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Sculpture

WRITTEN BY: Leonard R. Rogers

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Sculpture, an artistic form in which hard or plastic materials are worked into three-dimensional
art objects. The designs may be embodied in freestanding objects, in reliefs on surfaces, or in
environments ranging from tableaux to contexts that envelop the spectator. An enormous variety of
media may be used, including clay, wax, stone, metal, fabric, glass, wood, plaster, rubber, and random
“found” objects. Materials may be carved, modeled, molded, cast, wrought, welded, sewn, assembled, or
otherwise shaped and combined.

Sculpture is not a fixed term that applies to a permanently circumscribed category of objects or
sets of activities. It is, rather, the name of an art that grows and changes and is continually extending the
range of its activities and evolving new kinds of objects. The scope of the term was much wider in the
second half of the 20th century than it had been only two or three decades before, and in the fluid state
of the visual arts at the turn of the 21st century nobody can predict what its future extensions are likely
to be.

Certain features which in previous centuries were considered essential to the art of sculpture are
not present in a great deal of modern sculpture and can no longer form part of its definition. One of the
most important of these is representation. Before the 20th century, sculpture was considered a
representational art, one that imitated forms in life, most often human figures but also inanimate objects,
such as game, utensils, and books. Since the turn of the 20th century, however, sculpture has also included
nonrepresentational forms. It has long been accepted that the forms of such functional three-dimensional
objects as furniture, pots, and buildings may be expressive and beautiful without being in any way
representational; but it was only in the 20th century that nonfunctional, nonrepresentational, three-
dimensional works of art began to be produced.

Before the 20th century, sculpture was considered primarily an art of solid form, or mass. It is true
that the negative elements of sculpture—the voids and hollows within and between its solid forms—have
always been to some extent an integral part of its design, but their role was a secondary one. In a great
deal of modern sculpture, however, the focus of attention has shifted, and the spatial aspects have
become dominant. Spatial sculpture is now a generally accepted branch of the art of sculpture.

https://www.britannica.com/art/sculpture

Sculpture

-the art of carving, modeling, welding, or otherwise producing figurative or abstract works of art in three
dimensions, as in relief, intaglio, or in the round.

-to carve, model, weld, or otherwise produce (a piece of sculpture).

-to produce a portrait or image of in this way; represent in sculpture.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/sculpture
Definition of Traditional Sculpture

Traditional sculpture prior to the 20th century had four main defining characteristics. First, it was
the only three dimensional art form. Second, it was representational. Third, it was viewed as an art of
solid form. Any empty spaces involved were essentially secondary to its bulk or mass. Moreover, as a solid
form it had no movement. Fourth, traditional sculptors used only two main techniques: carving or
modelling. That is, they either carved directly from their chosen material (eg. stone, wood), or they built
up the sculpture from the inside, so to speak, using clay, plaster, wax and the like. The models for
traditional sculpting derive from Greek and Roman Sculpture of Classical Antiquity.

Different Mediums of Sculpture

Bricks, Clay and Terra Cotta

Artists often use the medium that works best for the application. Sculptures can be made from brick, such
as the Patriots Peace Memorial in Louisville, Kentucky, and may include bas-relief stone carvings like the
Arc de Triomf -- the Arch of Triumph -- in Barcelona, Spain. Clay is a common sculpting medium because
it’s easy to work with. The Chinese Terracotta Army discovered in 1974 near the tomb of China’s first
emperor Qin Shi Huangdi contains life-sized horses and an army of 8,000 individually sculpted soldiers, all
with different faces and gear.

Metal and Wire Sculptures

Metal artist Richard Carey makes wire and metal sculptures depicting dragonflies, rabbits, kiwi,
chameleon and even a piece that resembles a xenomorph creature from “The Alien” movie franchise.
Other metal sources for sculptures include gold, lead, brass, steel, copper and silver.

Fabric, Paper and Ivory

Internationally acclaimed Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz began working with fabric mediums such
as burlap and gauze, among other items in the 1970s. Her Androgyn III, created in 1985, consists of burlap,
wood, string, resin and nails, and resides in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sculptors have long
valued ivory from elephant tusks as a material for small detailed carvings. People even create 3D art pieces
from paper by wetting, molding, cutting and shaping.

Sand and Stone

If you’ve ever visited a beach during a sand sculpting contest, you’ll marvel at the creativity of the artists
who create sculptures from sand. In most cases, the sculptures are temporary, washed away with the next
high tide. One company promotes their sand sculptors for special events, which involves displays of the
project as the artists create castles and dragons from sand. All types of stone are used as source materials
for a variety of sculptures, with Michelangelo’s work at the top of the list for his creations from marble,
such as David and the Pieta.

Wax and Wood

Wax sculptures abound at Madame Tussauds wax museums in cities around the world. These museums
depict life-sized wax sculptures of the famous and infamous. With museums in America, Asia, Australia
and Europe, the wax sculptures include movie stars, historical figures, world leaders and more. Native
Americans have long used wood for their hand-sculpted totem poles, [while many wood artisans today
carve wooden sculptures with chainsaws].

Recycled Materials

In the end, the materials an artist uses may be part of a statement she makes with her artwork, as when
an artist creates a sculpture that includes glass, lights and sound or recycled materials. Slater Barron -- the
Lint Lady -- makes sculptures from lint from the dryer lint screen and uses recorded sound in some of her
pieces. The mediums that artists choose are as varied and wild as their imaginations.

https://www.ehow.com/list_6686843_different-mediums-sculpture.html

Materials

Any material that can be shaped in three dimensions can be used sculpturally. Certain materials,
by virtue of their structural and aesthetic properties and their availability, have proved especially suitable.
The most important of these are stone, wood, metal, clay, ivory, and plaster. There are also a number of
materials of secondary importance and many that have only recently come into use.

Throughout history, stone has been the principal material of monumental sculpture. There are
practical reasons for this: many types of stone are highly resistant to the weather and therefore suitable
for external use; stone is available in all parts of the world and can be obtained in large blocks; many
stones have a fairly homogeneous texture and a uniform hardness that make them suitable for carving;
stone has been the chief material used for the monumental architecture with which so much sculpture
has been associated.

The tools used for carving differ with the material to be carved. Stone is carved mostly with steel
tools that resemble cold chisels. To knock off the corners and angles of a block, a tool called a pitcher is
driven into the surface with a heavy iron hammer. The pitcher is a thick, chisel-like tool with a wide
beveled edge that breaks rather than cuts the stone. The heavy point then does the main roughing out,
followed by the fine point, which may be used to within a short distance of the final surface. These pointed
tools are hammered into the surface at an angle that causes the stone to break off in chips of varying
sizes. Claw chisels, which have toothed edges, may then be worked in all directions over the surface,
removing the stone in granule form and thus refining the surface forms. Flat chisels are used for finishing
the surface carving and for cutting sharp detail. There are many other special tools, including stone
gouges, drills, toothed hammers (known as bushhammers or bouchardes), and, often used today, power-
driven pneumatic tools, for pounding away the surface of the stone. The surface can be polished with a
variety of processes and materials.

https://www.britannica.com/art/sculpture/Materials
Principles of Sculptural Design

Orientation

To create a sense of harmony (or disharmony) in the sculpture itself, or between parts of it, or between
the sculpture and the viewer, or between the sculpture and its surroundings, the sculptor usually works
to a particular spatial plan or scheme of reference. Such a plan, often based on a system of axes and
planes, is essential to maintain linear proportion amongst other things. Thus for instance, the poses of
human figures are typically calculated and created with reference to the four cardinal planes, namely: the
the principle of axiality (eg. anatomical movement), the principle of frontality (predominant in the kouros
standing figures of Greek Archaic sculpture), contrapposto - the dynamic pose in which one part of the
body twists or turns away from another part, exemplified in works by Michelangelo (1475-1564) and
Giambologna (1529-1608) - and the chiastic stance (the pose in which the weight of the body rests mainly
on one leg, a typical characteristic of Greek figurative sculpture of the High Classical period).

Proportion

How sculptors handle proportionality varies considerably. Some (eg. Egyptian sculptors) observed
hierarchic non-naturalistic canons of proportion (eg. Gods the largest, Pharaohs next largest, citizens
smallest etc). Other sculptors have followed more naturalistic but equally iconometric rules of proportion.
By comparison, many tribal cultures employ systems which - for religious or cultural reasons - accord
greater size to certain parts of the body (eg. the head). In addition, the specific siting of a sculpture may
require a special approach to proportionality. For example, a human statue mounted on the top of a tall
structure may require a larger upper body to balance the effects of foreshortening when viewed from
ground level. (The great rococo painter Tiepolo was a master at counteracting this effect when creating
his ceiling frescos).

Scale

This refers, for example, to the need to create a sculpture in tune with the scale of its surroundings. Walk
around any major Gothic cathedral and observe the great variety in the scale of the sculptures which
decorate the doorways, facades and other surfaces. In addition, certain groups of figures, illustrating
Biblical scenes, may contain several different scales: the Virgin Mary and Jesus may be similar in size, while
(eg) the Apostles may be smaller.

Articulation

This describes how sculptural figures (and other forms) are jointed:, either how the differing parts of a
body merge in a single form, or how separate sections come together. The realist French sculptor Auguste
Rodin (1840-1917) created impressionist-style continuity in his figures, in contrast to the earlier Greek
classical sculptors (eg. Polyklitus) and Renaissance sculptors who preferred distinct units of delinated
form.

Balance

In freestanding figurative sculpture, balance involves two principal matters. First, the sculptural body must
be physically stable - easy enough to achieve in a crawling or reclining figure, less easy in a standing statue,
especially if leaning forwards or backwards. If naturally unstable, a base must be used. Second, from a
compositional viewpoint, the statue must project a sense of dynamic or static equilibrium. Without such
harmony, beauty is almost impossible to achieve.

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/sculpture.htm#materials

Types of Sculpture

Relief • A relief sculpture protrudes out of a flat surface, and it’s projection into three- dimensional space
is relatively shallow. • The back of the relief sculpture is not meant to be seen; the entire design can be
understood from a frontal view.

High Relief High Relief: The figures in the sculpture are dramatically raised from the background. They
are sometimes nearly sculpted in the round.

Bas Relief Bas Relief- (Also referred to as low relief.) Characterized by figures that are only slightly raised
from the surface of the background.

Sunken Relief Sunken Relief: (Also known as incised or intaglio relief.) Relief that is created by having an
image carved down below the surface of the sculpture.

CARVING -Carving is the process of creating a sculpture by cutting, chipping away from or otherwise
removing material from a solid mass using a chisel or other carving tool. Because material is taken away
from the mass, carving is known as a subtractive process for creating sculpture. The most common
materials used in carving sculptures are stone and wood. In fact, most sculptures throughout history were
made using this method.

Full Round/Free-Standing Full Round- Sculpture that exists in three-dimensional space. To see all parts
of the work you need to walk around it.It inhabits three- dimensional space in the same way that living
things do. • Sculpture in the round cannot be appreciated from only a single viewpoint but must be circled
and explored.

Modeling is a process in which the artist uses a soft, pliable material such as wax, clay, or plaster that is
gradually built up and shaped until the desired form is attained. Unlike carving, modeling is an additive
method, as the sculptor is continually adding material to the form. ModelingThe material may be
constructed atop some sort of metal frame or skeleton known as an armature to lend support to the soft
material, so it will be able to maintain its shape.

CASTING -Casting is the process of filling a mold with a liquid material or applying a pliable material to a
form and allowing it to harden. In either case, when the material hardens, the resulting form is a cast.

Assemblage- Assembling found objects in unique ways to create a sculpture. A found object is anything
used in a work of art that is recognizable as an object that existed before the sculpture. Examples include
trash or wood scraps.

CONSTRUCTION-Additive processes where existing materials are attached together in some fashion to
create a sculpture. This method of production can be used to describe the use of a number of different
materials and processes including but not limited to: weaving, welding, woodworking, blacksmithing, or
assemblage.
Non-Objective/Abstract -Art that is simplified from something in reality. Art that has no recognizable
subject matter. It is based on the art elements and principles only.

Representational -Art that has recognizable subject matter and is based on reality.

Kinetic Sculpture contains moving parts and can be set in motion by air currents or a motor.

Post Modern- Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of
modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath.

https://www.slideshare.net/rAkerr/types-of-sculpture-72779623

SCULPTURE
Filipino sculptors came to be known in the middle of the 19th century. Classical
Philippine sculpture reached its peak in the works of Guillermo Tolentino (1890-
1976). His best known masterpiece is theBonifacio Monument, which is a group
sculpture composed of numerous figures massed around a central obelisk. The
principal figure is Andres Bonifacio, leader of the revolution against Spain in 1896.
Behind him stands Emilio Jacinto, the brains of the Katipunan. The Bonifacio
Monumen t - completed in 1933 -- marked the apex of Tolentino'’s career.

Bonifacio Monument
Napoleon Abueva (born 1930), one of Tolentino'’s pupils, is one of the pioneering
modernists in sculpture. He used various media. And his stylization bordered on the
abstract as in Allegorical Harpoon, in which the dominant horizantal thrust of the
figure evokes the vitality of primitive forms.

Allegorical Harpoon, Art Philippines

Abueva'’s more famous work is Fredesvinda , which was included in the First
ASEAN Sculpture Symposium held in Fort Canning Hill, Singapore, from March 27
to April 26, 1981.

Fredesvinda, The Asean Sculptures


https://park.org/Philippines/education/sculp.htm
Napoleon Abueva’s long and fruitful career as a sculptor has lent him the official
title of the National Artist of the Philippines, and the unofficial recognition of being
the father of contemporary Filipino sculpture. Abueva’s influence on Filipino art has
been immense, and his skill as a sculptor spans materials as varied as wood, bronze,
coral, and stone. We explore the life and work of the Philippines’ most talented and
recognized modern sculptor.
Napoleon Abueva, Father of modern Filipino sculpture, the National Artist of
the Philippines – and the youngest artist to receive the honor – is credited with leading
the way for the nation’s sculptors, and serves as a living legend of the Filipino art
world. His titles and distinctions are as numerous as his artworks, and as impressive
as his prowess as a sculptor.

But when Abueva, born on the Philippine island of Bohol in 1930, was growing
up, he had little access to the art of sculpture. Reportedly, the only sculpture in his
house was a bust of José Rizal, a national hero, poet and political activist living in the
19th century – an apt reminder of the country’s centuries-long struggle for
independence in a house owned by Abueva’s parents, both of whom were involved in
politics.

It was only later, when Abueva was a schoolboy, that he first noticed the sculptural quality
of clay and began to mold it into the shape of carabao, or water buffalo common in the Philippines. These
first experiments with clay soon turned into a fully fledged dedication to the visual arts as Abueva began
to collect various scholarships throughout the Philippines and abroad. At a pivotal point of his
development as an artist, he was granted a scholarship at Harvard University.

At that point, Abueva could have realistically pursued an entirely different route, choosing a
career in the United States over a less secure situation back in his homeland. But his roots called him back
to the Philippines, and he followed them: he went back to teach at university, and share his skill with
Filipino art students. Back then, and still now, what guides him are the unshakable beliefs that art should
be accessible to everyone, and that basic education must be accompanied by an education in culture:
‘that’s the best thing in life – to be taught about art early’.

Abueva’s own style is at the same time incredibly varied and instantly recognizable – many of his
sculptures that now sit in public places in the Philippines and abroad convey a sense of realism with their
intimately physical presence, lifelike forms and evocative gestures. For these, Abueva gets his inspiration
from a range of sources, including popular mythology, history and day-to-day life. It is this aspect of his
work that betrays an ongoing affinity with the work and style of his mentor, Guillermo Tolentino, whose
oeuvre was monumental in its reverence for the classical school and ancient Greek sculpture.

But, when Abueva polished his stones to create works that, at first, resembled
those of Tolentino’s, he also polished his own vision of sculpture and fine-tuned a style
that jumps from abstraction to representation. While his realistic figures represent the
better known and more widely seen aspect of his work, Abueva’s abstract sculpture
demonstrates an active engagement with the ambiguity of representation and
testifies to his talent. Indeed, perhaps his morphing styles and techniques, which span
wood, metal, stone and many other media, retain their spirit of authenticity because
of the artist’s fundamental belief that “a good piece of art transcends any period and
has perpetual value.” The medium, style and technique matter little, compared to an
underlying sense of beauty or goodness.
The theme of motherhood, or the archetype of the mother, is present
throughout his oeuvre, and serves as a good point of comparison for his varied
techniques. One of these, a bronze statuette, represents a mother kneeling, and
raising her child high up above her head in a gesture of exaltation, emboldened still
further by the natural shine of the material – the scene is resplendent and conveys the
pride of motherhood and relationship between mother and child in all their glory.

Childbirth (2001), another realistic piece made from bronze, is an honest and
simple representation of labour, to the point where its straightforward frankness
becomes almost uncomfortable to the viewer as the woman in the sculpture holds her
newborn in her right hand, the left still holding on to the umbilical cord. On the other
hand, one of Abueva’s most widely known sculptures sharing this theme, titled Mother
and Child (1960s), is a confident example of Abueva’s whimsical departures from
Realism.

The position represented is strikingly similar to the bronze statuette of a mother


holding her child above her head, but the style and form are completely different.
Roughly hewn from stone, the sculpture combines straight lines (legs, arms and feet)
with curves (buttocks, breasts, back), conveying a powerful voluptuousness and
sensuality, both of which hint at the natural beauty of childbirth and motherhood.
Inherent to the piece is a seeming nod towards the work of Romanian Constantin
Brancusi, and more specifically his famed The Kiss (1907), which similarly combines
the sexual nature of the curve with contrasting straight lines. Abueva’s admiration for
Brancusi is a widely known fact, and shines through much of his abstract work.
But Abueva’s sculptures, in addition to representing his unique vision,
frequently seem to serve a specific function. Somewhat humbly, he insists that
“sculpture is actually manual labor,” and infuses much of his work with a practical
purpose. Much of it stands proudly, almost heroically, in public places around the
country, and even in the UN Headquarters in New York. The surprising Nine Muses of
the Arts, located at the UP Diliman campus, is a tribute to the arts, from the traditional
media of painting and music to new media: cinema and computer art. The function of
his public works lies in the way they inspire respect for previous generations and
remind the viewers of the past, of heroism, of the moments that made history, while
keeping a watchful eye over the present.
But, when Abueva polished his stones to create works that, at first, resembled
those of Tolentino’s, he also polished his own vision of sculpture and fine-tuned a style
that jumps from abstraction to representation. While his realistic figures represent the
better known and more widely seen aspect of his work, Abueva’s abstract sculpture
demonstrates an active engagement with the ambiguity of representation and
testifies to his talent. Indeed, perhaps his morphing styles and techniques, which span
wood, metal, stone and many other media, retain their spirit of authenticity because
of the artist’s fundamental belief that “a good piece of art transcends any period and
has perpetual value.” The medium, style and technique matter little, compared to an
underlying sense of beauty or goodness.

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