Sculpture
Categories: Wikipedia section cleanup | Sculpture | Arts
Sculpture is the organization or selection of things in space for a variety of contemplative purposes that have included religious, prophetic, political, aesthetic, entertainment, decorative, and theoretical.
Some of these purposes demand a high level of ability - requiring a social system that selects, supports, and trains talented people within guilds, national workshops, or academies.
Some sculpture is considered an artistic expression whether or not it was ever intended as such, and some of this sculpture is included in the various narratives of art history with their progression of styles. For example: Gothic to Renaissance to Mannerist to Baroque to neo-classical to Romantic to Modern to Abstract to Pop to Minimalist to Post-Modern etc etc.
Since sculpture can fill public space, both within buildings and between them, sculpture has often been called on (by democracies as well as autocracies) to manifest public ideals.
Since sculpture can resemble the human body, sculpture has often been used to manifest ideal human qualities, both masculine and feminine.
Since sculpture can create an effect that is experieced as spiritual, sculptures have often been worshiped as instances of the divine.
In societies with sharply divided social classes, sculpture has always been considered a trade to be practiced by artisans (except, as with
Michelangelo, an exceptional sculptor was promoted to a higher status).
Since sculpture can be seen as presenting social and perceptual conventions, sculpture can also be presented to critique or challenge those conventions.
In the mid-20th century American led democratic/capitalist society, a kind of sculpture education entered the university system where it became one of many arts used to critique/understand the human condition. But many other kinds of sculpture continued to be practiced outside that system.
The creation of sculpture often involves: changing one or more of the physical or contextual attributes of an object, such as its mass, colour, texture, context, location, form, scale, implication, association, temperature or smell. Much contemporary sculpture transmits expression through arrangement and juxtaposition or by the simple designation of an object or even an act as sculpture.
The artist who sculpts is called a sculptor. A sculpted object or material has been worked to resemble sculpture either by human hands or by nature. A figure or person can be described as sculpturesque if it shares qualities with classical figurative sculpture or statue.
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Traditional materials
Traditionaly the materials used for the manufacture of sculpture in Europe and the west were materials that were permanent. High forms of sculpture and large public works were often produced in expensive durable materials primarily bronze and stone such as marble, limestone, porphyry and granite, and more rarely precious materials such as gold and ivory for chryselephantine works. More common and less expensive materials were used for sculpture for wider consumption, including wood such as oak, box and lime; terracotta and other ceramics; spelter; and metals such as pewter.
Although rarely used for final works, the sculptor would make use of ephemeral materials such as plaster of paris, wax, clay and even plasticene in the case of the victorian Alfred Gilberts maquettes for 'Eros' at Piccadilly Circus, London.
Contemporary materials
In his late writings, Joan Miró even proposed that some day sculptures might be made of gases; see gas sculpture.
Other materials used in modern and contemporary sculpture include:
- sand
- stone
- glass
- metal
- wood
- resin
- polymers, and many other synthetic materials
- water, ice, snow
- the environment
- textiles
- terra cotta
- found objects
- balloons
- liquid crystals
- frozen blood, dead animals
- sound
Perhaps the least elitist of these media is sand, as it is used by young and old to create sand castles.
Forms
Some of the forms of sculpture are:- Relief: sculpture still attached to a background, standing out from that ground in "High Relief" or "Low Relief" (bas relief)
- Sculpture "in the round": designed by the sculptor to be viewed from any angle.
- Free-standing sculpture
- Mobile (See also Calder's Stabiles.)
- Statue
- Bust (sculpture)
- Site-Specific Art
- Equestrian
- Jewellery
Perhaps the majority of public art is sculpture. See also sculpture garden.
Sculptors
Sculptors include the Classical Greek masters, through Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance masters, to modern sculptors such as Henry Moore, Felix de Weldon, and Alexander Ney.
- See also: List of sculptors
Greenfield Products Pty Ltd v. Rover-Scott Bonnar Ltd
The Australian copyright case of Greenfield Products Pty Ltd v. Rover-Scott Bonnar Ltd (1990) 17 IPR 417 is authority for the proposition that a thing not intended to be a sculpture is not a sculpture. This seems contrary to some famous examples of sculpture, including Marcel Duchamp's 1917 sculpture consisting of a porcelain urinal lying on its back, titled Fountain, and Carl Andre's sculpture Equivalent III exhibited in the Tate Gallery in 1978, consisting of bricks stacked in a rectangle.
Nudity
A Nude or 'unadorned' figure in Greek classical sculpture was a reference to the status or role of the depicted person, deity or other being. Athletes, priestesses and gods could be identified by their adornment or lack of it.
The Renaissance preoccupation with Greek classical imagery, such as the 4th century B.C. Doryphoros of Polykleitos, led to nude figurative statues being seen as the 'perfect form' of representation for the human body. Subsequently, nudity in sculpture and painting has represented a form of ideal, be it innocence, openness or purity. Nude sculptures are still common. As in painting, they are often made as exercises in efforts to understand the anatomical structure of the human body and develop skills that will provide a foundation for making clothed figurative work.
Nude statues are usually widely accepted by most societies, largely due to the length of tradition that supports this form. Occasionally, the nude form draws objections, often by fundamentalist moral or religious groups. Classic examples of this are the removal of penises from the Vatican collection of Greek sculpture and the addition of a fig leaf to a plaster cast of Michaelangelo's sculpture of David for Queen Victoria's visit to the British Museum.
Related topics
See the category Sculpture for full listing of sculpture topics.
Sculpture genres
- Allegorical sculpture
- Hologram
- Ice sculpture
- Kinetic sculpture
- Kouros
- Snow sculpture
- Sound sculpture
External links
- Sculptors from Romania - Sculptors from Romania
- ModernArts & ModernSculpture.com - shows contemporary and some historical sculpture
- www.sculptor.org, sculptor.org - resources for sculptors
- International Sculpture Center
- Traces - career resource for stone sculptors
- The Italian Sculpture! - many images of historical sculptures
- Jessica Straus: Wood sculptor
- About Stone - About Stone fosters mutual interests, understanding and contacts amongst people who work with stone
- Teresa Kochanowska Manojlovic - Wood sculpture, stone sculpture, aerated concrete, bustan:Escultura
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