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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31228 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Why Boston’s “Embrace Statue” has led me to embrace Western chauvinism

Boston Common is a beautiful park in America’s true historic city. It’s a must see when visiting, and features a number of old monuments. There’s the Soldiers and Sailors monument, the Robert Gould Shaw memorial, and a memorial to the Boston Massacre. All of these are in a beautiful timeless design that the common man appreciates, which is appropriate for the common park of Boston. I wouldn’t say these monuments compare to achievements in European cities, but they are nevertheless noble attempts to celebrate the glories of the nation. As in all great art, the form befits the content, and the statues artfully imitate the gravity of their depicted scene.

Boston liberals decided to plop down a new monument, called “Embrace”, in dedication of MLK Jr — a figure mired in controversy over his support and instructions on raping women and the evidence that he plagiarized both his PhD thesis and his famous dream speech. (If that sentence was strange to read, it’s because I’m trying a new writing style where I introduce progressive heroes like they introduce mine). But the reason I disagree with the statue isn’t because MLK is a cheat or a misogynistic rape-enabler. Were the statue beautiful and heroic, and adequately conveyed the perseverance and dedication and cultural significance of MLK, this post wouldn’t be written. But that didn’t happen. Instead the statue looks like shit.

I mean this literally: it looks like a gigantic turd. The real world angles (not the architectural projections) make it look like a man firmly gripping monumental dung [1]. Some go further, and say it looks like a man gripping a monumental dong — that Boston has erected nothing short of an erection [2] [3] [4]. Surely the view of the common people should take primacy for the statues of the Boston Common, and Twitter is filled with normal people laughing hysterically at this statue.

So why erect something so ugly? The root cause here is the conscious betrayal of the Western legacy. What we see in the Boston Common is what we saw in Obama’s official portrait, with many questioning the artist’s choice of a casual background and hiding semen in his work [5]. The Western legacy and its hundreds of years of artistic development, which made a science out of beautiful monuments, is seen as intrinsically white — which is intrinsically bad. And so the novelty of experimental artists is privileged over the traditional and beautiful forms of art. Many of these artists make bad and gaudy work. The public knows this, but they are chosen anyway by the powers that be, who notoriously have an undeveloped sense of beauty.

And so I embrace western chauvinism. The West is the best, not in all the ways, but in important ones. Their statuary history is surely the best. Because the West is the best, we should privilege the traditional modes of art. Accepting this fact would make the public beautiful again.

Don’t love the statue. It feels like they wanted a unique MLK statue and just missed the mark. MLK’s memorial in the national mall is a a much more traditional monument and looks great, especially lit up at night.

Not sure one statue ties into a wider point on “The West”. Seems like most of our statues are just a guy on a horse or standing in a military uniform. Doesn’t seem like a sign of downfall to try out new styles even if this one turned out poorly.

MLK’s memorial in the national mall is a a much more traditional monument and looks great, especially lit up at night.

Oh dear. That is not true at all. That thing is ugly.

Perhaps the problem is that memorializing MLK other than with a street name is impossible.

What upsets me is that it feels like the artist got halfway through doing an amazing sculpture and someone came in and said "What are you doing? If you keep going like that it's going to look fantastic - cut it out with the good sculpting already!" so he just stopped and shipped it as is.

The unfinished part is referring back to Michelangelo's sculptures, so they are trying to do reference to "heroic classical sculpture", so I can forgive them for the unfinished look, the image arising part-way out of the stone.

The statue itself is not bad, if a little too reminiscent of Chinese Communist style, but it could be a lot worse. So for public art that is a memorial to a heroic figure, it gets a pass from me.

Have you been in person? The memorial as a whole just works in a way that isn't apparent in pictures. The white stone conjures up images of Mount Rushmore, subtly asking the viewer, "what would a modern Mount Rushmore look like?" but without taking on the virulent anti-imperialist tone all too prevalent in other artworks of the genre.

My ex said something similar when we saw it. Maybe I'm too enamoured with the image of the finished sculpture I have in my head.

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