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