SCULPTURE

DEFINITION

Sculpture is a three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials, typically stone such as marble, metal, glass, or wood, or plastic materials such as clay, textiles, polymers and softer and softer metals. The term has been extended to works including sound, text and light.

4 basic modeling methods:1. modeling – additive process2. casting – indirect process3. carving – subtractive process4. assembling – additive process

MODELING

Additive process – the sculptor begins with a simple framework or core or nothing at all and adds material until the sculpture is finished

Modeling : clay or dough Wet clay most common modeling material;

Pliable; can be worked and reworked “sketch” Dried and fired it becomes hard and durable

“terra cotta

Modeling is the most direct sculpture method. The workable material responses to every touch, light or heavy pinch of the scultpor’s hand

CARVING

A subtractive process in which one starts with a mass of material larger than the planned sculpture and subtracts, or taken away, material until only the desired form remains

CARVING

The sculptor begins with a block of material and cuts, chips, and gouges away until the form of the sculpture emerges

Wood and stone – principal materials used; tend resist the sculptor’s tools

Sculptor must study the grain of the material; to violate the grain could result in a failed sculpture

Types of wood and stone

CARVED WOODEN CRANES

A selection of woodcarving hand tools: 3 fishtail gouges, a v-parting tool, 4 straight gouges, 3 spoon gouges, and a carvers mallet

SCULPTOR AT WORK

CASTING

Involves a mold of some kind into which liquuid or semi-liquid material is poured and allowed to harden

Indirect method Bronze – commonly used;

Can be superheated until it flows, will pour freely into the tiniest crevices and forms, and then hardens to extreme durability

Lost-wax process – common method for casting; also known in French name “cire perdue”

Each casting is considered original Earlier sculptors often cast their own

work

1. A MODEL OF AN APPLE IN WAX

2. A RUBBER MOLD AND A CAST, IN THIS CASE PLASTER

3. A HOLLOW CAST IN PARAFFIN

4.The fire-proof mold, in this case clay-based, with the paraffin apple, an open view. The core is also filled with fire-proof material

5. LIQUID BRONZE AT 1200°C IS POURED INTO THE DRIED AND EMPTY CASTING MOLD

6. A BRONZE CAST, STILL WITH SPRUING

Illustration of stepwise Bronze casting by the Lost Wax Method

ASSEMBLING

Is a process by which individual pieces or segments or objects are brought together to form a sculpture

Assembling vs. Constructing Assembling , parts of the sculpture are

simply placed on or near each other Constructing, parts are actually joined

together through a welding, nailing or a similar procedure

Both types work= assemblage

TYPES OF SCULPTURE

Freestanding or sculpture in the round Complex interaction with space; exists

wholly in our world; We can walk around it and see it from

every angle = viewpoints Work looks different from every angle

Relief sculpture Low-relief sculpture High relief sculpture (or haut-relief)

FREE STANDING/ SCULPTURE IN THE ROUND

The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin held in the Musée Rodin in Paris.

It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. It is often used to represent philosophy.

THE BURGHERS OF CALAIS (1884–C. 1889) IN VICTORIA TOWER GARDENS, LONDON, ENGLAND

commemorated the six townspeople of Calais who offered their lives to save their fellow citizens. During the Hundred Years’ War, the army of King Edward III besieged Calais, and Edward ordered that the town's population be killed en masse. He agreed to spare them if six of the principal citizens would come to him prepared to die, bareheaded and barefooted and with ropes around their necks. When they came, he ordered that they be executed, but pardoned them when his queen, Philippa of Hainault, begged him to spare their lives.

RELIEF SCULPTURE

Meant to be viewed from one side only Used to decorate architecture or

functional objects Low relief – known as bas-relief

Subjects project very slightly from their background

High relief – when a sculpture projects more boldly from the background

BAS-RELIEF

The background is very compressed or completely flat, as on most coins, on which all images are in low-relief.

HIGH RELIEF

Sculptured elements should project by at least half their depth, and parts of the figures may be in the round, unattached to the background

Lorenzo Ghiberti's gilded bronze "Doors of Paradise", Baptistery, Florence combine high relief main figures with backgrounds mostly in low relief.

SUNKEN RELIEF

Sunken-relief, also known as intaglio or hollow-relief, is where the image is made by carving into a flat surface - usually the images are mostly linear in nature.

Sunken-relief depiction of Pharaoh Akhenaten with his wife Nefertiti and daughters. Note how strong shadows are needed to define the image.

HUMAN FIGURE IN SCULPTURE

Human figure as subject matter in sculpture

Reasons: Life is short, and the desire to leave some

traces of ourselves for future generations “presence”, to portray a being in sculpture is

to bring it into the world, to give it a presence that is close to life itself

Materials: metal, terra cotta, stone, wood

Among the human images that artists are often asked to make present in the world through sculpture are those connected with religion and the spirit realm

Portrayals of rulers, heroes and heroines, and religious or spirit figures unite the many sculptural traditions of the world.

Western culture is marked by a tradition of sculpting the human figure for its own sake and finding the body to be a worthy subject for art – owed to ancient Greeks. They believed that the body itself is beautiful.

Greek sculptors derived an ideally beautiful body type governed by harmonious proportions demonstrated in the perfected bodies to images of gods and mythological heroes, and to images of male athletes

CONTRAPPOSTO

Developed by Greek artists Meaning “counterpoise” or “counterbalance”

sets the body in a gentle S-shape curve through a play of opposites

Contrapposto implies the potential for motion inherent in a living being

An Italian term used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs.

David, by Michelangelo. The shoulders of the figure are seen to angle in one direction, the pelvis in another.

Since the Renaissance, body has continued to serve as a subject through which sculptors express feelings and ideas about the human experience.

20TH CENTURY SCULPTOR

Henry Moore was an English sculptor and artist. He

was best known for his abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art.

Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Moore

Moore's signature form is a reclining figure. Moore's exploration of this form, under the influence of the Toltec-Mayan figure he had seen at the Louvre, was to lead him to increasing abstraction as he turned his thoughts towards experimentation with the elements of design.

Reclining Figure: Hand "Reclining Figure: Hand," a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore, was given to the United Nations by the Henry Moore Foundation. The sculpture is located in the landscape area north of the United Nations Secretariat Building, and was unveiled in 17 September 1982.

The Art Gallery of Ontario's Henry Moore collection is the largest public collection of his works in the world.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCULPTURE

the term may be used several ways: Refer to sculptures that are large enough

for viewers to enter and move about in, sculptures that create their own environments

It can mean large sculptures designed for display in the outdoor environment

It can be sculptures that are actually a part of the natural environment such as the presidents’ heads carved out of the natural rock of Mount Rushmore

Red Grooms is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life.

(left to right) Sculptures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln represent the first 150 years of the history of the United States.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States. Sculpted by Gutzon Borglum and later by his son Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of former United States.

The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres (5.17 km2) and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.

Jeff Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces.

PUPPY

The was Puppy, a forty-three feet (12.4 m) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy, executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure. In 1995, the sculpture was dismantled and re-erected at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sydney Harbour on a new, more permanent, stainless steel armature with an internal irrigation system.

GREAT SERPENT MOUND

The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,330-foot-long, three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound located on a plateau of the Serpent Mound crater along Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. Maintained within a park by the Ohio Historical Society, it has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Department of Interior.

Environmental sculpture on a grand scale occurs when an artist sets out to sculpt the earth itself, e.g. Earthworks – Serpent Mound near Locust Grove, Ohio

Impermanent sculpture: E.g. An outdoor figure modeled in snow on

a cold winter afternoon is destined to melt before spring

Castles and mermaids modeled in wet sand by the shore

We cannot evaluate sculptures according to how long they last. What is important is the sculptor’s expression and the experience of the viewer – even if it lasts for a moment.

The end