Sculpture as an Artform
Sculpture is an art form in which hard or plastic materials are shaped into three-D items. The designs may be embodied in freestanding objects, in reliefs on surfaces, or in environments that can range from tableaux to contexts surrounding the spectator. An unrestricted variety of material may be used, including clay, wax, stone, metal, fabric, glass, wood, plaster, rubber, and random “found” objects. Materials are carved, modeled, molded, cast, wrought, welded, sewn, assembled, or simply shaped and combined.
Sculpture is not a fixed brand that can be applied to a permanently standing category of objects or range of activities. It is, rather, the name of an art that is growing and is changing and is continually extending the range of its activities and evolving new types of objects. The definition of the term grew much wider in the later half of the 20th century than it had been just two or three decades before, and in the everchanging state of visual art at the start of the 21st century, one simply cannot predict what its future possibilities are likely to see.
Certain features which in previous centuries were considered to be essential to sculpture but are now not present in a majority of modern sculpture and thus no longer form part of its definition. One of the most important of these is representation. Previous to the 20th century, sculpture was regarded as a representational art; one that imitated forms in life, that were mostly of human figures but also inanimate objects, like game, utensils, and books. From the dawn of the 20th century, however, sculpture has also included nonrepresentational forms. It became accepted that forms of such functional 3-D objects as furniture, pots, and buildings can be expressive and beautiful without having to be representational. It was only from the 20th century that nonfunctional, nonrepresentational, 3D art began to be common practice.
Prior to the 20th century, sculpture was considered fundamentally an art of solid form, or mass. Whilte the negative elements of sculpture – the voids and hollows inside and between its solid areas – have always been to some kind of degree an intricate part of the design, but the role was unacknowledged. In a large area of modern sculpture, however, the focus of attention has broadened, and the spatial aspects have come to be dominant. Spatial sculpture is currently a fully acceptable field of the art.
It was also taken for granted in sculpture from the past that its components consisted of a constant shape and size and, except for objects such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Diana (a monumental weather vane), would not move. With contemporary development of kinetic sculpture, neither the immobility nor immutability of its form can still be regarded as fundamental to defining the art form.
Finally, sculpture during the 20th century has not been confined to the two traditional forming processes of carving and modeling, or to any traditional natural materials as stone, metal, wood, ivory, bone, and clay. Because present-day sculptors will use any materials and methods of manufacture that they wish to, the art can no longer be identified with any particular kind of materials or techniques.
With all this change, there is probably only one element that stayed constant in the art of sculpture, and it emerges as the central abiding concern of sculptors: the art is a branch of the visual arts that is specially concerned with the creation of works in 3D.
Sculpture may be either in the round or in relief. A sculpture in the round consists of a separate, detached piece in its own right, possessing the same kind of independent existence in space as a human body or a chair. A sculpture that is in relief does not exist in this reality. It is attached to and projects from or is an innate part of something else that may serve either as a background to it or a matrix from which it projects.
The actual three-dimensionality of sculpture in the round puts limitations on its scope in certain respects compared with the scope of painting. Sculpture cannot have the illusion of space with solely optical means, or invest its structure with atmosphere and light as we might see in painting. It does have a reality, a vivid physical presence that is simply denied in the pictorial arts. The forms of sculpture are tangible as well as visible, and they can appeal strongly and directly to both tactile and visual senses. Even the visually impaired, even those who are congenitally blind, can produce and appreciate some kinds of sculpture. It was, in fact, argued by the 20th-century art critic Sir Herbert Read that sculpture should be regarded as elementarily an art of touch and that the first roots of sculptural forms can be traced to the pleasure one experiences in touch.
All three-D forms are regarded as having an expressive character as well as pure geometric properties. They can strike the observer as delicate, aggressive, flowing, taut, relaxed, dynamic, soft, and so on and so forth. By exploiting the expressive qualities of form, a sculptor is able to create images in which subject matter and expressiveness are mutually reinforcing of form. Visual imagery will go beyond the pure presentation of fact and imply a wide range of subtle and powerful feelings.
The aesthetic raw material used in the art of sculpture is, so to speak, the complete realm of expressive three-dimensional form. A sculpture can draw upon what we see that exists in the endless variety of natural and man-made form, or it can be an art of simple invention. It has been used to express a vast range of human emotions and feelings from the subtly tender and delicate to the highly violent and ecstatic.
All human beings, innately involved from birth with the world of 3-D form, know something of its structural and expressive aspects and will develop emotional responses to them. This combination of understanding and reaction, often called a sense of form, may be cultivated and refined. It is to that sense of form that sculpture primarily appeals.
For art supplies Brisbane, including canvas art supplies and artists supplies, visit or call the Discount Art Warehouse. Become a member for free and get 10% discount on future purchases.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 at 6:18 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.