Looking at a Fiberglass Sculpture Art Essay

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Looking At A Fiberglass Sculpture Art Essay Is it possible to learn about ourselves from looking at a fiberglass sculpture? Should it be enough for us to see the physicality of ourselves in order to define our humanity? “Can a monster story teach us something about our own morality? [And] can a tale be a parable holding up a funhouse mirror to the beast lurking in our own hearts?” (Lamoureux, 107). Art is the looking glass of human emotions; it is a reflective instrument that holds neither flawlessness nor scar or threadbare imperfection away from human being. Art is, in other words, what forces us to look at ourselves, identify, confront and define our humanity. Mary Wollstencraft Shelley’s Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus and Ron Mueck’s A Girl are two profound artworks that are expressive examples of this idea. Ron Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor, whose attention to detail allows him to create some of the most beautiful works of sculptured art—ranging from a 21-foot tableau of a bedridden woman, to a 3-foot-tall, spooning couple. But, perhaps, one of the most unique sculptures in his collection is that of the 16-foot-long, fiberglass structure of a newborn baby girl—a structure otherwise known as: A Girl (2000). Though it is a significant aspect of the work, what makes this sculpture so unique is not merely Mueck’s remarkable attention to detail; perhaps what sets this sculpture a part from the rest is that A Girl is an infant separated from the adults of Mueck’s collection; the sculpture captures a moment in time where a child is no longer connected to a mother’s womb. It is, to put it shortly, a single, vulnerable infant in and of herself. A Girl is not nearly as simple as an apple-cheeked toddler—prepped, puppied and powdered for the outside world. Particular aspects of the sculpture stand out, creating a figure of further complexity. But
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