The MLK statue looks like…
As I’m sure many of you saw in the past couple of days, Boston unveiled a brand new MLK statue in the Common, entitled “Embrace” to commemorate one of the great men in American history. And it is…definitely a statue.
The sclupture, presumably conceived out of white guilt in Boston’s latest attempt to apologize for how racist the city was in the past and still is at Fenway sometimes, is, shall we say, open to interpretation. I for one, don’t understand why artists feel the need to get abstract when depicting an actual thing that happened. Here is, for comparison, the real photo of Dr. King and his wife embracing.
And here again is the statue.
Look I get what we’re going for, but it just seems like we’re trying to be too clever here. Whatever happened to just sculpting people straight up? Boston is loaded with normal, full-body statues of people and they’re all universally praised. Look at the Paul Revere statue. That shit is featured in the introductory shot of every Patriots game despite being 28 miles from the stadium.
There are certainly angles where the intent of the sculpture is clear, but you gotta account for the angles where it looks like a surgeon rooting through someone’s small intestine. The artist had to have pitched this thing using a printed image. No way he showed anyone a 360 degree angle of that bad boy.
Just do a nice sculpture of MLK and his wife Coretta hugging, and every pink-haired liberal arts major at Suffolk will pose in front of it and post the photo on Instagram with the caption: “I also have a dream.” Except their dream is less about racial equality and more about protesting Mr. Pibb until they change their name to something gender neutral.
That’s not a real protest (yet), but it kinda seems like it could be right?
However, what this marvel of modern art has given me is excellent fodder for comedy. I’m going to interpret the art from multiple angles, as you should with any masterpiece. Each angle will receive its own unique characterization. The following section will be exclusively deriding the sculpture, not Martin Luther King, who deserves a statue that includes his head or at least more of his torso. With all that being said, (*cracks knuckles*), this statue looks like…
A mortician examining a bloated, alcoholic liver/A guy proudly displaying a massive dump he just took
Touching tribute to this blog either way
2. E.T. waking up hungover with a soft 3 in his bed
3. Rafiki raising up Simba on Pride Rock except Simba is a giant slug
4. Can’t say this one — my Mom reads this blog
5. The obvious. A real masterPIECE if you catch my drift.
This is actually the most flattering reflection of MLK. Wouldn’t be mad at this.
6. You motorboatin’ son of a bitch, you old sailor you!
7. A more literal interpretation of Human Centipede
Half-man. Half-centipede. So he has 50 legs, I guess?
8. A tribal fisherman hauling an anaconda back to his village
9. A nefarious old man clasping onto the top of his snakehead cane after his dastardly plan has been revealed
10. A UFC fighter preparing to tap as he slowly suffocates in a triangle chokehold
Look the artist clearly has some talent. He just needs an objective partner from outside the art world to tell him when his sculptures look like…something he hadn’t intended. So for next time, just remember: you can’t go wrong with a simple, full-body sculpture.
And screw all the people saying, “Oh be mature about it, get your mind out of the gutter.” If you make a giant dick sculpture, I’m going to come together with my online brothers and sisters and make fun of it. Isn’t that kind of what MLK was fighting for?
Finally, for the sake of balance, here’s what I think is the intended angle of the piece. It looks nice.
See? I’m nothing if not fair.
