What do you think? Your first question might be how tall was MLK Jr.? He looks oddly short in the sculpture, and he may be tall in your imagination, but the real human being was only 5'7" tall. Adjust your perception and the statue seems fine. I like it. I've been to Winter Park a few times, and I know that park. I think the statue is a nice addition to the place. The city paid $500,000 for it, so the people need to like it. I'd advise you to look at this one until you like it. It's fine. And I don't mind saying that a statue is bad and needs to go.
ADDED: The selection committee involved itself in the design and was responsible for the extra large feet: "When a selection committee member commented that Dr. King 'had big shoes to fill,' a collective decision was made to reflect that symbolism in the statue, so [the artist] enlarged Dr. King’s shoes." Whose shoes was he filling?! That is so dumb. But all the more reason the city needs to learn to like it... and to defend the artist.
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Superior to the butt statue on Boston Common…
Borat voice: Hiiyeee Five!
The city paid $500,000 for it, so the people need to like it.
Oh good lord…
Extremities do look a bit out of proportion with the body. Facial features not bad, but head is a bit square-ish when compared to photos of King. His he supposed to be hailing a cab?
AI states it better than I could:
Michelangelo's David is considered to have some intentional misproportions, particularly in the head, hands, and torso, which are larger than anatomically correct when viewed from a normal perspective. These adjustments were made because the statue was intended to be viewed from below, and Michelangelo wanted to ensure certain features, like David's hands and head, would be visually impactful from that angle, according to art historians.
The statue makes him look fat.
It is not OK.
In modern times there is no excuse for this level of ineptitude. This statue should be the end of several careers in some government somewhere.
The pose is similar to that of the Statue of Liberty, whose head is too small and whose right arm is too long.
"His he supposed to be hailing a cab?"
James Lileks called this style (Lenin, Saddam, the Kims) "The Great Leader Hails a Cab" statues.
rehajm said...
The city paid $500,000 for it, so the people need to like it.
Oh good lord…
Someone probably hired their daughter or cousin or some other nepo bullshit.
He looks like a Flintstone.
When I actually look at that picture I see a mashup combination of MLK and Stalin.
But the statue is a fat version of both of them.
Someone just sucks at making statues.
Part of the problem is the artist assumes a literal point of view and casts the bronze based on that point of view. So sometimes you end up with distortions when viewed from a different angle like from above or the side or the taxpayer..
Better than that Boston perversity. At the time he was growing up in the south, nutritious food of the type that made you full-grown, was rare for most blacks and whites. But he was well-off and middle-class. So, normal for his size. It's a nice statue, and the face is accurate. Enough with the creepy hand and feet stuff.
MLK was 5’6.
the sculptor should be blackballed they did a terrrible job, yes don't get me started on the Boston statue,
I don't mind the big shoes, and the big head seems like a good idea. But that right and the left arm shouldn't have been different in size.
I love bobbleheads. I collect bobbleheads. Bobbleheads are the next Beanie Babies.
Hate to say it, but the pose made me think "lawn jockey."
Anyway its better then the MLK "Supervillian" statue in DC.
Looks like AI.
I just looked up the Boston statue. What the hell?
If this was of a republican, the media would be calling that a Nazi salute.
Well I would need to see it in person - the pictures here, and in the article, don't look at all like him, in my opinion. As for the proportional tweaks, well...... what do you expect, when you commission a piece of art and then put it through a committee? These municipal disasters happen all the time, and nobody ever learns. If Winter Park is happy with it though, then nothing else really matters.
My overall impression is one of awkwardness. The non-lifelike proportions, especially the clown-size shoes/feet, detract from the sense of dignity that a heroic figure's statue should be expected to project. The NYT's photos don't highlight the described disproportion between the enlarged, book-bearing left arm and the other, so the execution of that part I won't comment on, but the idea seems rather odd; why should carrying a book warrant that sort of distortion?
Overall, I don't think the statue does justice to the man. Maybe it's too much to ask that the Nth statue of a famous man (and I have no idea what the current value of N is, but it's more than a few) should really be "original," whatever that means in this context.
Why not pose him at a speaker's podium, as the preacher he was, spelling out his dream? Or is the character-not-color concept just too politically incorrect now?
I guess everybody's worried now about the "tiny hands" thing and the hand and shoe size being a reflection of something else. It's silly.
The Boston statue was supposed to be the shoulders and arms of Martin and Coretta embracing at a pivotal moment in their lives. The photo of that embrace became iconic. The statue, seen from one angle, just looks like a giant floating penis. Maybe that was another way of getting around the "small hands" problem and its implications.
Manny, Moe, and Jack . . . and Martin.
A diversity in shapes, sizes, and height, too.
the media would be calling that a Nazi salute
Obama at Air Force One, waving to the assembled crowd.
The MLK statue in DC was controversial for another reason. The Chinese sculptor couldn't avoid giving Martin "oriental" features. The proportions of that statue may also be wonky, but MLK is barely emerging from the stone, so perhaps it wasn't as noticeable.
While massive statues of Lenin and Stalin were built, none were built for Hitler. That was part of the Nazi acestetic (sic) which favored "the volk" over individual leaders. Per Wikipedia
"statues of him were remarkably rare in public spaces. Hitler's personal preference, combined with the focus of Nazi ideology on the collective "Volk" (people) rather than the individual, contributed to this lack of self-monumentalization. Nazi Propaganda was crafted to portray him as a selfless leader dedicated to Germany's greatness, implying that monuments of him would only be fitting once his mission was complete. "
Martin Luther King had a rounded head with an oval face. That statue looks like an attempt to assimilate King's image to that of Stalin.
see for example:
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/909156734/photo/germany-history-russia-stalin.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=eeXBE1l0fXUfWsXK_plUAsQAkjrrvCWSpnearx6iprw=
Hitler didn't care about having a statue, but he loved the money he was paid by the Reichspost for use of his image on their stamps. Lots and lots and lots of stamps.
Google AI sez...
Big shoes to fill" is an idiom used to describe someone taking over a role or position from a highly successful or well-regarded predecessor. It implies that the new person will face high expectations and have to work hard to match the accomplishments or reputation of the previous individual. In essence, it means the new person has a difficult task ahead of them to live up to the standards set by the person they are replacing.
I guess one could extend from that MLK left big shoes to fill, though how one is supposed to grasp that from out of proportion feet I'm not sure.
Doing a little other Googling shows that 5-7 is less than average height (current data) but not excessively as by state averages run from 5-9 to just over 5-10.5 with the US average being just under 5-10. Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee are among the tallest now.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C_gEUsxRD3E/?igsh=MThjdmI4bjRyZDN5YQ==
The USA seems to be going down the USSR way of massive monuments to sacred leaders, MLK being the holiest of holies. No doubt 20 years from now, when the USA is even further left, we'll blow up the Jefferson monument and replace it with a massive Bill and Hillary Clinton monument.
Sculptors have had to use distortion for centuries--a large sculpture on a large plinth or pedestal must be out of proportion to appear in proportion. The Forrest statue removed from public view here in 2016 is a good example.
It's similar to the way the Parthenon columns need some extra width in the middle to appear straight (IIRC).
In this case, the sculptor just sucks.
My suggestion: MLK mounted on a horse. In the immediate rear are JFK and Jackie. He is leading them to a better future. You can see it in their faces. The statue should be placed outside the Kennedy Center. Some distance away should be placed a sixty foot gilded statue of Trump welcoming them to their bright future.
That's interesting, Christopher B.
What about average shoe size by state?
MLK WAS a Republican.
He got a big hayud!
You know who had a big head?
Elaine
Untitled book?
From his office in the Kremlin, Stalin had a view of St. Stephen's Cathedral. That view irritated him immensely. He had the cathedral torn down. The plan was to build a skyscraper there and on top of the skyscraper there would be a huge statue of Lenin. It was designed to be the biggest structure on earth. Then WWII happened. There was nothing there but an enormous hole in the ground. I don't know if it was the world's biggest hole in the ground, but it was a truly impressive hole in the ground. It was in its way a truly fitting monument to Stalin and his achievements......After the war, they installed an outdoor pool there, but the hole was a truly haunting and resonant image of nada.......After the fall of the USSR, an exact replica of St Stephen's Cathedral was put up.
I’ve never meet Some Critics. He or she really does have an opinion about everything.
oh the lucy statue, that really was nightmare fuel,
You all know he attended parties where women were raped, right?
If the picture is correct that's the "military left" arm of King that got bulked up--i.e. it's his right arm. But there's a long tradition of altering dimensions or poses of statues to signify or emphasize a point. Look at all the statues of generals mounted on horseback. There's as much a "language of equestrian statuary" as there is a "language of flowers".
Dr. King’s shoes were made slightly larger, to evoke the big shoes he had to fill...
I would say instead that Dr. King left behind big shoes to fill. IMHO no one since has come close to filling them.
Whose shoes did Dr. King fill? Giving the statue large feet/shoes doesn't tell me anything about his predecessor. Is there a plaque or something that explains?
A quick internet search leads to the Reverend Vernon Johns, who preceded King as minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Is there anything at the statue about Johns?
A somewhat more leisurely internet search might lead to Martin Luther King Sr. The elder Reverend King did not plagiarize a doctoral dissertation, nor was he ever recorded by the FBI, cheating on his wife and chuckling as his drunken friends raped members of their congregations. Shoes apparently a little too big for his nepo baby to fill.
just call it Webster
But do please note the sharpness of the crease in his pants.
That statue has the proportions of a hypochondroplastic dwarf. The shoe business is nonsense, by the way. It implies MLK was poorly equipped for the task he undertook. We know from history, he was not. That his work is largely in ruins today is the work of the Democratic Party, which seeks to keep blacks and other minorities within their system of voter slavery.
Many artists have experimented with what I will call editorial disproportionate anatomy, that is the subtle misrepresentation of the ideal human form intended for biographical, rhetorical, or visual effect. The most famous example is Michelangelo's David. The statue has obviously disproportionate hands, head, and eyes. (Not to mention his 'nads, which even elicits pity from poorly-equipped Quaestor.) The why of the disproportionate parts isn't clear. Michelangelo wrote with his chisel, rarely a pen. However I think the artist tried to combine the Greco-Roman ideals of male beauty in one image. Apollo was the ideal of youth, the Apollo Belvedere being a fine example. Hercules was the ideal of middle age, the Farnese Hercules,for example. Michelangelo's David has very similar proportions to Apollo in the torso, the legs and feet, and the arms, minus the hands. IOW, the ideal proportions of an athletic man of nineteen or twenty. The hands belong to larger, older man. Though Michelangelo never saw the Farnese Hercules (attributed to Lysippus , circa 350 BC, and rediscovered in 1545) the hands are virtual twins. Old Herk even has a handful of rocks held behind his back as if he's about to clobber someone with them. David seems to be holding something in his right, perhaps a rock to sling at Goliath. The statues large head may have been intended to imply a boy of twelve or thirteen summers, but putting it on Apollo's shoulders looks weird. The pubic hair also confuses the effect. If David is twelve when he fights Goliath, why the pubes? And like a Greek, he's not circumcised. Classical aesthetics.
Another example of deliberate disproportion is also from Michelangelo, Christ in his fresco, The Last Judgment. He's oddly foreshortened as if He is hovering above everyone else in the fresco.
Italics off.
Off!
If you're going to do representational art, it needs to be resemble the intended subject.
I look at this statue, and I think, "That doesn't look like Andrew Young."
That sculpture is lame, looks nothing like King, and conveys no message of importance, feeling of grandeur or respect, or even interesting artistic expression. If the placard didn't say who it was supposed to depict it would be no more impressive than the fat black chick sculpture or the one of the little brat that libtards positioned in front of the Wall Street Bull. It would just be the anonymous black guy carrying a book and waving hello.
Libtard art sucks, maybe it's because of the fundamentalist dogma or rigid ideology that artists are afraid to offend that makes their efforts so heartless, so artless. This chickenshit sculptor didn't even dare give the book a title or a purpose. Weak.
Young David is a problem for artists. If he's a boy, how do you make him believable as a warrior? If you depict David as a maturing adolescent, you make him very plausible as a soldier, but you contradict the story. Verrocchio gets the age right, but his David wears a cuirass and has a sword. No shepherd's sling is to be seen. Rubens shows him in the act of decapitating Goliath, but his David is plainly a mature man. Furthermore, Goliath is not quite dead, and David is probably going to lop off his own foot rather than his enemy's head. The less said about Donatello's David, the better. (The man must have been an epic-scale pervert.) Michelangelo Caravaggio does the subject justice. His youngest son of Jesse is plainly a teenager, plausibly 13, and there's no pervy crap to distract from the story and its hero.
We can never see this statue in Newport RI without exclaiming "Taxi!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Perry_Monument
From an artistic point of view, when a sculpture has a big head and big feet, it makes the subject look like a midget from a distance.
Also, I don't think the head looks like MLK.
High five!
When the artist has the unwilling taxpayer as his patron, sewage is the predictable result.
Asian artist takes an American idiom literally, "big shoes to fill" (and even at that, reverses the roles of deceased and heir). Coulda been worse.
Too bad the artist didn't have him doing the Vulcan salute. His hand's in the right position.
It’s horrible.
It has the soul of a mannequin
Reminiscent of late imperial statuary. Everything could probably be forgiven if the likeness was good, but the likeness is off in a lot of ways. It's like the opposite of a successful caricature -- the facial features are all basically in the right place but just a bit off. To my eyes, too square at the crown, too rounded at the chin, too narrow between the eyebrows, and too wide at the mouth. Only slightly off, but enough that the likeness is lost.
The figure of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerges halfway out of an enormous mound of granite some 30 feet up at the entrance to his four-acre, $120 million memorial on the edge of the Tidal Basin in DC,
And folks don't like this rendition either.
I like the granite MLK too. What I don't like is what he did to women.
@Quarstor: So true about depictions of David! The Donatello is sickening. When I was in Florence and saw the Michaelangelo I exclaimed "He's not circumcised!" The art tour leader replied "Oh, was he Jewish?" In his defense Michaelangelo never saw a Jew.
Hmm. Choices were:
..Have a committee design the statue; make every aspect of the statue symbolize some real or imagined characteristic of the person.
..Make a statue that looks like the person.
They chose badly.
Some arguments in support of the statute:
The eyes are very good. They look like his eyes, but even more, they are neutral, calm, and direct. MLK was uniquely detached from the turmoil and egos swirling around him, and that served him well. He's not aloof: he is staring straight ahead, at a person or the future itself. Something is captured there.
He is walking, which is what he did to protest. Subtly symbolic. And it's hard to make a sculpture show any motion.
The presence of a Bible in one hand. Because, despite his flaws, the Bible guided him.
The outstretched hand, not a raised fist, but an open welcome.
Interpreted as a greeting or a wavw to others.
Technically, the tie and suit are accurate. The shoes are just what you do to create a statue like this. Enough, already. There are hundreds of photos of King on the internet. Pretty easy to compare.
It’s mediocre, but at least it looks human, which makes it far better than a lot of the other dreck that’s come out since WWII.
My biggest complaint is that it looks like the head was made for another, larger, statue and was just stuck on this smaller one. Maybe because they ran out of money and couldn’t afford enough materials for a proper body.
He slept around a lot so ought to have his package enlarged too.
As Charles Barkley would say, turrible.
According to his website "Andrew Luy is an artist and sculpting teacher assistant based in Manhattan, NY."
Those who can, do ...
I can't believe I'm the first person to ask if the same sculptor did the Lucille Ball statue.
It's kind of an achievement to render a statue that doesn't much resemble one of the most famous, recognizable figures in American history of the last sixty years. If passing it by on foot I'd assume it was some local luminary.
"The city will add a small sign nearby to explain the exaggerations". The artist is "supportive". WTF. If I were an artist - especially one trying to depict something accurately - and the owner felt obliged to announce why it does NOT look like the subject... "supportive" would not be my reaction.
What’s this criticism about. It looks like him. And MLK was a very brave warrior smart enough to use non violence as a weapon. To this day the White Guilt response to his tactic still proves his amazing wisdom.
If they put that thing up where I live I'd move.
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