Monumental
by
Sculpture today tries
to distress and alarm.
It should back off,
and allow us to gape,
awestruck on its
monolithic vestiges
as we once did at great
paintings from dead
masters. Museums
carry
busts, gloriously veined,
polished oak and walnut
statues, reclining, age-
darkened bronze generals,
enameled and gilded Egyptian
glass. Bisque fired raku,
black-figure amphoras,
ivory netsuke.
In the Modern wing,
quartz rocks are dropped
into a pile of carefully
arranged abstraction,
clashing with artistically
set jumbles of junk throw
away, usually for good
reason, now resurrected.
Mixed up rusted metals,
plastic poured in molds
to replicate the living
palm trees outside the
window. We gaze intently,
desperate to connect to last
week’s trash, cheeks red
and strained. Equally
embarrassed, contemporary
sculpture stares back, tail
wagging, an anxious, seven-
legged puppy sculpted
from the brush of
Hieronymus Bosch.
16 comments:
what an awesome take on this prompt... it has been so long since i have actually been to a museum... i am thinking i need to go.. thank you for this inspiration......
Different and inspirational.
Thanks for stopping by!
Last week I went around visiting Museums and Monuments.
This describes some of my feelings.
Paisley, thanks. I think this is my reaction from my memories of going to museums like the Met as a kid, compared to some I've been to recently. Not that I don't like some modern art. Far from it. :)
Steve - thanks!
gautami- I'm still undecided on a great deal of modern art. Not much moves me like some of the older works.
Could be me. Still pondering.
Lol, I don't get moderns art. I've been living less than an hour from the Documenta in Kassel for ages but never bothered to visit it.
Gabriele - after all those years of art school , I 'get' it. I just don't like a lot of it. *g*
You raise the subject well. I dislike most modern art, but in a sense it is correct to what art should be.
Art reflects life. Today we live in a non-permanent, throwaway society. Art reflects that - and it will be complete when they throw it away :-)
That happens on the Documenta. Some cleaning women once shrubbed a bath tub Joseph Beuys had intended to be dirty, and this year the town cleaning team scraped colour off a road that was supposed to be art.
Hi Constance, art is such a subjective thing sometimes, but I like the way you wrote your poem. I love the final thought 'Equally embarrassed,etc.'
anthonynorth - it probably all came about because I was rereading "The Shock of the New" by Hughes. It's hard to put modern art in context with out some help...
Gabriele, can't tell the forest from the replication? :)
sweettalkingguy- I think most art wants to BE something, and us artists misinterpret the goals. Since viewer is supposed to meet art halfway, they can both be guilty of misinterpretation. :)
It seems to me there is classic art and modern art and to try and compare them is a hopeless task. In London we have two major galleries - Tate London and Tate Modern. They are miles apart in distance as well as style. Me? I love 'em both and treat them as two totally different experiences.
Ah, but classic and modern art have much in common - at the root, it is still Art, so comparisons are not only inevitable, but necessary.
I like trying to find the classic influences in modern art when I go to museums. :)
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