Films on Sculpture

Abstract

Short of a field trip, the best way to teach sculpture is with cinematic visual aids. The flow of images and the inherent motion of changing camera distance and angle simulate the live three-dimensional experience of sculpture better than a series of front, side, and back view slide reproductions. The cinema can also reproduce the movement of light, so important in rendering the material of sculpture—the shifting reflections in Brancusi's metals, for example, or the glowing transparencies in Pevsner's plastics. Calder, of course, cannot be taught in the classroom at all without the aid of film. The contemporary light sculptors are also inaccessible.Beyond these obvious necessities, however, there are some more subtle cinematic visual aids incorporated in contemporary films. The split-screen is used for making three-dimensional comparisons, multiple exposures capture some of the dynamic feeling of kinetic sculpture, and time-lapse photography provides a glimpse into the workings of a sculptor's mind which may someday prove as revealing as the notebooks of painters. But even a simple, low-budget film can make a statement as in the case of some of the films cited below.