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Arch. Rania Obead
بيت اطلبي نسختك وتوصلك لل
Visitors arriving at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao find it guarded by a very strange and unsettling
presence: a 30-foot-tall bronze
sculpture of a spider.
Even less expected is the spider’s name: Maman, French
for “mom.”
For the artist Louise Bourgeois, Maman is a metaphor for her
own mother as seen through a child’s eyes—awesomely
tall, protective, patient, and skilled.
Maman is a sculpture in the round.
Not all sculpture is finished
in the round.
This work from Mesoamerica, for
example, is a relief Sculpture
A sculpture in which forms project
from but remain attached to a
background surface.
A relief is meant to be viewed
frontally, the way we view a
painting.
Sarcophagus lid, from the
Temple of Inscriptions,
Palenque,
Chiapas, Mexico. Maya,
Late Classic period, 684
C.E.
The depiction of Lord Pacal’s
glorious death is in low relief,
Sometimes called by the
French name Bas-relief, a
technique in which the
figures project only slightly
from the background.
Coins, for example, are
modeled in low relief,
as you can see by examining
the portrait of Abraham
Lincoln on the one-cent coin.
A sculpture in which forms project more boldly from their background is called High relief.
Forms modeled in high relief generally project to at least
half their understood depth. Foreground elements may be
modeled in the round, detaching themselves from the background altogether,
as in this 7th-century monumental relief in a temple in Mamallapuram, India
There are four basic methods for making a
sculpture:
1/ Modeling.
2/ Casting.
3/ Carving.
4/ Assembling.
Modeling is familiar to most of us from childhood.
As children, we experimented with play dough or clay to construct lopsided figures of people and animals.
For sculpture, the most common modeling material is Clay, an earth substance found in most parts of the world.
when a clay form has dried and been fired
(heated to a very high temperature), it becomes
hard.
Fired clay, sometimes called by the Italian name Terracotta, is surprisingly durable.
Much of the ancient art that has survived was formed from this material.
Gesturing exquisitely with
one hand, the other hand
posed on her knee,
this graceful female figure
was modeled of clay over a
thousand years ago by an
artist of the Mayan
civilization in Mesoamerica.
Figurine of a Voluptuous
Lady. Maya, Late Classic period,
700–900 C.E. Ceramic with traces
of pigment, height 83⁄4".
The Art Museum, Princeton
University.
In some ways modeling is the most direct of
sculpture methods.
The workable material responds to every touch,
light or heavy, of the sculptor’s fingers.
Sculptors often use clay modeling in the same
way that painters traditionally have used
drawing, to test ideas before committing
themselves to the finished work.
As long as the clay is kept damp, it can be
worked and reworked almost indefinitely.
In contrast to modeling, casting seems like a
very indirect method of creating a
sculpture.
Sometimes the sculptor never touches the final
piece at all.
Metal , and specifically bronze, is the material
we think of most readily in relation to
casting.
Bronze can be superheated until it flows, will
pour freely into the tiniest crevices and
forms, and then hardens to extreme durability.
Also through casting, the
sculptor can achieve smooth
rounded shapes and a
glowing, reflective surface,
such as we see in this Indian
sculpture of the bodhisattva
Avalokiteshvara.
Cast in bronze and then gilded
(covered with a thin layer of
gold).
The Bodhisattva
Avalokiteshvara, from Kurkihar,
Bihar, Central India. Pala
Dynasty, 12th century. Gilt
bronze, height 10".
Patna Museum, Patna.
Plastic resins and other synthetic materials developed by modern
chemistry have opened up new possibilities for sculptors.
Luis Jiménez cast Vaquero in fiberglass widely employed commercially for
such products as surfboards, boat hulls, and automobiles, fiberglass is strong
and yet lightweight.
Jiménez believed in usingcontemporary materials for
contemporary art.
He even painted his sculptures using acrylic urethane enamels, the industrial “wet-look” paints used for cars.
Carving is more aggressive than modeling,
more direct than casting.
In this process, the sculptor begins with a
block of material and cuts, chips, and
gouges away until the form of the sculpture
emerges.
Wood and stone are the principal materials
for carving, and both have been used by artists
in many cultures throughout history.
Tilman Riemenschneider, one of
the foremost German sculptors of
The late Middle Ages, carved his
Virgin and Child on the Crescent
Moon in limewood .
A soft wood with a close, uniform
grain, limewood carves easily
and lends itself well to
Riemenschneider’s
detailed, virtuosic style.
Tilman
Riemenschneider. Virgin and Child
on the Crescent Moon. c. 1495.
Limewood, height 341⁄8".
Museum für Angewandte Kunst,
Cologne.
Ancient Olmec artists, may have
had more complex reasons for
using basalt for their monumental
stone carvings.
Certainly they went to great
lengths to quarry and transport it.
Boulders weighing up to 44 tons
seem to have been dragged
for miles to the riverbank, then
floated by barge to a landing
point near their final destinations.
Assembling is a process by which individual pieces or segments or objects are brought
together to form a sculpture.
Some writers make a distinction between
Assembling, in which parts of the sculpture are simply placed on or near each other, and
Constructing, in which the parts are actually joined together through welding, nailing, or a similar procedure.
This book uses the term assemblage for both
types of work.
The 20th-century American sculptor David Smith came to assemblage in an unusual way.
While trying to establish himself as an artist, Smith worked as a
welder.
Later, when he began to concentrate on sculpture, he
adapted his welding skills to a different purpose.
His mature works broke new
ground in both materials and forms Smith’s Cubi XII is made
of steel, a material closely identified with our modern era.
David Smith. Cubi XII.
1963. Stainless steel, height 9'15⁄8".
Smithsonian Institution, Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden,
Washington, D.C.
Roxy Paine also uses stainless
steel for his outdoor
sculptures, but in contrast to
David Smith’s vocabulary of
geometric forms, Paine
constructs organic forms
—life-size, naturalistic trees
The pair of trees here lean
toward each other, their
branches joined at the tips. Roxy Paine. Conjoined.
2007. Stainless steel and
concrete,
height 40'.
Modern Art Museum of Fort
Worth.
A basic subject for sculpture, one that cuts across time and cultures, is the human figure.
If you look back through this lecture, you will notice that almost all the representational works portray people.
One reason, certainly, must be the relative
permanence of the common materials of sculpture.
Our life is short, and the desire to leave some trace of ourselves for future generations is great.
Metal, terra cotta, stone—these are materials for the ages, materials mined from the earth itself. Even wood may endure long after we are gone.
The royal tombs of
ancient Egypt, for example,
included statues such as the
one illustrated here
of the pharaoh Menkaure and
Khamerernebty, his Great
Royal Wife.
Menkaure and
Khamerernebty. Egypt,
c. 2490–2472 B.C.E. Greywacke,
height 4'61⁄2".
Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Sculptors are often called on to memorialize the heroes and heroines of a community, people whoseaccomplishments or sacrifices are feltTo be worthy of remembrance byfuture generations.
Rodin’s group of figures known as The
Burghers of Calais was commissioned in 1884 by the French city of Calais
to honor six prominent townsmen of the 14th century.
when France and England were engaged in the protracted conflict Known as the Hundred Years War. The men had offered their lives to ransom Calais from the English, who had laid siege to it for over a year, starving its citizens.
Auguste Rodin. The
Burghers of Calais. 1884–85.
Bronze, 6'101⁄2" 7'11" 6'6".
Palace of Westminster, London.
Among the human images that artists
are most often asked to make
present in the world through sculpture
are those connected with religion and
the spirit realm.
A touching example is this wooden
statue of Kuya Preaching by the
Japanese sculptor Kosho.
Kuya was a Buddhist monk who
lived during the 10th century.
He devoted his life to roaming the
countryside and teaching people
to chant the simple phrase Namu Amida
Butsu (Hail to Amida Buddha).
Kosho. Kuya
Preaching. Kamakura period,
before 1207. Wood, with paint
and inlaid eyes; height 461⁄2".
Rokuhara Mitsu-ji Temple,
Kyoto.
For Kiki Smith, who came of age artistically during the decade
around 1990, the body is a subject that connects the universal and the personal in a unique way.
“I think I chose the body as a subject, not consciously, but
because it is the one form that we all share,” she has said. Its something that everybody has their own authentic experience with.”
Honey wax depicts a woman, her knees and right hand drawn up to her chest, her left arm relaxed at her side, her eyes closed.
The body at the center of
Antony Gormley’s Quantum
Cloud XX (tornado) seems to
vanish into a brilliant dazzle
when sunlight strikes the
statue.
First-time viewers may doubt
their eyes, for nothing in the
work s title suggests that
they are supposed to
perceive a body at all.
Antony Gormley.
Quantum Cloud XX (tornado).
2000. Stainless steel, height 7'73⁄4".
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.
People, too, have worked to sculpt the
landscape.
Often, the shaping is purely practical, like
digging a canal to enable boats to penetrate
Inland, or terracing a hillside so that crops can
grow.
But just as often, we have shaped places for
religious purposes or for aesthetic contemplation
and enjoyment.
One of the most famous
earthworks in the United
States is the Serpent Mound,
near Locust Grove, Ohio.
For almost five thousand
years, numerous Eastern
American peoples built
large-scale earthworks as
burial sites and ceremonial
centers.
Goldsworthy makes earthworks
that are ephemeral, often from
such fleeting materials as ice,
leaves, or branches.
Many of his works last no more
than a few hours before the wind
scatters them, or the tide
sweeps them away, or, in the
case of Reconstructed Icicles,
Dumfriesshire, 1995, the sun
melts them.
Goldsworthy tries to go into nature
every day and make something
from whatever he finds.
Thomas Hirschhorn’s installation Jumbo Spoons and Big Cake has the earnest, homemade look of a collective project set up in a high school gym or
a community center.
We might imagine that eager students had been
asked to prepare an informational exhibit on a monumental topic such as globalization or the
history of the 20th century.
In Fireflies on the Water, Yayoi
Kusama created a room that is a paradox: a small and intimate space that seems to open up to infinity.
Fireflies on the Water consists of
a room 12 feet square and just shy of 10 feet in height.
The walls are entirely lined with
mirrors, and a reflecting pool is sunk into the center of the floor.
One hundred fifty small white lights suspended from the ceiling provide the only illumination—tiny points of brightness reflected in the water and multiplied into infinity by the mirrors.
Flavin made constructions from standard,
commercially available fluorescent light tubes and fixtures.
At first he focused his attention on the lightsthemselves as sculptural objects,
but he quickly came to realize, as he put it, that “the actual space of the room could be disrupted and played with” through light.
Untitled (to Karin and Walther)
consists of four blue fluorescent lights arranged in a square and stood on the floor
in a corner.
Two lights face inward, two outward. From these simple means a whole range of blues
arises as light reflects off the white walls
and radiates into the room.
Several of the works we have examined in this section no longer exist, not because they were lost or
destroyed , but because they were not meant to last in the first place.
The idea of impermanent sculpture may surprise us
at first, but in fact most of us not only are familiar with it but also have made it.
An outdoor figure modeled in snow on a cold winter afternoon is destined to melt before spring, but we
take pleasure in sculpting it anyway.
Castles and mermaids modeled in wet sand by the shore will be washed away when the tide comes in, but we
still put great energy and inventiveness into creating
them.
For festivals and carnivals the world over, weeks and even months are spent creating elaborate figures and floats, all for the sake of a single day’s event.
Among the most famous artists to
work with these ideas are the
husband-and-wife team of Christo
and Jeanne-Claude.
For over four decades, they have
planned and carried out vast art
projects involving the cooperation
of hundreds of people.
Their most recent work was
The Gates
a project for New York City’s
Central Park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhnEKV8LPH0