Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast.
For other uses, see Sculpture (disambiguation).
Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works (other than pottery) from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely. However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, and this has been lost.[2]
Sculpture has been central in religious devotion in many cultures, and until recent centuries, large sculptures, too expensive for private individuals to create, were usually an expression of religion or politics. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, as well as many in Central and South America and Africa.
The Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith. The revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelo's statue of David. Modernist sculpture moved away from traditional processes and the emphasis on the depiction of the human body, with the making of constructed sculpture, and the presentation of found objects as finished artworks.
Anti-sculpture movements[edit]
Aniconism originated with Judaism, which did not accept figurative sculpture until the 19th century,[19] before expanding to Christianity, which initially accepted large sculptures. In Christianity and Buddhism, sculpture became very significant. Christian Eastern Orthodoxy has never accepted monumental sculpture, and Islam has consistently rejected nearly all figurative sculpture, except for very small figures in reliefs and some animal figures that fulfill a useful function, like the famous lions supporting a fountain in the Alhambra. Many forms of Protestantism also do not approve of religious sculpture. There has been much iconoclasm of sculpture for religious motives, from the Early Christians and the Beeldenstorm of the Protestant Reformation to the 2001 destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan by the Taliban.
Löwenmensch, from Hohlenstein-Stadel, now in Ulmer Museum, Ulm, Germany, the oldest known anthropomorphic animal-human statuette, Aurignacian era, c. 35–40,000 BP
Swimming Reindeer c. 13,000 BP, female and male swimming reindeer – late Magdalenian period, found at Montastruc, Tarn et Garonne, France
Per Hasselberg, Snöklockan (snowdrop), Paris 1881. Copy from 1953 in bronze by C & A Nicci (Rome/Italy) placed in Rottneros Park near Sunne in Värmland/Sweden.
Alfred Gilbert, the so-called Eros, 1893, the world's first aluminium statue, Piccadilly Circus, London
Paul Gauguin, 1894, Oviri (Sauvage), partially glazed stoneware, 75 x 19 x 27 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Joseph Csaky, Groupe de femmes (Groupe de trois femmes, Groupe de trois personnages), 1911–12, plaster, lost
Constantin Brâncuși, Portrait of Mademoiselle Pogany, 1912, white marble; limestone block, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show
Käthe Kollwitz, The Grieving Parents, 1932, World War I memorial (for her son Peter), Vladslo German war cemetery
George Rickey, Four Squares in Geviert, 1969, terrace of the New National Gallery, Berlin, Germany, Rickey is considered a Kinetic sculptor
