Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works.[Elsen, Albert E. (2003). Rodin's Art: The Rodin Collection of the Iris & Gerald B. Cantor Center for the Visual Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. .][" Rodin to Now: Modern Sculpture", Palm Springs Desert Museum.] He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void".[Giedion-Welcker, Carola, ‘’Contemporary Sculpture: An Evolution in Volume and Space, A revised and Enlarged Edition’’, Faber and Faber, London, 1961, p. X] Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".[Atkins, Robert, ‘’ARTSPOKE: A Guide to Modern Ideas, Movements and Buzzwords, 1848-1944’’ Abbeville Publishers, New York, 1993, p.140]
Modernism sculpture movements include Art Nouveau, Cubist sculpture, Geometric abstraction, De Stijl, Suprematism, Constructivism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Formalism, Abstract expressionism, Pop-Art, Minimalism, Postminimalism, Land art, Conceptual art, and Installation art among others.
Modernism
The modern sculpture movement can be said to begin at the
Auguste Rodin exhibit at the Universal Exhibition held in Paris in 1900. At this event Rodin showed his
Burghers of Calais,
Balzac,
Victor Hugo statues, and the exhibition included the first public showing of his
Gates of Hell which included
The Thinker.
[Curtis, Penelope, ‘’Sculpture: 1900-1945’’, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999, p. 1][Elsen, Albert L., ‘’Rodin’s Gates of Hell’’, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1960 p. 77]
Cubist sculpture, in the early 20th century, was a style that developed in parallel with Cubism, and the formal experiments of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Beginning around 1909 and evolving through the early 1920s cubist artists developed new means of constructing works of art using collage, sculptural assemblage using disparate materials and traditional sculpture making from plaster and clay molds. Some sources name Picasso's 1909 bronze Head of a Woman as the first cubist sculpture.[Grace Glueck, " Picasso Revolutionized Sculpture Too", New York Times, exhibition review 1982, Retrieved July 20, 2010.]
Artists like Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918), whose career was cut short by his death in military service, and Alexander Archipenko, who'd arrived in Paris in 1908 and whose 1912 Walking Woman were very quick to follow Braque and Picasso's lead.[Robert Rosenblum, "Cubism", Readings in Art History 2 (1976), Seuphor, Sculpture of this Century][Edith Balas, Joseph Csaky: A Pioneer of Modern Sculpture, American Philosophical Society, 1998.]
In the early 20th century, during his period of cubist innovation, Pablo Picasso revolutionized the art of sculpture when he began creating his constructions fashioned by combining disparate objects and materials into one constructed piece of sculpture; Picasso reinvented the art of sculpture with his innovative use of constructing a work in three dimensions with disparate material, the sculptural equivalent of the collage in two-dimensional art. Just as collage was a radical development in two-dimensional art; so was construction a radical development in three-dimensional sculpture. The advent of Surrealism led to things occasionally being described as "sculpture" that would not have been so previously, such as "involuntary sculpture" in several senses, including coulage. In later years Picasso became a prolific pottery, leading, with interest in historic pottery from around the world, to a revival of ceramic art, with figures such as George E. Ohr and subsequently Peter Voulkos, Kenneth Price, and Robert Arneson. Marcel Duchamp originated the use of the "found object" (French: objet trouvé) or readymade with pieces such as Fountain (1917).
Similarly, the work of Constantin Brâncuși at the beginning of the century paved the way for later abstract sculpture. In revolt against the naturalism of Rodin and his late 19th-century contemporaries, Brâncuși distilled subjects down to their essences as illustrated by the elegantly refined forms of his Bird in Space series (1924). These elegantly refined forms became synonymous with 20th-century sculpture.[Edward Lucie-Smith, Visual arts in the 20th century, Edition illustrated, Publisher Harry N. Abrams, 1997, Original from the University of Michigan, , ] In 1927, Brâncuși won a lawsuit against the U.S. customs authorities who attempted to value his sculpture as raw metal. The suit led to legal changes permitting the importation of abstract art free of duty.["Constantin Brâncuși", Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008 http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Constantin_Brancusi.aspx]
Brâncuși's impact, with his vocabulary of reduction and abstraction, is seen throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and exemplified by artists such as Gaston Lachaise, Sir Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Ásmundur Sveinsson, Julio González, Pablo Serrano, Jacques Lipchitz[The Oxford dictionary of American art and artists, Author Ann Lee Morgan, Publisher Oxford University Press, 2007, Original from the University of Michigan,, ] and also by the 1940s abstract sculpture was impacted and expanded by Alexander Calder, Len Lye, Jean Tinguely, and Frederick Kiesler who were pioneers of Kinetic art.
Post-1950s
Since the 1950s
Modernist trends in sculpture both abstract and figurative have dominated the public imagination and the popularity of Modernist sculpture had sidelined the traditional approach.
Pablo Picasso was commissioned to make a
maquette for a huge, -high
public art to be built in
Chicago, known usually as the
Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and somewhat controversial. What the figure represents is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman, or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks in downtown Chicago, was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of the city.
In the late 1950s and the 1960s, abstract sculptors began experimenting with a wide array of new materials and different approaches to creating their work. Surrealist imagery, anthropomorphic abstraction, new materials and combinations of new energy sources and varied surfaces and objects became characteristic of much new modernist sculpture. Collaborative projects with landscape designers, architects, and landscape architects expanded the outdoor site and contextual integration. Artists such as Isamu Noguchi, David Smith, Alexander Calder, Jean Tinguely, Richard Lippold, George Rickey, Louise Bourgeois, and Louise Nevelson came to characterize the look of modern sculpture.
By the 1960s Abstract expressionism, Geometric abstraction and Minimalism, which reduces sculpture to its most essential and fundamental features, predominated. Some works of the period are: the Cubi works of David Smith, and the welded steel works of Sir Anthony Caro,[National Air and Space Museum Receives "Ascent" Sculpture for display at Udvar-Hazy Center [4]] led contemporary abstract sculpture in new directions. During the 1960s and 1970s figurative sculpture by pop artists and modernist artists in stylized forms by artists such as: George Segal, Claes Oldenburg, Arman, Leonard Baskin, Ernest Trova, Marisol Escobar, Paul Thek, Manuel Neri and others became popular. In the 1980s several artists, among others, exploring figurative sculpture were Robert Graham in a classic articulated style and Fernando Botero bringing his painting's "oversized figures" into monumental sculptures. Ceramic art sculpture as practiced by Pablo Picasso, Peter Voulkos, Stephen De Staebler, Kenneth Price, and others became an important idiom of modern sculpture in the 20th century.
Gallery of modern sculpture
File:Auguste Rodin, The three shades (Les Trois Ombres), for the top of The Gates of Hell, before 1886, plaster.jpg|Auguste Rodin, The Three Shades, before 1886, plaster, 97 x 91.3 x 54.3 cm. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the shades, i.e. the souls of the damned, stand at the entrance to The Gates of Hell, pointing to an unequivocal inscription, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”. Rodin assembled three identical figures that seem to be turning around the same point.[ Rodin Museum, The Three Shades]
File:Paul Gauguin, 1894, Oviri (Sauvage), partially glazed stoneware, 75 x 19 x 27 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.jpg|Paul Gauguin, 1894, Oviri (Sauvage), partially glazed stoneware, 75 x 19 x 27 cm, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
File:The Thinker, Rodin.jpg|Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, 1902, Musée Rodin, Paris
File:Constantin Brancusi, 1907-08, The Kiss, Exhibited at the Armory Show and published in the Chicago Tribune, 25 March 1913..jpg|Constantin Brâncuși, 1907–08, The Kiss, Exhibited at the Armory Show and published in the Chicago Tribune, 25 March 1913
File:Constantin Brancusi, Portrait of Mlle Pogany, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia.jpg|Constantin Brâncuși, Portrait of Mademoiselle Pogany, 1912, White marble; limestone block, Philadelphia Museum of Art, exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show
File:Alexander Archipenko, 1910-11, Negress (La Negresse), Armory Show catalogue photo.jpg|Alexander Archipenko, 1910–11, Negress (La Negresse), Armory Show catalogue photo
File:Antoine Bourdelle, 1910-12, La Musique, bas-relief, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris DSC09325.jpg|Antoine Bourdelle, 1910–12, La Musique, bas-relief, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris
File:Joseph Csaky, 1911-1912, Deux Femme (Two Women), plaster lost, photo Galerie René Reichard, Frankfurt, 72dpi.jpg|Joseph Csaky, 1911–1912, Groupe de femmes (Groupe de trois femmes, Groupe de trois personnages), plaster lost, Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, and Salon des Indépendants, 1913, Paris
File:Modis2.jpg|Amedeo Modigliani, Female Head, 1911/1912, Tate. Paul Guillaume, introduced Modigliani to Constantin Brâncuși. He was Brâncuși's disciple for a year.[ the Art Story][Klein, Mason, et al., Modigliani: Beyond the Myth. The Jewish Museum and Yale University Press, 2004.]
File:Otto Gutfreund, Violoncelliste, c. 1912-13.jpg|Otto Gutfreund, Violoncelliste ( Cellist), 1912–13[ Otto Gutfreund - exhibition in the Municipal House (Czech Radio)]
File:Les amants II by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, 1913, Musée national d'art moderne.JPG|Raymond Duchamp-Villon, 1913, Les amants II, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris
File:Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, 1914, Boy with a Coney (Boy with a rabbit), marble.jpg|Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, 1914, Boy with a Coney (Boy with a rabbit), marble
File:Marcel Duchamp, 1917, Fountain, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz.jpg|Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
File:Joseph Csaky, Tête, ca 1920 (front and side view) limestone, 60 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Holland.tiff|Joseph Csaky, Tête, ca.1920 (front and side view), limestone, 60 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
File:Aristide Maillol la nuit 1902-1.jpg|Aristide Maillol, The Night, 1920, Stuttgart
File:JacobEpstein DayAndNight.jpg|Jacob Epstein, Day and Night, carved for the London Underground's headquarters, 1928.
File:Het treurende ouderpaar - Käthe Kolwitz.JPG|Käthe Kollwitz, The Grieving Parents, 1932, World War I memorial (for her son Peter), Vladslo German war cemetery
File:Jacques Lipchitz, Birth of the Muses (1944-1950), MIT Campus.JPG|Jacques Lipchitz, Birth of the Muses, (1944–1950)
File:Barbara Hepworth monolyth empyrean.jpg|Barbara Hepworth, Monolith-Empyrean, 1953
File:Calder-redmobile.jpg|Alexander Calder, Red Mobile, 1956, Painted sheet metal and metal rods, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
File:RuthAsawa Untitled DeYoungMuseum.jpg|alt=|Ruth Asawa, Untitled (1950s-60s; exact date unknown) at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco.
File:John Chamberlain at the Hirshhorn.jpg|John Chamberlain, S, 1959, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC.
File:2004-09-07 1800x2400 chicago picasso.jpg|Pablo Picasso, Chicago Picasso, 1967, Chicago, Illinois
File:104 0422.JPG|Isamu Noguchi, Heimar, 1968, at the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel
File:George Rickey Ri10.gif|George Rickey, Four Squares in Geviert, 1969, terrace of the New National Gallery, Berlin, Germany, Rickey is considered a Kinetic art
File:Alexander Calder Crinkly avec disc Rouge 1973-1.jpg|Alexander Calder, Crinkly avec disc rouge, 1973, Schlossplatz, Stuttgart
File:Atmos n Environ XII.JPG|Louise Nevelson, Atmosphere and Environment XII, 1970–1973, Philadelphia Museum of Art
File:Caro 1974.jpg|Sir Anthony Caro, Black Cover Flat, 1974, steel, Tel Aviv Museum of Art
File:Cristaux.Jean Yves Lechevallier.jpg|Jean-Yves Lechevallier, Cristaux, Homage to Béla Bartók, Paris, 1980
File:Dona i Ocell.JPG|Joan Miró, Woman and Bird, 1982, Barcelona, Spain
File:Karlheinz Oswald Hildegard von Bingen, Eibingen.JPG|Karlheinz Oswald, Hildegard of Bingen, 1998, bronze, in front of Eibingen Abbey
File:Spider. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.JPG|Louise Bourgeois, Maman, 1999, outside Museo Guggenheim
File:Iron Man - Antony Gormley Statue - Victoria Square - Birmingham - 2005-10-14.jpg|Antony Gormley, , 2005, in Victoria Square, Birmingham
File:Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 2015 (37171698741).jpg|alt=|Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 2015, in Montreal.
File:"Etudes" by Karen LaMonte.jpg|alt=|Karen LaMonte, Etudes, 2017, at the Hunter Museum of Art in Tennessee.
Contemporary movements
Site specific and environmental art works are represented by artists:
Andy Goldsworthy, Walter De Maria,
[ Guggenheim museum ] Richard Long,
Richard Serra, Robert Irwin,
[ Dia Foundation] George Rickey, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude-led contemporary abstract sculpture in new directions. Artists created environmental sculpture on expansive sites in the "land art in the American West" group of projects. These
land art or "earth art" environmental scale sculpture works exemplified by artists such as
Robert Smithson,
Michael Heizer,
James Turrell (
Roden Crater).
Eva Hesse,
Sol LeWitt,
Jackie Winsor,
Keith Sonnier, and
Bruce Nauman, among others were pioneers of
Postminimalist sculpture.
Also during the 1960s and 1970s artists as diverse as Eduardo Paolozzi, Chryssa, Walter De Maria, Claes Oldenburg, George Segal, Edward Kienholz, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Duane Hanson, and John DeAndrea explored abstraction, imagery, and figuration through video art, environment, light sculpture, and installation art in new ways.
Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Works include One and Three Chairs, 1965, by Joseph Kosuth, and An Oak Tree, 1973, by Michael Craig-Martin, and those of Joseph Beuys and James Turrell among others.[ Tate]
Postmodern art occupies a broader field of activities than Modernist sculpture. Rosalind Krauss identified sculpture in the expanded field, a series of oppositions around the work's relationship to its environment that describe the various sculpture-like activities that are postmodern sculpture, creating a theoretical explanation that could adequately fit the developments of Land art, Minimalism, and site-specific art into the category of "sculpture":
-
Site-Construction: the intersection of landscape and architecture
-
Axiomatic Structures: the combination of architecture and not-architecture
-
Marked sites: the combination of landscape and not-landscape
-
Sculpture: intersection of not-landscape and not-architecture
File:Spiral-jetty-from-rozel-point.png| Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson from atop Rozel Point, in mid-April 2005
Image:Umbrella Project1991 10 27.jpg|Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Umbrellas 1991, (Japan) [ NY Times, Umbrella Crushes Woman]
File:South Bank Circle by Richard Long, Tate Liverpool.jpg|Richard Long, South Bank Circle, 1991 Tate Liverpool, England
File:Public contemporary-light-art-sculpture-manfred-kielnhofer-illumination.jpg| Time guards / Madonna, light sculpture by Manfred Kielnhofer at the Light Art Biennale Austria 2010
Minimalism
File:Tonysmith freeride sculpture.jpg|Tony Smith, Free Ride, 1962, Museum of Modern Art
File:UntitledGoldBox1964.jpg|Larry Bell, Untitled 1964, bismuth, chromium, gold, and rhodium on gold-plated brass; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
File:Judd Muenster.JPG|Donald Judd, Untitled 1977, Münster
File:RichardSerra Fulcrum2.jpg|Richard Serra, Fulcrum 1987, 55-ft-high freestanding sculpture of Cor-ten near Liverpool Street station
File:DonaldֹJudd IMJ.JPG|Donald Judd, Untitled, 1991, Israel Museum Art Garden
Postminimalism
Image:Rachel whitereadwien holocaust mahnmal wien judenplatz.jpg|Rachel Whiteread, Holocaust Monument 2000 Judenplatz, Vienna
File:TWUP Jerusalem 190810 1.JPG|Anish Kapoor, Turning the World Upside Down, Israel Museum, 2010
File:The Spire-doyler79.jpg|The Spire of Dublin officially titled the Monument of Light, stainless steel, 121.2 metres (398 ft), the world's tallest sculpture
Contemporary genres
Modern sculpture is often created outdoors, as in environmental art and environmental sculpture, often in full view of spectators.
Light sculpture and site-specific art also often make use of the environment. Site-specific artwork is intentionally created for a specific place. The term was first used in the mid-1970s by sculptors Patricia Johanson,
Dennis Oppenheim,
Athena Tacha, and others.
[Peter Frank, "Site Sculpture", Art News, Oct. 1975] Site specific environmental art was described as a movement by architectural critic Catherine Howett
[Catherine Howett, New Directions in Environmental Art, Landscape Architecture, Jan. 1977] and
art critic Lucy Lippard.
[Lucy Lippard, Art Outdoors, In and Out of the Public Domain, Studio International, March–April 1977] Land art, Earthworks, (
Earth art) is an
art movement that makes specific use of the real landscape to form works of sculpture that are located in and make use of
nature generally in altered form. It is a form of sculpture created in nature, from nature, using materials found in nature like dirt,
soil, rocks, logs, branches,
leaf, and
water, as well as man made materials like Chain-link fencing,
barbed wire,
rope,
rubber,
glass,
concrete,
metal,
Asphalt concrete, and mineral
pigments.
Ice sculpture is a form of ephemeral sculpture that uses ice as the raw material. It is popular in China, Japan, Canada, Sweden, and Russia. Ice sculptures feature decoratively in some cuisines, especially in Asia. Kinetic sculptures are sculptures that are designed to move, which include mobiles.
are usually carved out of a single block of snow about 6 to on each side and weighing about 20–30 tons. The snow is densely packed into a form after having been produced by artificial means or collected from the ground after a snowfall.
take the form of indoor sound installations, outdoor installations such as , automatons, or be more or less near conventional musical instruments. Sound sculpture is often site-specific. Art toys have become another format for contemporary artists since the late 1990s, such as those produced by Takashi Murakami and Kid Robot, designed by Michael Lau, or hand-made by Michael Leavitt.["Art Army by Michael Leavitt", hypediss.com [12], December 13, 2006.]
See also
External links
