Blink and the Getty Kuoros

As I told Mrs. Quinet, I read a ton of nonfiction, self-help books this summer. My favorite was Malcom Gladwell's Blink, which was about the power of first instincts and the importance of not doubting your decisions. Gladwell spends the first chapter of the book talking about the Getty kouros. The Getty kuoros is a Greek kuoros like the ones we've been learning about in class. When the statue was first purchased by the Paul Getty Museum, several art experts "had a bad feeling" about the piece but could never actually point out why they felt that way or what was wrong. Extensive testing seemed to assure that the statue was authentic, but still experts only warned that "something was not right," without having any evidence to back up their intuition. Years later, however, the paper trail that at first authenticated the statue was found to be forged. To this day, the Getty kuros sits in the museum with a plaque stating that it could be an authentic Greek kuoros or an extremely accurate forgery.