Oh thanks. I’m not as familiar with the NPR voices as I used to be.
The new pictures muldoonthief posted make me want to see it even more. I like it. The hands are just beautiful. I feel the urge to touch the buttons and the bracelet even through the screen. I acknowledge there’s one rather awkward view, but I like it overall.
People say it looks weird without the heads, but I could accept that. What seems weird to me (from the photos) is the lack of torso, with arms going through where I would expect the torso to be.
Coretta Scott King’s cousin and Martin Luther King III have opposing views:
The art piece, designed by Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas, only features the couple’s arms during the embrace and not their heads, which has sparked criticism and mockery online. Some people described it as hideous or disrespectful while others posted memes and said it resembled a sex act.
Seneca Scott, a community organizer in Oakland, California, and cousin of Scott King, told CNN the statue was insulting to his family. He previously described it as a “masturbatory metal homage” in an essay published by Compact Magazine.
“If you can look at it from all angles, and it’s probably two people hugging each other, it’s four hands. It’s not the missing heads that’s the atrocity that other people clamp onto that; it’s a stump that looked like a penis. That’s a joke,” Scott told CNN.
But Martin Luther King III approves of the piece:
"I think that’s a huge representation of bringing people together,” King said. “I think the artist did a great job. I’m satisfied. Yeah, it didn’t have my mom and dad’s images, but it represents something that brings people together.”
“And in this time, day and age, when there’s so much division, we need symbols that talk about bringing us together,” he added.
The group that sponsored the sculpture says,
“The Embrace is intended to inspire visitors to reflect on the values of racial and economic justice that both Kings espoused,”
Something that brings people together? Maybe, from the right angle, sort of. An inspiration for reflecting on racial and economic justice values? Not getting that at all.
Whoever signed off on that design should be fired. It kind of looks like the action in the back seat of a '59 Chevy.
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Your first picture looks like someone holding a snake that’s curled around the non-existent neck.
Your second picture looks like someone holding a giant dong.
Your third picture looks like someone holding a giant turd.
Your fourth picture looks like someone holding their head, as if they just got hit on it.
Your fifth picture looks like someone giving head. (Chrome wants to correct “giving head” to “giving a head”)
Anyway, I think the problem might be that it’s hard to capture the spirit of this monument in a picture?
Ah that’s my little brother! It has been interesting watching his opinion piece go viral. Personally, I see what the artist was trying to do, but this piece misses the mark and I find it hard to believe that no one raised the question of its unfortunate resemblance to other things from certain angles.
Maybe it was a case of “The Emperor Has No Clothes”. Perhaps people involved in the production did see the problematic aspects, but were hesitant to speak up. They didn’t want to appear like they didn’t get the point of the sculpture. They probably thought “Hmm… It looks like sex to me, but I don’t want everyone to think that’s what I see in it.”
I think as a standalone art piece, it’s thought provoking. It could be demonstrating two aspects of intimacy. One is the emotional intimacy of an embrace and the other is sexual intimacy. But as it’s supposed to be a statue representing MLK, the intimacy theme is greatly overshadowing the intended message. There’s too much explanation that’s needed. Most people viewing the sculpture will just have their initial impression and walk away. They won’t do much digging to learn what it’s supposed to represent, or even read the plaque. Something like this should have a clear and unambiguous message so pretty much everyone gets it right away.
I don’t see it as a sex act (although I can see why others might). My impression is that it’s a fight. The weird asynchronous placements of the hands, with both of hers under one of his, makes it look like they’re wrestling.
When you see the original photo, the way their heads are facing makes it clear what’s going on, but with the heads removed, we have no clue that they’re both generally looking in the same direction. Without that hint, it looks to me like he’s going for a choke-hold, and she’s trying to get under one arm, to escape the hold. Which seems like the exact opposite of what they were going for…
It’d probably be good if any public project or product took some time to discuss how the name or image could be misconstrued. Like, at some point in development of “BJ’s Restaurant” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods”, someone should have pointed out the sexual overlap. TJ’s and Rick’s would be just as good names and would have avoided the sexual issues. One case where someone spoke up was with the game Pac Man. Originally it was named “Puck Man”, but someone pointed out that if you scraped away part of the P it would look like an F. Seeing as every kid playing the game would have a quarter with which to scrape the P into the F, they decided to avert the issue by changing Puck to Pac. But rather than hoping that someone has the courage to speak up and point these problems out, the teams should proactively ask for these types of problems to be brought forward. Small tweaks early on can easily avoid these issues. Art is always going to be subject to varied perceptions, but at least this way the artist could decide if they want those perceptions to be part of the piece.
Should be fine as long as we just don’t look.
Has this ever been a problem for them? One of my good friends from high school was named Brendan, but he went by BJ. I never heard a single kid tease him about it. He still goes by BJ or Beej.
Not to go too much into a tangent, but in the case where a corporation is picking a name, there’s no reason to pick a name which has unintended sexual innuendo. “BJ’s Strip Club” is not necessarily a problem, but there’s no reason for a family restaurant to have a name which is going to invariably have some people giggling at the obvious sexual connotation. A real person has the initials they are born with and deal with that as they have to. But even if BJ himself starts a restaurant, he doesn’t need to name it “BJ’s Restaurant”. There are many names that are just as good for a restaurant that he owns.
Getting back to this sculpture, it didn’t have to look exactly like it did. Just like a corporation picks it’s name out of nothing, so did this artist create this form from nothing. He could have made it any form. By changing this form just a bit, it could have looked much more like arms and shoulders rather than legs and crotch. There might still be discussions over whether a sculpture of an embrace represented MLK, but there would hopefully be no distracting and embarrassing discussions about whether it’s a sexual act.
I’m starting to think it is impossible for a modern sculptor to make a decent statue of the man. Just a simple life-sized bronze that isn’t full of weird design choices that need explanation and defending.
Wow, that’s pretty cool! I’m off to see if I can find the full essay.
ETA: I found it, and it’s an interesting and quick read. Here’s the link.
do you have any good examples? you peaked my curiosity here … (or should I start a new thread)?
I don’t much like the statue, but nor does it seem particularly erotic. No one really wants a statue with a plaque that says I had a wet dream given the historic importance of the luminary.
OK, a hug does sort of signify unity and love between people… except that, for that to be representative of King’s work, it’d have to be a hug between a black person and a white person. Even the most virulent of racists, in King’s time or ours, accepted that two black people were allowed to hug each other.
I’ve seen a lot of logos that show a handshake between two disembodied hands, one black and one white. That works. This doesn’t.
My last name in real life is Head. My childhood was torture at times. It’s not even always great as an adult.
As far as the sculpture, it’s kind of ugly and weird but I don’t see why everyone is up in arms about it.