminder of that era. It is the most visited memorial on the National Mall. Opinions change. We can grow into the art when it quits being new. Then sometimes we see what the artist saw.
Boston has courage in its public art. Boston City Hall is more than an office building. It is a sculpture. It makes a statement. I first saw it at age 17, a new college freshman making a five-stop subway adventure into Boston. I was awestruck. The building is massive from every angle. The walls are sheer. Every surface is hard and unadorned. It erupts from a giant plane of bricks. The building bullies people. I did not know the architectural term "brutalism" then, but I immediately felt the brutality. I heard its message: Don't screw with us or we will smash you flat.
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7 comments:
I had Peter’s exact same sequence of reactions to the Vietnam War Memorial. Seeing it for the first time in person sometime in the 1980s was an amazingly powerful experience.
Portland kind of missed the boat with their Vietnam War Memorial. They copied the “wall of names” concept, but did it in a way that somehow sapped all of its power. It’s a nice place to be, but the setting doesn’t really support the message that the walls are supposed to carry.
The Virgin Mary painting made of elephant dung demonstrates how chickensh*t our supposedly “transgressive” art world is. They wouldn’t dare to make a similar painting of.Mohammed. They’re very brave when it’s totally safe.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s direct descendants said the monument brought to mind strength, perseverance and the power of love. Viewing it as a “masturbatory metal homage” says more about the viewer than the sculpture. That sounds like something a male teenager might think about a Porsche tailpipe, but most would have better sense than to say it out loud.
Nobody who sees that sculpture is going to associate it with MLK. It's a heap of garbage.
MLK deserves respect, and a more main-stream sculpture (a bust or statue of King) should have been created.
Speaking of sculptural tributes to MLK, I have always wondered why the one in Washington DC is made out of white granite.
Here is another take on the statue from The Daily Show with Leslie Jones re-published by The New York Post and re-published in the link I attach:
https://nypost.com/2023/01/18/leslie-jones-talks-mlk-jr-penis-statue-on-daily-show-debut/
MLK's message was both spiritual and political. The sculpture doesn't seem political to me, so judge if you must, but only as to whether it is successful to its intent, which is to evoke something transcendent. I think it does.
I'm reminded of a sculpture in Nashville. "Musica" was installed at the entrance to Music Row, a major intersection. It's a depiction of naked dancers. As you might imagine it caused a furor. People would go at night and cover up the naughty bits. After a while that died down and it's now a pride of the community. My point is that if a public work is even remotely erotic it becomes offensive to a certain mentality.
Contrast that to "David" by Michelangelo.
Also, art criticism is an activity related to commerce, not art alone. It's is a business like any other dedicated to controlling supply and demand, and subsequent value, not necessarily quality. It generally follows the popular mood, as it's dangerous to predict what the public will embrace. The most relevant parable is "The Emperor's New Clothes".
Hmmm - some people like it, some people don't. We must be talking about art.
I'm reminded of an artist whose work was considered worthless and who never sold a piece in his lifetime. Now it's worth millions. His name was Van Gogh.
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