Feeling Small: Scale and Proportion in Art
The sculptureShuttlecock's is clearly a massive object much larger than the average size of a birdy. When a person walks up to it there is no doubt that this is not a normal shuttlecock and has no use other than to be viewed upon as pieces of art. If I were to walk around this sculpture I would be flabbergasted as to why and how someone would take something so small and unimportant and make it into art. My initial thought about the artwork before I had read about it, was that this ridiculous thing makes the museum behind it look tiny! When looking at the picture there are no trees or people around to see what the scale of the sculpture actually is. This gives the illusion that the building looks like a child's play house. From reading about the sculpture in chapter four I understand that that was partially the artists goal in building the shuttlecock's to tease the museum.
By making the birdies so large it distorts the scale of the museum into a fun and delightful manner.
I know the dimensions of the birdy from the textbook but it is still confusing to clearly understand how large it actually is without knowing it in proportion to my body. The interesting use of scale and proportion in this sculpture is what makes it famous. Without the distortion it would just be a regular shuttlecock, with no significance other than its made of metal and other materials, not plastic.
The shuttlecock does not make me feel uncomfortable or endangered, in fact quite the opposite. To often I become wrapped up in my own world and do not enjoy the smaller things in life. The oversized birdy is something...