Said Seneca Scott, the 43-year-old cousin of Coretta Scott King, quoted in "'Woke' $10M MLK 'penis' statue insults black community: Coretta Scott King kin" (NY Post).
ADDED: I wonder if the sculptor thoroughly knew it looked like "a big old dong" but believed people would be so conned to believe that it's supposed to be beautiful art that it would take months or years before his true vision dawned on them.
The sculptor — Hank Willis Thomas — is referred to as a "conceptual" artist. What is conceptual about the reproduction of a photograph of MLK hugging his wife? Cutting the image down to just the arms and hands? Or designing it to look plainly — once the scales fall from your eyes — like a big old dong?
OR: Perhaps the concept is an attempted sophisticated joke on white people: They’ll see the penis, but they won’t say it out loud because they are terrified at the idea that they will be called racist.
Posts
103 comments:
The boy could see it was a penis because it had no clothes.
Ok, that's just funny.
It’s objectively awful. I assume it kept getting approved because people were afraid to be cancelled if they asserted any degree of disapproval.
from various angles it looks like raunchy sex positions.
It is an insult. The woke mafia probably love it.
Once seen, it cannot be unseen.
I think it is a test to determine how far the disinformation campaign can go.
"If you see a big old dick here, the onus is on YOU, you disgusting pervert."
"Oh, and that's racist, which is even worse. Your words make me feel unsafe, which is violence. Officer!"
We'll know when they have won when we see them shuttle the unfortunate child off to reeducation camp in a short piece played on The View as a performative display of state power to the approval of all present. Then the child will be brought on set to recite his/her mea culpa.
So much for the glory of the Emperor's magnificent "New Clothes".
That was just turrble nearly as bad as bidens speech at ebenezer baptist
Almost as good as Oblahblahs official Presidential portrait.
It's just all kinds of weird.
I had only one reaction when I saw the first multiple shots of that sculpture: Ugh.
Given the part of MLK history Tina T reminded us of, couldn't the big old dong be the perfect tribute?
Maybe the sculptor had done his research.
It looks like a head is disappearing up an ass.
It looks like a turd.
It looks like a dong.
It's a hideous mess.
The hands are nice. Perhaps melt the whole thing down and keep the hands.
HWT was selected because he is Black. The committee that hired him certainly wouldn’t listen to any criticism of this piece during development because to do so would be racism.
There’s a nice MLK statue in Omaha by Littleton Alston. He’s Black and a Creighton professor. His work is very good. He just finished a Gale Sayers piece.
The sculpture of Lucille Ball was unveiled several years in Celeron, NY, her hometown.
"Residents noted the statue's deranged, androgynous expression, which bore little resemblance to Ball, earning it the nickname Scary Lucy ..... On August 1, 2016, it was announced that a new statue of Ball would replace the original." (Wiki)
It would be wise for the folks in Boston to follow suit.
Boston Commons had to be defiled, it was too beautiful, with its gorgeous statues of revolutionary heroes and literary greats. It's all part of the Gramsci plan to destroy the culture. Buttigig is using the Gramsci his father championed to destroy our transportation system.
I am sure that the $10 million dollar check cleared, and if you don't like the sculpture, you are obviously racist.
The artist tried to do something really hard.
I can see what he was trying to do.
I think I would have tried on a smaller model first though.
I wasn't really trying to make a pun.
My first thought was someone was presenting a liver to their liege or a sacrifice.
the 2 pairs of arms-hands are in different style - so who is worshipping 'the dong'
The sculpture is no worse than what they've already done to his dream.
tim maguire said...
The boy could see it was a penis because it had no clothes.
you could make a cool fable about this!
an "artiste" gets A LOT of money to make a design...
Everyone is Told, that it is beautiful..
No wants to say different, because they don't want to seem square..
finally..
The boy could see it was a penis because it had no clothes.
Oh, wait.. they already made this movie
The artist is also known for doing a Black power hair pick in various cities. Maybe he should have stuck to sculpting inanimate objects.
Achilles said I think I would have tried on a smaller model first though.
Perhaps the smaller model the the big ol' dong the center point of the structure. From the tarp reveal video it looked like somebody eating ass from the bottom up. At least it's gender neutral depending on your vantage point.
How come a big ol' dong isn't a compliment anymore?
Anybody skeptical of the masterfully timed 'emperor has no clothes' allegory story?
Reminds me of the numerous boys and girls asking their NY Times subscribing parents deeply penetrating questions about the stories of the day. #WokeToddlers
To be clear on my point above, there is at least one gifted Black sculptor in America who could have done this commission.
Ann is on to the right answer. The people who approved this horrid piece couldn't reject it because to reject it would have meant they were both racist and not sophisticated smart people who live in Boston.
New question: How much did this cost?
Apparently this design was presented several years ago to the Boston city fathers (landmark commission? A body with jurisdiction over what gets put up on the Commons). The presentation was attended by a large and enthusiastic crowd of POCs who made clear that they would not take no for an answer. The city fathers, no fools and adept at self-preservation, said nothing in the way of criticism. And here we are.
I imagine that meeting like something out of Tom Wolfe’s reporting on “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers” although the courtroom scene in “Bonfire of the Vanities” also comes to mind.
Prediction. Within ten years Cinco de Mayo or Cesear Chavez's birthday will become a national holiday. Numbers.
This is the sort of thing that it made me think of: Link
Awful lot of Emperor’s New Clothes type stories playing out in real life during the absurd Biden era. Hell, the president’s entire speech at Ebenezer was recycled lies about his history with black Americans, which is actually closer to the lies he tells about his opponents. Real Joe actually was the foe Fake Joe claims to have been fighting against. There’s got to be a German word for such a fucked up psyche that can’t stop lying. And that word might sound like a better title for this hideous sculpture than The Embrace.
“ I think I would have tried on a smaller model first though.”
There’s no way there wasn’t a smaller model. This looks exactly how the artist intended it.
The hands are nice. Perhaps melt the whole thing down and keep the hands.
I noticed the hands first and agree they are beautiful.
Then I spent way too long trying to figure out the rest of the statue. I am not sure I would have were it not for the photo that accompanied the article. How does anyone even know it was Dr. and Mrs. King? If you look at an old style statue of man sitting on a horse, you can assume somethings and probably get close. The assumptions people are making after seeing this statue don't add to the King legacy IMO.
If the woke won't take it down, maybe nobody will take it down. Or: maybe besides the list of things the woke definitely want taken down, there are things in a grey area or sorry, neither black nor white, sorry, middling or ambiguous. Or maybe the gay/trans community will like it, and insist that it stay up. Intersectionality, who wins: black pride or gay/trans pride? I'm betting the gay/trans group keeps the statue up. What fun.
The issue is the skin of the sculpture, which is brass or copper. With the way it was cast and assemble, plus the metal’s soft shininess, there is a…veiny appearance to the ummm trunk pieces of the piece. I think it was meant to be a sleeve of a suit jacket, rippled stiff cloth. But since there are no texture patterns to indicate cloth, and no contextual cues from certain angles except hands, the whole thing looks fleshy.
It’s an interesting sculpture. I would also suggest that little boys and men are prone to seeing a phallus in any number of shapes.
I don't see a dong but maybe haven't seen the right angle.
I’m guessing that this would be a statute that probably would end up at La Défense and probably not anywhere within the périphérique.
The NY Post article provided plenty of other angles that finally made the sculpture make some sense to me. Everyone else likes to take photos from the worst angles, which is fine too, but yeah they always made the art the worst it could be. That said, the last line I somewhat agree with; yeah there is poverty and $10M spent on this, but why create a statue celebrating MLK without a head? Why must the artwork depicting BIPOC (using their language) people have heads cut off? Who thought that was a good idea? I guess it isn't modern, but wow what could have been a beautiful picture of a full figured MLK embracing his wife, showing a loving BIPOC couple in full being celebrated in public.
I can’t add much to everything that’s been said already…so a fun thing about the exact location of the statue: I had a meeting in the financial district and as I was walking by the location there were a bunch of ordinary city birds- not pigeons but those unremarkable black birds- grackles? Flying amongst them were two parakeets and a cockatiel, like there must have been a jailbreak at the pet store. I like to think they made it and never regretted their decision…
I hope the sculptor isn't white, or we're going to lose a few more cities.
Althouse said:
Perhaps the concept is an attempted sophisticated joke on white people:
They’ll see the penis, but they won’t say it out loud because they are terrified
at the idea that they will be called racist.
Do Hispanics not see a penis? East Asians?
In this day of drone-videos I can't find one of this work on-line. Such a video could provide viewers the perspective necessary to understand the sculpture.
Or maybe a few pictures of the artist's model ...
The FBI reportedly has evidence that the sainted Doctor King regularly participated in orgies. Maybe that's the reference.
Feet of clay....
Given all the rumors about MLK, maybe the visible penis was appropriate. I thought the King memorial didn't looked so terrible yesterday, but sculpture can be seen from any angle, so if the sculptor doesn't take that into account the results can be disastrous.
The replacement Lucy statue is scary enough. The original one not only didn't look like Lucy, it didn't even look humanoid. The artist has since apologized and given up sculpture. I'm sure he'll move on to other media.
That's exactly what it looked like to me on first sight, a 3-D reproduction of that meme of the chap with his head up his ass, while grabbing both ass cheeks.
Certainly this will help dispel the common theme that blacks are over-sexualized creatures.
It will, won't it?
"The sculpture of Lucille Ball was unveiled several years in Celeron, NY, her hometown.
"Residents noted the statue's deranged, androgynous expression, which bore little resemblance to Ball, earning it the nickname Scary Lucy ..... On August 1, 2016, it was announced that a new statue of Ball would replace the original." (Wiki)
It would be wise for the folks in Boston to follow suit."
It sure does seem that, more often than not, these sculptors are bad at what they do. Does everyone remember that god awful Ronaldo bust? (https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2781589-ronaldo-sculptor-emanuel-santos-devastated-as-bust-swapped-at-madeira-airport)
And, then there was this pretty funny gag against David Beckham (who really handled the situation well even before he knew it was a joke) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF014EUJrSI)
Based on previous Althouse discussion threads, if the sculptor really wanted to make the piece even more "beautiful" and "meaningful" to lefties then he/she would have immersed the entire piece in a giant plexiglass container full of urine.
3d Rorschach Test
I see one person orally stimulating another.
Angles may vary.
From what I can see Achilles is correct. This should have been on a smaller scale so one could actually take in the whole sculpture. When you can see front and back simultaneously i think it is much easier to understand. As it is , I agree, save the hands cut up the rest for scrap.
Is it wrong to chuckle?
My fix would be they put some Elisabeth Arden cream on the sculpture.
If it was good enough for Harry...
Conceptual Artist?
Well, it's no Dog Peeing on the Museum of Modern Art.
Close... very close.
I can’t tell if it’s a dong or a turd, so I’m going dongturd.
Boston removed a statue of Lincoln to replace it with this thing. Hilarious.
If nothing else, at least they got an American to do the sculpture this time, not a Chinese dude who then made the face look, unsurprisingly, a bit Chinese.
Big Old Dong Man . . . I might change my moniker.
"The mainstream media... was reporting on it like it was all beautiful..."
Ha! The sculpture reflects a phase of “déformation professionnelle” arc.
There's definitely a conceptual theme in El Paso, Althouse today.
I'm reminded of Harvey Weinstein for some reason.
Who is this:
https://npg.si.edu/learn/classroom-resource/michelle-obama
It doesn't even look like her photo immediately below.
"Prediction. Within ten years Cinco de Mayo or Cesear Chavez's birthday will become a national holiday. Numbers."
But not before Obama's birthday.
RH said: I don't see a dong but maybe haven't seen the right angle.
The dong angle
A reference to the scourging of Clarence Thomas at the hands of Biden's Judiciary Committee?
This sculpture perfectly captures the character of MLK. Saying anything else is __________(fill in the blank).
Did you see this guy's reaction?
"Dave Begley said...
Prediction. Within ten years Cinco de Mayo or Cesear Chavez's birthday will become a national holiday. Numbers."
Cinco de Mayo is not really celebrated in Mexico or by Mexicans.
Diversity and envy are equitable and inclusive.
Beth B said...
The sculpture is no worse than what they've already done to his dream.
1/16/23, 8:36 AM
THIS^^^
I am reminded of the popular saying, that anything is a dildo if you're brave enough.
Once you see the sculpture as a penis you can't unsee it as a penis.
It is a penis sculpture.
Then I spent way too long trying to figure out the rest of the statue.
The simplest explanation is that the sculptor ran out of inspiration.
You know, something in the same vein as "If you cannot dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit".
Original Mike (9:41am):
"I hope the sculptor isn't white, or we're going to lose a few more cities."
Hank Willis Thomas is black, but the latest angle is for pissed-off people to deny that. For instance, on Twitter @SamClay2020 (race unclear) says:
"There wasn't a single Black American that worked on this. Just white people and immigrants. This is not to be celebrated for black Americans."
@BrunoParks4 (race unclear, says he's gay) replies:
"It should be called 'Homage to White Fragility.'"
@AmerFreedman75 (picture of black guy in his profile) replies:
"That was the most disrespectful part of it and the racist ass immigrant/white coalition don't have the grace to reply"
Finally, someone with a white picture in his profile says "Nah" and gives a picture of the sculptor with his model, but no one has the nerve to say "Morons! Stop repeating obvious lies that can be proven lies in 30 seconds on Google!"
IIRC, all the other entries were worse. I can't find the article I was looking at the other day. They were all anonymous hideous things. This one was the least worst one.
Was Dr. Evil involved in the design work?
I am reminded of an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" in which Marie takes a sculpture class and produces what is easily mistaken as a (slightly) abstract portrayal of vulva. The men in the family are fascinated by it but can't quite figure out why. I don't remember who actually finally notices the resemblance but from than point of course Marie is appalled.
I don't this sculptor is going to be appalled at his work, maybe he will pretend to be outraged at the reaction....
Here were the finalists.
Again, least worst option.
https://www.cladglobal.com/CLADnews/architecture-design/Finalists-for-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Boston-memorial-revealed/339154?source=home&p=5
All we are saying is give AI a chance.
-The sculpture is crap. Either the sculptor should have done an abstract version or a realistic version with heads, shoulders, torso etc..
According to the NY Post, MLK, III approved of the sculpture from the beginning.
There's another MLK statue which had text from the "I Have a Dream" speech. The thing is the speech is copyrighted and the King family hadn't been paid. Eventually, it was.
MLK is an industry.
White guy Paul English is the main culprit.
Paul English is a cofounder of Lola.com, an online travel service dedicated to serving the needs of business travelers and their company. Paul was previously the cofounder of Kayak (sold to Priceline), GetHuman (ongoing), Boston Light Software (sold to Intuit), Intermute (sold to Trend Micro), and the World Xiangqi League.
Non-profit work: Paul is the cofounder of Embrace Boston, Summits Education (a school system with 10,000 students in Haiti), the Winter Walk (Boston homeless awareness), and also serves on the boards of Humanity Rises (refugees), Partners In Health (global health) and Village Health Works (Burundi).
What's that? Black people complaining about something? Surely you jest.
not a Chinese dude who then made the face look, unsurprisingly, a bit Chinese.
My daughter had to re-new her passport while living in Seoul. I swear someone photoshopped the passport photo to make her look just a little bit Korean.
MadisonMan said...
Is it wrong to chuckle?
What's so funny about...
Biggus Dickus ?
(snicker!)
Even bad art is art. Most art is bad art. MLK would know this is bad art, but MLK might be delighted by Hank Willis Thomas' interpitation of his big shlong.
“Boston Commons had to be defiled, it was too beautiful, with its gorgeous statues of revolutionary heroes and literary greats.”
No such statues on Boston Common, perhaps you are thinking of the Boston Public Garden. Boston Common does feature these wonderful naked breasts.
The artist is a real thinker.
Evidence: "All Things Being Equal" at the Portland Art Museum. (Of course, Portland).
The message is that athletes are just like field hands or slaves.
Heavy.
Anybody skeptical of the masterfully timed 'emperor has no clothes' allegory story?
Well, of course - but I still LOL'ed. "Yo, it's a big old dong, man," is comedy gold.
And every now and then small children do say exactly what they think. At the age of three - I actually have my own memory of this, not just my parents telling me it happened - my parents and I were out walking and we saw some people getting onto a bus. One was a woman who was quite overweight - in retrospect over the years, I thought she might have been a teenage girl, who of course looked like a grown woman to me at that age. I pointed at her and exclaimed loudly, "Look at her fat!"
My parents, only in their mid-20s at that point, were mortified and angrily shuffled me away as fast as they could go.
And - with respect to my story of embarrassing my parents and insulting the girl - they immediately hit the manners thing hard with me, perhaps more than my tender years could accommodate. But as I said, I remember the incident and cringe whenever I think of it.
Why did the article say the sculpture was woke? Would any piece commemorating MLK be considered woke? Sometimes bad art is just bad art
It looks like a freakin' schlong. It takes no imagination to see it looks like a freakin' schlong.
If that makes me a racist, so be it. I'm a racist.
What else you got?
Beth B said...
The sculpture is no worse than what they've already done to his dream.
Yes, a color bloc, a class-based bigotry, and a disordered ideology... religion, really.
I can see the penis but rather abstractly.
What I really see is a very realistic turd in shape and color.
Shame on these folks for dishonoring mlk this way
John Henry
I don't think this sculpture is particularly original, conceptual or abstract. I think the idea behind this project was to create a public meeting place, a tourist attraction; it might be kind of like the famous Bean (Cloud Gate) in Chicago.
What will The Embrace in Boston eventually be called? The MLK Schlong Memorial? Or just The Schlong? The MLK family is publicly outraged so maybe it will be removed.
First rule in sculpture is it is a 3 dimensional art form. The public was invited to vote on the final submissions, however only one view was shown, and there was no way of knowing what was on the reverse side I can't imagine that the sculptor and the design group involved didn't see what everyone is seeing. But he's a big shot and as other commenters have mentioned no one can say anything critical about a Black person without being accused of being a racist and a cretin, so maybe his ego and all the yes people blinded them.
It's too bad the artist was not talented enough as a portrait artist to execute his original inspiration and vision -- the embrace and the look of joy in MLK and Coretta's faces at the moment they learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. It would have been nice to see a sculpture which celebrated their closeness instead of this weird anonymous non-binary thing. I've looked online for some photos of sculptures of her, but found nothing very good, imo.
The art world is a small kind of self protective enclave and at this moment we have to tolerate and even celebrate bad art if the artist is Black. To say anything critical is bad manners. You know that The Schlong must really be bad if the King family are complaining about it.
Diggity dongey dong…
Basically it's bad. If you support it now, you'll be accused of white supremacy later.
MLK was mainly seeking respect for black men. They were the ones being slandered by white people because they feared the black males sexual endowment. So this artist said here is your bad dream in your face. Now compete with that.
Martin was assassinated for giving his “I am a man” protests by the Memphis Sanitation workers seeking air wages.
He knew he was a man . Because the Bible told him so. And as a Southern Baptist he believed what it said. He believed it said he was made a righteous man. And he was spreading that message.
They had no other choice except to murder him or men everywhere would follow him.
MLK a Southern Baptist?
HAHAHA! And HA!
Back in his day, Blacks were welcome to clean Southern Baptist churches, but they attended National Baptist churches if they were Baptists.
How old are you, tradguy? Obviously not old enough to recall those days.
The most vicious expressions of white racism I ever heard in my life came from Southern Baptists and Methodists. That may be because that's who I knew, but there it is.
>>Boston Commons had to be defiled
OK, this erroneous, obnoxious term has popped up a number of times in recent posts. Left Bank corrected it here sub silentio, but somebody (I guess it's me!) has to be the a*hole to point it out. So let this be a lesson ("baby/I mean everything I said/Baby, I'm determined and I'd rather see you dead," oops slipped away into some Beatles/John Lennon misogyny).
It's "Boston Common," NOT "Boston Commons." Using/saying "Boston Commons" is perhaps the most glaring way of showing that you're an ignorant furriner, not from here. I learned that early on, even though I've only been "from here" for about fifty years.
A related "tell," both geographically and linguistically, is referring to the "Public Gardens," across Charles Street from the Common. It's "Public Garden," NOT "Public Gardens." Where the swan boats and make way of ducklings are.
Another one high on the list is pronouncing "Copley Square" with a long O, as in "Cope-ley Square." No, it's "cop," as in, well, "cop."
Messing up references to Mass. Ave. and Comm. Ave. is probably also there somewhere, but I haven't got it quite pinned down.
--gpm
Once it's covered in birdshit it won't look so bad.
If joe biden's locution were a sculpture.
Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned that this was coming toward us.
https://apnews.com/article/ri-state-wire-boston-365f67444fc676bd6203e6cdee679ff9
The backers had the racial injustice theme well developed. The Landmarks Commission’s approval was no ordinary process. Like the picture on which the sculpture was based, the mundane moment was invested with monumental symbolism; the very date of the Commission’s decision was explicitly made part of the BLM framing of everything as racist oppression. Who in officialdom was going to raise any merely aesthetic objection to a mob stoked on George Floyd stories?
What’s this you whiteys looking. I, , as a BIPOC, see Julia Child’s hands with a hum go-mungo tenderloin.
The hands are beautiful. Why couldn't he just create their intertwined hands? Coretta Scott King was so beautiful. Why literally sever her head?
Many people have negative feelings about the MLK children profiting repeatedly from King's words. I just picture them as children, (actually one baby alone with their mother), when their Alabama house was firebombed.
King received the Nobel, the honors. But she was always in as much danger as he was. And she lived mostly alone with their children and feared for her children's lives. She is a symbol of pure sacrifice and hope. She should have received the Nobel Prize too. And that statue should be of her.
Don't forget to look a the other side of it. There is a definite cunninlinguist (sp) overtone.
Perhaps I missed it, but has no one else caught the similarity to "The Sculpture" episode on "Everyone Loves Raymond"? Prophetic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSqIhpH6axs
(the unveiling moment is only about 30 seconds in)
"MLK was mainly seeking respect for black men. They were the ones being slandered by white people because they feared the black males sexual endowment. So this artist said here is your bad dream in your face. Now compete with that.
Martin was assassinated for giving his 'I am a man' protests by the Memphis Sanitation workers seeking air wages.
He knew he was a man . Because the Bible told him so. And as a Southern Baptist he believed what it said. He believed it said he was made a righteous man. And he was spreading that message.
They had no other choice except to murder him or men everywhere would follow him."
This commenter is either fucking stupid or moronically racist or a fucking stupid moronic racist.
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