Thursday, December 03, 2009

Mural relativism


Rank these in descending order of inappropriateness
a. Sculpture of a topless dancer
b. Painting of a sculpture of a topless dancer
c. Photograph of a painting of a sculpture of a topless dancer
d. Talking about a photograph of a painting of a sculpture of a topless dancer.

My answer would be d, c, a, b. But I really can't explain why that is so. And watch how if you replace "12th century sculpture of a 12th century dancer" with "21st century sculpture of a 21st century dancer" the order would undergo some more reshuffling.

3 comments:

vineet vinod said...

Painting of a 21st century dancer would be ok but i can't imagine a sculpture..:)

Shreeni said...

@Vineet Can "21st century dancer" include "21st century bollywood dancer"? If so, I am unable to control my mind from imagining a host of very good examples for sculptures. :-)

Anonymous said...

reminds me of http://modernkicks.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/calvin_3.jpg :D