W.W. at The Economist writes A Blockheaded Memorial:
... (Take the virtual tour!) Did you know it is a subject of controversy? Well, now you do. Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune sums up the complaints about the massive new scultpure of MLK:
Among the objections in this case, the Memorial on the National Mall was designed by a Chinese artist, carved by Chinese workers out of Chinese granite and shipped here and reconstructed by Chinese workers on the National Mall.
Why not an American artist, critics ask? With American rock? And why use white granite, some have noted, to portray a black man?
Mr Page, who finds the memorial a "fitting and awe-inspiring tribute", has answers. White rock shows up better than black rock at night. Chinese white granite is harder than the domestic variety, so it will last longer. The artist best prepared to work the hard Chinese rock is, not suprisingly, Chinese. As it happens, the memorial's sculptor, Lei Yixin, is "better known for his mammoth tributes to Chairman Mao", as Mr Page puts it. And Mr Lei's pedigree comes through in his latest work. As much as Mr Page admires the memorial, he says King is depicted with "a bit too much of a worker's-paradise seriousness for my taste."
That King's monumental likeness was chiseled from stone by an ace aesthetic hype man for Mao, a dictator responsible for "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history", suggests a couple things. First, and most obviously, it suggests that monuments like this one are pieces of propaganda, attempts to manipulate a state's citizens (or subjects, as the case may be) into parcelling out honour, reverence and esteem according to an "official" account of the country's history. (continue at The Economist, hat tip Marcus Wilder)
Go read it all.
King's daughter compared her father's statue with that of Lincoln (who king said signed the Constitution), with Lincoln sitting and King of course standing high over and above Lincoln.
Maya Angelou says King memorial inscription makes him look ‘arrogant’. "I Was A Drum Major For Justice, Peace, and Righteousness". Here is what MLK himself said and what Angelou said:
“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice,” King told the congregation. “Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”...
Carved on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue, the inscription reads: I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.
“The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit,” Angelou, 83, said Tuesday. “He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply.
Maya Angelou's comment is spot on, IMO.
I haven't gone downtown to see the memorial but plan to do so. Then, I'll make my own judgement about it.
That said, the pictures I've seen of the memorial disturb me. This memorial is not "in the America tradition" at all!
Posted by: Always On Watch | September 01, 2011 at 05:24 AM