Mueuk At The Brooklyn Museum

We went to the Brooklyn Museum today with R's Mom to see an exhibit of Ron Muek's fiberglass sculptures. Muek's uber-realistic figures are either gigantic or tiny and there's something about the unflinching nature of his gaze--the fat man's uncircumcized penis hanging flacidly against his thigh; the elephant-sized newborn still streaked with blood; the old woman's hawk-like eyes peering from hooded flesh--that startled me. These were not necessarily attractice or unattractive people, but just normal human bodies, flaws and all. And as I stared down at a mini sculpture, one of a couple spooning, I realized that by reducing--or enlarging--the human figure so dramatically Muek had effectively divorced it from both the glorification of say greco-roman nudes and the shame of porn nudity. The tiny figures engendered feeling of protectiveness in me and the gigantic figures showcased the body's individualities, like nose hair, or a paunch, or chipped toenails, and ultimately made me exclaim--jesus, we're all flawed like this, aren't we? Every last one of us. A tragedy, really, that movies and magazines and the internet have lulled us into forgetting what most of us are really like beneath our clothes.