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  • Essay / Modern Glass Bottle Art - 1505

    Have you heard about these two little boys who ended up in a modern art gallery by mistake? “Quick,” one of them said, “Run! Before they say we did it!” While this may be a hilarious joke, I think it describes how society feels about modern art. As a popular saying goes: "Modern art is produced by incompetents, sold by charlatans and bought by ignorant people!" » Why such skepticism towards current art? Why do art historians and renowned scholars set aside art nouveau in favor of a Monet or a Rembrandt? Is the importance of modern art so infinitesimal that it is reduced to child's play? Or, better yet, is contemporary art worthy enough to be art? Walking through the Lowe Art Museum, I find myself constantly drawn to the Modern Art section of the museum like a magnet to a refrigerator. In particular, I am drawn to the piece called Shattered Illusions. Shattered Illusions consists of five glass bottles: glass bottles that appear to have been around for centuries and have been widely used by several people. The bottles have a yellow tint symptomatic of aging and hard holes that suggest previous use. Inside each of these medium-sized bottles are human figures. Each bottle has a different figure; for example, two of the bottles contain what appear to be females and the other three contain males. Each character is tangled, helpless, in this relentless coil that protrudes from every conceivable direction as if there is no end or hope in sight. The coil wraps around the characters' extremities, midsections, and necks, wanting to choke the life out of them. In each bottle, characters struggle with the desire to escape, but not everyone is freed. The central bottle has...... middle of paper...... and mysterious but as Gladwell says "It's one thing to recognize the enormous power of snap judgments and thin slices, but it it is quite another to place our trust in something so seemingly mysterious” (51). is left to the perception of the viewer and not the opinion of the critic; in the quintessence, art is indefinable, it is beauty! Works citedEsaak, Shelley “What is art” History? Arts. About .com. September 29, 2006Read, Herbert. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1968.Requadt, Water E. “Modern Sculpture: Art or Incompetence? art? 2006. September 29, 2006Richardson, Tony and Nikos Stangos New York: books on penguins., 1974.