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 Pacifying Dr. KingPosted on May 19, 2008WASHINGTON—We should all be able to agree that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was “confrontational.” He was also wise, measured, visionary, good-natured and generous of heart—like most great figures in history, he was complicated. But he didn’t ask for an end to Jim Crow repression, he demanded it; he didn’t request equal justice, he required it. Confrontation, basically, was the whole point. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts apparently believes otherwise and has kicked off a useful debate—more of a reality check, actually—about how King is remembered. It seems to depend on who’s doing the remembering. At issue is the statue that will stand as King’s official monument in Washington. The arts commission, which rules on the aesthetics of such memorials, has sent a letter complaining that the depiction is “a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character.” What they thought they were getting, commissioners wrote, was a “dynamic” and “meditative” King. Leave aside for the moment the question of how any sculptor is supposed to make someone look both dynamic and meditative at the same time. The point is that the arts commission, for some reason, was not comfortable with the image of a stern-faced, 28-foot-tall black man who has his arms crossed. [Editor’s note: To see a model of the statue, click here, then click on the image to enlarge. The article also includes an image of the King/Gandhi photo mentioned below.] That’s what Lei Yixin, one of China’s most celebrated sculptors, is concocting. There was grumbling from American artists, especially black American artists, that a Chinese sculptor was chosen to create our nation’s monument to King. Now, however, African-American commentators are rushing to defend Lei’s “confrontational” vision—or, at least, to slam the Fine Arts Commission for trying to make a righteously angry man look like Mister Rogers without the cardigan. Here’s what is really going on: It’s clear that some people would prefer to remember King as some sort of paragon of forbearance who, through suffering and martyrdom, shamed the nation into doing the right thing. In truth, King was supremely impatient. He was a man of action who used pressure, not shame, to change a nation. The Montgomery bus boycott, to cite just one example, was less an act of passive resistance than a campaign of economic warfare. Yes, he knew that televised images of black people walking miles to work would help mold opinion around the world. But he also knew that depriving the bus companies of needed revenue would hit the Jim Crow system where it really hurt. Lei, the sculptor, is understandably miffed at the commission’s second-guessing, especially since the panel had already approved the basic concept—King is supposed to be emerging from a massive “Stone of Hope” like a superhero with the power to walk through walls. The artist points out that the chosen pose comes from a famous photograph of King, standing—with his arms crossed—in front of a picture of Gandhi, who was his hero (and who, by the way, also was supremely confrontational). The King monument is being built not far from the Lincoln Memorial, where Daniel Chester French’s famous statue depicts an Abraham Lincoln who was anything but warm and fuzzy. French gave us a Lincoln so weighed down by duty and destiny that he almost slumps in his seat. We see not a nice guy, but a great man—one whose image certainly is not softened to the point of emasculation. To be fair to the arts commission, central to its complaint about the “confrontational” nature of Lei’s statue is the fact that Lei comes out of the Social Realist school—the preferred form of artistic expression for 20th-century dictatorships. The commission’s letter said his King statue “recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries.” On Lei’s behalf, let me make a couple of rejoinders. First, the sculptor is a known quantity; the arts commission knew what it was getting when Lei was hired. Second, a style that might be described as “postmodern heroism” is quite hot in the art world right now. I’m thinking of the painter Kehinde Wiley’s epic canvases of young black men, in hip-hop garb, assuming noble poses from classic Old Master works.
Lei’s admittedly chilly sculpture has begun to grow on me. Given a choice between a Martin Luther King whose saintly martyrdom redeemed the soul of white America and a defiant Martin Luther King who changed a nation through the force of his indomitable will, I’ll take the latter.
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By thebeerdoctor, May 22 at 4:35 am #
The hateful bile that your post represents, is what Dr. King sought to overcome in this world. Your comment of “utter sluts and whores”? As television’s Dr. Phil might say: “Mister it sounds like you have some misogynist issues.”
Report thisBy Conservative Yankee, May 22 at 4:07 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
What is the point? Why drag Dr. King through the dirt now? Do his plagiarisms make the work he did invalid? Should the old South look as it did in 1956?
No, I can think of only one reason to vilify Dr King at this late date, and that is to justify the system of apartheid practiced in the Old South, as J. Edgar Hoover, the source of those files, attempted to do.
If there is another reason please tell me what it is?
Report thisBy cyrena, May 22 at 12:11 am #
Academic plagerism is when one turns in a work using references and resources, AND FAILS TO SITE THEM.
If any of my students turned in work without any references, (and the proper citations) I wouldn’t care if every single word was their own. At best...they’d merely ‘pass’. The POINT is to read widely, and incorporate all of the thinking and perspectives into your own work.
Now if Dr. King copied words and text verbatim from other authors, and did not cite it, that was plagerism.
However, you speak to this as something that occurred at Boston University. Well, I’ve read mountains and mountains of Dr. King’s work, and but NONE of it from his time as a post graduate student. NOTHING from Boston University.
So tell me, did he plagerize those letters that he wrote from the Birmingham Jail? How about his “I have a Dream” work? How about all of the other thousands of sermons that he gave?
And let me ask you Allen Wood, did you write this stuff yourself, or did you plagerize it? I’m curious because you wrote this…
(an official publication of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., whose staff includes Kings widow Coretta)
And, I just noticed that you wrote this today, the 21st day of May, in the year 2008. This is odd. Coretta Scott King died over 3 years ago.
Seems like you would have corrected that part to reflect the reality of the times in which you are posting.
I’ve had my OWN work “stolen” if one could call it that. It was an academic assignment, (a final exam paper) and about 7 or 8 months after I’d submitted it, I found it published in “Psychology Today, under another name.”
It was somewhat annoying to say the least. But I hadn’t ‘copywrited’ it, or anything similar. And it would never have occurred to me to call whomever it was a slut or a whore. (I did get an A in the course). And it would CERTAINLY never occur to me to compare that to somebody beating me up and stealing my purse, or killing several million innocent civilians in Iraq, and using our troops as mercenaries to steal oil.
I think you have some troubles there Allen Wood.
Maybe if they locked your ass up in an Alabama jail, you’d be able to come up with something fit for print.
Report thisBy Joseph Powell, May 21 at 9:29 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
While it’s no secret that Dr. King was guilty of plagiarism in his early years, to compare it to what America is doing in Iraq is absolutely ludicrous. As a matter of fact, neither his plagiarism nor his infidelities should be allowed to diminish the good he tried to do on behalf of peace and justice in this world, as it pertained then(and now) to civil rights, the fight against poverty, and speaking out against the war(which he was lambasted for and proven to be right).
Report thisBy Allen Wood, May 21 at 3:14 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
Here are some verifiable truths about MR King:
King’s history and true behavior are kept secret from Americans, just like America’s recent history and true behavior, both domestically and abroad.
King ruthlessly stole from others, just like America steals Iraq’s oil and uses inflation to steal from its own elderly and poor.
“The first public sermon that King ever gave, in 1947 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, was plagiarized from a homily by Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick entitled “Life is What You Make It,” according to the testimony of King’s best friend of that time, Reverend Larry H. Williams.” Holiday for a Cheater, Michael Hoffman (Wiswell Ruffin House, Dresden, New York, 1992) For those who may not know, note that “ plagiarism” merely is a fancy word meaning for steal.
“(N)o less an authoritative source than the four senior editors of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (an official publication of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., whose staff includes King’s widow Coretta), stated of King’s writings at both Boston University and Crozer Theological Seminary: ‘Judged retroactively by the standards of academic scholarship, [his writings] are tragically flawed by numerous instances of plagiarism (again, that’s common theft to you and me).... Appropriated passages are particularly evident in his writings in his major field of graduate study, systematic theology...only 49 per cent of sentences in the section on Tillich (in his doctoral dissertation) contain five or more words that were King’s own....’” Hoffman, ibid.
Boston University officials eventually admitted, “There is no question but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation.” Even so, they concluded that, “No thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King’s doctoral degree, (because such action) would serve no purpose.” New York Times, October 11, 1991, page 15.
Just think about how outrageous is the conduct of these unnamed Boston University “officials.” This would be like a judge letting a criminal defendant go free, saying, “While eyewitnesses proved that he stole the old lady’s wheelchair and left her lying there on the subway tracks, no purpose would be served by punishing him or, even, making him give that wheelchair back to her.”
“No purpose,” my ass! Hell, you morons, King stole from another the only thing that other individual had by which to identify himself: his intellectual product. And you continue to let King pretend to be its author. In a court of law, you would be charged as accomplices after the fact and given the same sentence as the basic perp. What complete and utter sluts and whores you so-called academics there at Boston University really are!
Martin Luther King’s widow received a 1977 Federal court order which sealed the huge FBI file on her husband for 50 years, “because its release would destroy his reputation!”
Report thisBy Joseph Powell, May 21 at 8:43 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
Thank you for this article. I really wish that people wouldn’t settle for the sanitized version of Dr. KIng(isn’t short-term memory wonderful, America?) and reevaluate the true MLK. I don’t think that Lei Yixin or any other artist, for that matter, could have come up with a better rendition of King, even though King probably would have been uncomfortable with having a statue made in his honor.
Report thisBy roysf, May 20 at 8:39 pm #
I was reacting to the photo of the sculpture, which I suppose could be deceptive. I certainly hope that’s the caseit’s be a real travesty if in fact the sculptor did fail to capture Dr. King’s appearance.
Report thisBy cyrena, May 20 at 7:29 pm #
I guess it’s just you roysf. Have you SEEN the sculpture to ‘know’ that it is a very poor likeness?
Report thisBy thebeerdoctor, May 20 at 3:17 pm #
Instead of spending the money for some larger than life giant emerging from granite, why not commission J Seward Johnson Jr to depict in bronze, with color, a scene from Martin Luther King’s life, say something like the time he was taken to the Birmingham jail.
Report thisBy roysf, May 20 at 1:44 pm #
Is it just me, or is there a more fundamental issue here, which is that the sculpture is a very poor likeness?
Report thisBy thebeerdoctor, May 20 at 5:35 am #
Eugene Robinson’s article on pacifying King is a subject I have thought about often. I piece titled “Only When It Is Dark Enough, Can You See The Stars”, is about this very subject. It can be found at:
Report thishttp://beerdoctor-beerdoctor.blogspot.com/
By jackpine savage, May 20 at 5:29 am #
As someone who’s seen his fair share of Socialist Realism sculpture larger than life, i can say that the model does look vaguely Soviet/Maoist.
The problem with some of those sculptures is an unintended double meaning. Many of the statues of Lenin depicted him with his worker’s cap pulled down tight over his eyes, a look of stern determination, and his arm outstretched..."pointing towards the future”. Unfortunately, he often ends up looking like he’s trying to hail a cab in a cold rain for all eternity.
I can’t say that i like the sculpture, but i also can’t say exactly why. On the other hand, i believe that if D.C. needs anything that it is a very stern, 28 foot tall black man looking down on it. (I think that a 28 foot tall, stern black woman would be even better, but i won’t hold my breath.) And i most certainly do want the real Dr. King depicted.
The piece does remind me of the giant buddhas (minus the serene faces) of Afghanistan that the Taliban blew up.
Report thisBy Conservative Yankee, May 20 at 4:31 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
How can a person who spent the fifties and sixties in China, away from any news of King events have the “soul” to create a living King statue.
It is my opinion that a Statue is a poor venue to depict a Dr. King always in motion. but that is beside the main point.
If the memorial is to be a work of stone, then it should be sculpted by someone who smelled the smoke of the burning cities the night of King’s death, someone who saw Bull Connor’s water hoses attempting to put out the raging fire of civil disobedience, someone who felt the sting of whites only water fountains, bathrooms and lunch counters.
Can’t we find an artist who lived through this time HERE or is this one of those jobs “Americans won’t do”?
I’m so ashamed of this government and it’s sterile lackies
Report thisBy caia, May 19 at 11:13 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
I was all set to agree—King shouldn’t be made safe or conciliatory.
And then I saw the picture of the statue. And it does look like a figure from a communist dictatorship. I wouldn’t have had to be told that the sculptor had sculpted Mao to see the resemblance. This is hardly Lei’s fault, but that doesn’t mean the commission made a wise choice in the first place. It doesn’t mean that the associations are good. Why should King be saddled with the baggage of Mao, even if it’s a subtle stylistic association?
According to Kingisours.com, linked in the Times article, there was no competition for the statue; the artist was recommended to the commission by the purveyors of the granite. That’s hardly a process that leads to respectful acceptance of the result, regardless of who is chosen or the quality of the product.
Report thisBy cwhipps, May 19 at 10:40 pm #
Since it’s Malcolm X’s birthday, today, (and they’re probably not going to put up a statue to honor him) I agree, the defiant King seems like a reasonable compromise.
If they have a men’s room at the memorial, I’d also like them to paint the inside of the urinal like a confederate flag.
I’ve really been enjoying listening to you and Rachael Maddow on MSNBC lately, Eugene. Thanks. (I think it’s easier to pay attention when neither Pat Buchanan or Joe Scarborough are lurking. (When are they going to dump those clowns and give you and Rachael your own show?)
Report thisBy cyrena, May 19 at 10:23 pm #
Great piece. I noted this,
“ The commissions letter said his King statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries.
And, guess who pulled them down, or caused them to be pulled down? Besides, who cares? King wasnt anybody else, in any other country. The commission sounds like some of the same folks King would have crossed his arms at.
So I’m with Eugene. I haven’t seen the sculpture, (I donated money though) but I already know I want the one that looks like Martin Luther King Jr, doing what he did best. I want the one with him looking confrontational, with his arms crossed.
Besides, just ‘shaming’ white folks wasn’t the most important thing that he did, because he still didn’t shame enough of them, and just shaming them doesn’t necessarily produce the kind of results that are permanent. (especially since the ‘shame’ is only for public view anyway).
Nope, shaming others doesn’t cut it. Demanding the respect for all persons, and refusing to compromise on it is what he did and who he was, and that’s the purpose of a sculpture.
Report thisThe commission should be glad hes not shaking his finger and hollering at them. I think they should make him 32 feet tall instead of 28, just so everybody knows we still mean business