yeah it looks like someone being held while giving a blowie in post 35 or 36
None of this distaste for the design is present in Boston. It’s been very well received so far. IMO, the representation is clear, easily understood, and well executed.
This thread doesn’t make much sense to me.
And as someone said upthread, this isn’t a BU statue.
yeah, it either looks sexual, or like some weird Halo/Half-Life like computer game character.
Either way, WTF were the designers thinking.
Reading this thread has me constantly checking that I didn’t accidentally wander into the comments section of Boston.com.
To me it seems like the creators and organizers of this thing are trying too hard. There does seem to be a certain sensuality to it, but overall it’s just a big mess. They appear to be trying for poignant, but something went wrong.
As mentioned, it will likely become simultaneously loved and ridiculed, like San Jose’s Quetzalcóatl sculpture (resembles a coiled dog turd).
My mind doesn’t go to any specific “sex act”. Instead, even now that I know what it is supposed to be, when I see it from a certain angle I think "What IS that? Is that a hand grabbing a butt?
I was in Boston today, so I headed over to see the sculpture. It was a beautiful January day in Boston - overcast, 36 degrees, with a swirling wind. The sculpture was fairly crowded - between 50-75 people viewing it the whole time I was there.
It’s very impressive in person - 15-20 ft tall. It doesn’t really fit thematically with the rest of the Common, but that’s the Common’s fault - everything else there looks like it’s from the 1920s or earlier. I walked around it slowly, and at no time did I think “sex act” - from ground level it’s clearly pairs of arms embracing. There’s a little bit of dissonance where the arms meet at what would be the shoulder/back of each person - the problem is you’re simultaneously looking at the very realistic hands and forearms of one person, and the weird non-anatomical connection of the shoulders of the other person. I think it would have looked better with torsos, but that’s just my opinion.
I listened in to other viewers, and while some people were kind of puzzled - I heard “Where are their heads?” more than once - I think everyone appreciated it.
I’ll post some pics I took.
It was probably Robin Young of the local NPR station WBUR. She tends to be more effusive than Terry Gross.
Pics I took:
The more I look at it, I still perceive issues. The photo that inspired it shows a kinda weird embrace. Sort o a half. hug, with both parties facing in the same direction. You see both of his hands, but only 1 of hers. I think the odd-ish embrace makes the arms appear odd in the absence of heads and/or torsos. I try to think of how that would happen in a “standard” hug, with both people facing each other.
The angle that strikes me as the oddest is shown in the 2d and 3d of muldoonthief’s above, where it shows BOTH of her hands. Her hands impress me as somewhat too close together. From that angle, it is unclear exactly what her hands are embracing how. I guess the horizontal part would be part of the top of his back - more than just an arm. But as cast, it appears as a weirdly shaped arm. And if you don’t see his hand at the end, it could appear to be a leg or something.
It often seems that some amount of initial controversy ends up making a statue more accepted in the long run. Assume that will be the case here.
From some angles, the arms look very much like legs, which creates the sexual imagery. They should have ensured that the arms and shoulders were distinctly arms and shoulders and minimized leg appearance. For example, this angle looks very much like someone with their head between the other person’s legs. One reason is that the arms smoothly curl into the shoulders and around the back side, which makes it look like buttocks. The joint between the shoulder and arm also looks like a knee joint between the thigh and shin. Real arms and shoulders are straight have a more pronounced angle where they meet. The curved appearance is much closer to thighs and buttocks than arms and shoulders.
In those first three photos, I just cannot parse the top arm as actually being an arm. It looks like either a giant turd, a butt, or someone’s thigh.
All I see in those first 3 pics is a pair of hands grasping a giant dong.
And, even in terms of what it’s meant to be… It’s the disembodied arms of two people hugging each other. OK, so why are they disembodied? I mean, I get that the arms are the part that does the actual hugging, but they’d make a lot more sense in context. And how does a hug represent Reverend King? I mean, yeah, there’s a photo of him hugging, but there are photos of lots of people hugging. And it’s not really a seminal moment in his work-- It was already a moment recognizing his work. Him giving a speech, him in jail for civil disobedience… These would represent King much better.
I know there are all sorts of memorials, but today we were at a local library to see a show, and there was a showing o photos a local resident took of MLK’s time in Chicago. I found those a heckuva lot more meaningful than this thing.
I agree.
There is all sorts of art but, in this case, I think it misses the mark.
The art is trying to portray a historical person; someone who championed civil rights in the US and was a central figure in that fight.
This sculpture gives me none of that. I would have to read a plaque or online thing to let me know what I was looking at. Therefore, I think this sculpture fails in its task. I get the theory behind it and that’s cool but it does not deliver at all.
I guess I am saying I do not think art meant to revere a historic figure should be so abstract (and not sure it delivers even that). If it was just some random piece of art meant to portray two people embracing (with some sexual subtext)…maybe.
Here is a statue of Robert Burns, also in Boston, in Post Office Square. Just in case people think Boston doesn’t know how to do statues (usually).
Couldn’t they just have included heads on the statues and solved this whole mess?
Yes, is struggling to get your head out of your own ass a sex act?
I think it’s gorgeous. Yes, I see the cunnilingus interpretation from some angles. But, overall, it’s striking and it’s not fucking boring. I don’t want to see literal statutes of people. I want to see stuff distilled to the essence, and I think this statue does it well.