The Four Shuttlecocks

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Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen found controversy when they began thinking about the creation of the art pieces in 1991. Many people believed that they were frivolous, so they disapproved the establishment of the art. Despite the major nonacceptance of the shuttlecocks in the early 1990’s, the enormous shuttlecocks are now valued at the museum. Some people even pronounce them to be a representation of Kansas City itself. These are giant sculptures mimicking real life shuttlecocks that are typically used to play badminton. They are made of aluminum fiberglass- or plastic that was reinforced- and paint. This is representational art because their vast size is compared to that of the museum. Although the shuttlecocks exaggerated size could …show more content…

The content of the large shuttlecocks is a light-hearted way of joking about the museum’s size. This piece to me demonstrates that the artists built it for entertainment. The simplistic, yet enormous structure of the art pieces makes me believe that the artist wanted to bring people happiness by constructing a playful setting around the Nelson-Atkins Museum. The message behind this artwork doesn’t appear to be meaningful or obvious, but I did find a source that informed me on some of the inspiration behind building it. A painting inside of the museum by the artist, Frederic Remington, that consisted of Native Americans wearing a feathered headdress triggered the Shuttlecocks artist to make the bottom of the art feathers (Atlas Obscura, 2016). The artists of the gigantic scaled shuttlecocks also took interest from a satellite photo of the museum lawn that illustrated a grassy ball court (Atlas Obscura, 2016). The satellite picture of the implied grassy ball court gave the artists the idea to make the shuttlecocks eighteen feet high and the weight of 5,000 pounds. The title Shuttlecocks is an appropriate name for this art because it clearly enlightens visitors of the museum that the art is supposed to represent giant shuttlecocks and the yard is meant to represent a

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