History Of Sculpture Research Articles

Notas sobre escultura e Notas sobre escultura, parte 2

The articles “Notes on Sculpture” and “Notes on Sculpture, Part 2” by Robert Morris mark a milestone in the history of sculpture, challenging traditional notions of form and function. The emphasis on basic geometric elements and the understanding of sculpture as a spatial event, rather than a static object, transformed artistic discourse. By proposing an approach centered on the viewer’s experience and the work’s interaction with the environment, Morris paved the way for Minimalism. Through his reflections, the artist significantly expanded the possibilities of sculpture, influencing contemporary art production and criticism in a decisive manner.

The Muse of Zenon: from Syracuse to the Museum of Guadalajara

AbstractThis article traces a statue, which Zenon of Aphrodisias carved, from Syracuse to its discovery at the Palace of Cogolludo in 2007. The study of this statue of the Muse Euterpe broadly demonstrates the appreciation for a figure from the classical world to Early Modern Europe and focuses attention on two understudied moments in the history of sculpture. It shows that Zenon carved the figure in the 4th c. CE, and its story reveals new connections between sculptors of Aphrodisias and specific patrons of the period. The statue's subsequent history attests to the high regard for ancient art and epigraphy in the Iberian Peninsula in 1500–1700. Since the statue probably belonged to Luis de la Cerda, ninth Duke of Medinaceli, it draws attention to a remarkable patron and a neglected aspect of Spanish cultural history.

The Paradox of Permanence

This article considers sculpture parks through the lens of temporality, focusing on select outdoor artist projects of the 1970s and 1980s: a permanent installation by Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas; and ephemeral works by Alice Aycock, Mary Miss, Jody Pinto, and Michelle Stuart at Artpark, in Lewiston, New York, and Manhattan’s Battery Park City landfill. While Judd intended to ensure permanence for his works, Aycock, Miss, Pinto, and Stuart created important early works that lasted for shorter periods of time and endure only through documentation, or “ephemera.” These examples, I argue, illuminate permanence’s inherent paradox: sculpture parks and the art in them must change to stay the same under fluctuating environmental, institutional, and social conditions. Placed in sculpture parks distinguished by varying relationships to matters of duration, each artwork discussed in this article also engages forms of enclosure—especially walls, natural or manmade—and openness to heighten a viewer’s situated sense of space and time. Crystallized in artworks consisting of crumbling walls, punctured fences, and dissolving paper, the paradox of permanence requires critical rubrics that can bring permanent and ephemeral work together on a spectrum of impermanence, enabling scholars to generate a fuller and more inclusive history of sculpture, “parked.”

The Illusionist

The Illusionist

부여 군수리사지 유구와 유물에 관한 재검토

This report attempts to arrange the research history of the major remains and relics excavated from the Temple Site in Gunsu-ri, Buyeo, with a view to promoting inter-academy studies on the results of the excavation of the site, which dates from the Sabi Period of Baekje (538-660). Chapter II introduces the background to the discovery of the temple site in Gunsu-ri, which was the first such site to be found in Buyeo during the Japanese colonial era, and its investigation process, and then summarizes the report that was published after the excavation and investigation, the academic report published after 1945, and the database material and re-written report on the excavated relics. Chapter III describes the research results and the issues related to the remains found at the center of the temple, including the main hall and wooden pagoda sites. Regarding the main hall site, this chapter introduces the issues related to a double stylobate, a foundation stone (found between the top and bottom stylobates), and a stylobate made of roof tiles; while, regarding the wooden pagoda, it explains the importance of studying the method of “mounding” the foundation soil, and discusses the presence of a steep road (to transport stones), an underground-style foundation stone (which supported the main pillar), and the method of installing the reliquaries. In addition, it explains which kinds of building remains need to be clarified and compared to other temples in Buyeo. Chapter IV covers the research results and issues related to the major relics excavated from this site in terms of art history, archaeology, and the history of architecture. In particular, it explains the significance of two Buddhist statues found at the site, namely the Pyrophyllite Stone Seated Buddha and the Gilt-bronze Standing Bodhisattva, in terms of the history of sculpture in Korea; the importance of leaf decoration fragments made of clay; and the importance and issues related to convex roof-tiles and concave roof-tiles in terms of general roof tile studies in ancient East Asia. The temple site in Gunsu-ri exhibits the typical characteristics of a Buddhist temple that was built during the Sabi period of Baekje, and whose major remains and relics represent the universality of Baekje’s temples.

A Captive History of Sculpture: Abducting Italian Fountains in the Early Modern Spanish Mediterranean

A Captive History of Sculpture: Abducting Italian Fountains in the Early Modern Spanish Mediterranean

Women and the Modelling of Victorian Sculptural Discourse

This article focuses on a selection of nineteenth-century female art critics and connoisseurs who were prominent art writers of their day but whose contribution to the critical history of sculpture has since fallen out of view. I argue that women modelled a sculptural discourse that was distinctive, often personally driven and biographically inflected, and gendered. They deployed various forms of life writing – biography, autobiography, memoir, personal reminiscence, Bildungsroman, letters, gallery journals – as a vehicle for connoisseurship about sculpture. Cosmopolitan in outlook, they understood the importance of personal networks in both the production and the reception of art. Furthermore, female writers responded to the corporeal connections between viewers, models and figurative sculpture in their work. Writing about the three-dimensional representation of the human body in sculptural form enabled women to comment obliquely on issues such as female creativity, sexuality and education.

Edward Wittig (On the Possible Paths of Sculpture)

Originally published in Russian in 1913, this essay considers the work of the Polish sculptor Edward Wittig (1879–1941) in relation to the broad history of sculpture from antiquity to the early twentieth century. The essay is divided into three parts. Part I reflects on “possible paths of sculpture” through Rodin and the Greco-Roman tradition of sculpture. Part II considers Aristide Maillol, the influence of Egyptian art, and Edward Wittig. Part III further reflects on modern sculptors, such as Constantin Meunier, and Egyptian sculpture in relation to the cult of the machine and modern clothing.

Acts of Stillness: Statues, Performativity, and Passive Resistance

The idea for this essay was sparked by reading Barbara Johnson's Envy (1998), in which she interrogated the canon of Western poetry and its persistent idealization of female silence.1 Muteness, she argued, became a repository of aesthetic value in poems such as John Keats's Ode On a Grecian Urn (1819) because of the ways that the inability to speak served to facilitate patriarchal power.2 In the tradition she critiques, a lack of access to speech is upheld as a precursor to the judgment of beauty. When reading through Johnson's many cases of the ways in which muteness incited the desire to control, to ravish, or to protect, was struck by an analogous feature in the history of sculpture. If, in Johnson's formulation, muteness becomes the condition that both sparks and authorizes rape, paternalism, and objectification, then how does muteness operate in relation to surrogates for human beings that stand before us and do not speak? Muteness is a special feature of poetry and prose because of those media's direct relation to language, and began to question how, for sculpture, the related and more fundamental term is stillness.What follows is a proposition for reassessing the history of sculpture with a view toward characterizing a wider range of viewers' reactions to statues. In this, consider the sculptural encounter as a theater of power relations between active viewers and passive statues. This dynamic is fueled by the bodily and spatial engagements of the viewer or artist with the three-dimensional representation of the human body, most pointedly at a one-to-one scale, that stands before them. My emphasis will be on statues in the post-Enlightenment tradition of European and American art, with an emphasis on the history of modern sculpture, but one could ask analogous, if differently inflected, questions of other times and places. have pitched my argument toward recurring patterns in the history of sculpture, and have avoided in-depth case studies in preference for a more wide-ranging and general assessment of the effects of statues acting on us by standing there, motionless. The performativity of statues' passive resistance has underwritten the aesthetics of sculpture, and a focus on stillness can illuminate the ethical contours and recurring historical themes of the sculptural encounter.* * *A three-dimensional figurative image-that is, a statue-both depicts a body in space and is a body-in-space. can look at a statue of an athlete, of Apollo, of a fieldworker, of a politician, of a heroine, or of a fawn and see it in its representational distance. am confronted by an image of something not actually present, perhaps never seen in everyday life, or maybe recognized as a character from books, poems, dreams, or the televised news. At the same time that it functions in this way as a three-dimensional image, the statue is also present for me as a physical object displacing space with its volume. It stands, sits, or lies in front of me. can touch it. do touch it. walk around it. move up to it. walk away from it.Sculpture differs fundamentally from the vast majority of twodimensional, pictorial media in its coextensiveness as depicted image and depicting object. A statue can be equivalent in volume to the represented body, sharing its proportions and construction. Jean-Paul Sartre saw this as the paradox of the statue: I have real relations with an illusion; or, if you prefer, my true distance from the block of marble has been confused with my imaginary distance from [the image it represents].3 Because of this paradox, the address of a statue is necessarily corporeal, spatial, and relational. Sartre saw the statue as dependfing] on the relativity of the angles from which it is viewed. As for the spectator, he takes the imaginary for the real and the real for the imaginary.4 The situation the statue presents is more akin to an encounter with another person than any twodimensional representation could offer. …

Desiderio da Settignano: sculptor of Renaissance Florence

This long-awaited monograph is dedicated to one of the most noted masters of Florentine Renaissance sculpture. da (ca. 1429/30-1464), like most sculptors before Michelangelo, was long overlooked by scholars, who focused their attention almost exclusively on Donatello, the great master of the quattrocento. And yet Desiderio, who may have begun his career in Donatello's workshop, became one of the most original and influential sculptors in Florence. His impact is clear in the numerous replicas of his Virgin and Child reliefs as well as copies of the Bambino in the Basilica of San Lorenzo. His work, showing an early interest in sfumato, may even have influenced the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci.Sweetness, strength, and luminosity are the principal qualities of Desiderio's oeuvre. The expressive power, emotion, lightness, and grace visible in his work affirm the place he now occupies not only in the history of sculpture but also in the history of art. This retrospective catalogue devoted to Desiderio da Settignano - published in conjunction with the exhibition organised by the Musee du Louvre in Paris, the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington - invites us to discover or rediscover one of the most important sculptors of the Florentine Renaissance.

The Cast Collection at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna

The Viennese collection of plaster casts at the Academy of Fine Arts (Academie der Bildende Kunst) dates to the beginning of this institution in the late seventeenth century. In 1851 a part of the collection was first opened to the public and therefore, besides its use as study material for the Academy's students, its second task became the representation of the history of sculpture. In the course of the nineteenth century the taste changed in favor of Renaissance art and therefore some works by Michelangelo were acquired including the Moses. From 1885 onwards Sigmund Freud frequently visited the collection. The architect of the new Academy building at the Schillerplatz—still the site of today's Academy—Theophil Hansen, designated the central hall and eight rooms on the ground floor to house the Museum of Plaster Casts (Gipsmuseum) which was opened in January 1878 and was going to be the biggest museum for plastic works in the history of the city until its closing and clearance in 1935. The article is focused not only on the history but also on the presentation of the collection especially at Freud's time.

John Marshall: Dealer in Antiquities and Collector of Photographs

For some years I have been trying to reconstruct the extensive and historically important photographic collections of the British School at Rome, one of which consists of28 boxes containing photographs of mainly antique sculpture. All that appeared to be known about this particular collection was that it had belonged to a dealer in sculpture. The photographs appeared not to belong with those of the art historian and archaeologist, the first authority writing in English on Roman sculpture, Mrs Arthur Strong (Eugénie Sellers) (1843–1943), who was Assistant Director of the British School at Rome from 1905 to 1925. I had become interested in her collections not long before and had thus wandered into the history of sculpture. I began to reassemble material from this dealer, which had migrated into other collections. At the same time, I became intrigued by the quantity of items marked ‘suspicious’ or ‘forgery’. Some time before, I had come across a wooden drawer containing file cards that turned out to be the annotated index to the photographs. On a dirt-stained piece of paper glued to the front of the drawer, in tiny letters, appeared the name ‘John Marshall’. I was later to find corroborating evidence in one of the boxes. This was a letter dated 9 April 1926, from Gisela M. A. Richter, Curator of Classical Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 1910 to 1948, to a Julius Epple of Switzerland. The letter referred to John Marshall as being the Metropolitan Museum's agent in Europe. Marshall was, I thought, no ordinary dealer. Another search delivered several boxes of glass plate negatives. It was as if John Marshall (1862–1928) had decided suddenly to wake up.1

What History of Sculpture in the 20th Century?

Titles delivered in 2002 confirm the sustained interest in studies on sculpture. From the viewpoint of the consolidation of knowledge, we now have a fine catalogue raisonne of the sculpted work of Fenosa (1899-1988), a protege of Picasso and Cocteau, author of the Tempete pourchassee par le beau temps (1957), set in the Boulevard Saint-Jacques in Paris in 1978-1979, and of the Monument a Pau Casals (1976-1977) erected in Barcelona in 1982. His phantasmagorias, his style that conjures up the s...

Michelangelo: the Medici Chapel

When Michelangelo left Florence for Rome in 1534, the Medici tombs were unfinished, but there was no question of another sculptor being brought in to complete them. They were already icons of artistic perfection, which it would be sacrilege for anyone else to touch. That eminence they retain to this day. The two seated Medici Dukes and the reclining figures of Night, Day, Dawn and Dusk are among the most famous sculptures in the world, endlessly copied and universally recognisable. Yet however familiar these images are, this collection of photographs by one of Italy's leading photographers of sculpture allows us to view these works of art in detail. It is now possible to actually imagine Michelangelo's chisel at work, and to marvel afresh at the sheer physical power that made him almost superhuman for his contemporaries. Bruno Santi, Director of the Medici Chapel from 1982 to 1992, and the art historians James Beck and Antonio Paolucci provide the historical background to the Chapel, essentially the Medici's family mausoleum, and explain how the concept changed over the 15 years Michelangelo worked on it. Originally envisaged as commemorative for members of the family, it was eventually confined to only two - who would now be forgotten but for their monuments. They make the little building that contains them as important in the history of Mannerist architecture as the figures are in the history of sculpture: indeed, no other location, not even the Sistine Chapel, captures the essence of Michelangelo's genius so intensely.

The Buildings of St Mary's Abbey, York and Their Destruction

St Mary's Abbey, York was one of the richest Benedictine monasteries in the country and its buildings reflected its wealth and status. The quality of its architectural remains is of the highest order, and the collection of medieval sculpture from the site is outstanding. Indeed, the set of life-size column-figures brought to light in 1829 must count as one of the most exciting discoveries ever made in the field of the history of sculpture in this country. Nor is the later history of the site any less interesting. At the Dissolution it became the seat of the King's Council in the North and acquired the name of King's Manor, which part of the complex retains to this day. The principal monastic buildings came down within a few years, and their demolition can be followed in considerable detail, as we shall see; but the centuries of Crown ownership prevented the division of the property until the nineteenth century, and it remains one of the best-preserved urban (albeit extra-mural) monastic precincts in Britain.

La sculpture dans la « querelle de l’Art Sacré » (1950-1960)

Sculpture in the « quarrel of Sacred Art » (1950-1960). The renewal of sacred art in France after 1945 is marked by a major quarrel between the partisans of modernism and the upholders of tradition (1950-1952). Sculpture plays a significant part in this quarrel. But this art did not enjoy more than a modest influence at the time : only a small number of sculptures were realised, and these sculptures were mostly small in size. Contemporary historical studies pay but litde attention to them. Several of these sculptures, however, realised in a modern idiom, gave rise to lively scandals which are examined in this article as an ensemble : Richier’s Christ at Assy, V. Székely’s Calvary at Fossé, Gilioli’s Christ at Mulhouse and Chavignier’s at Neuilly. All these examples lead to forms of iconoclasm (destruction or removal of the works) which neither the painting nor the architecture of the time witnessed. The particular fate reserved for sculpture is to be explained by the religious character generally recognised fot this art form during our century, and by the history of sculpture between the two wars, a history which hardly prepared sensibilities to welcome modern sculptures. These difficulties also help us understand the prudence of sculptors in the world of sacred art after 1960.

As for the Gods of the Heathen

In the closing lines of The Gothic Idol Michael Camille stresses the 'beautiful but terrible tyranny' of Medieval Art. It is an issue which he illustrates by a study of the manipulation of the notions of idols and idolatry in order to categorise alien or unwanted groups as Other. Once such groups were categorised in this manner the established elites, whether clerical or secular, could wreak a terrible vengeance on them. Accusations of idolatry were levelled against pagans, Saracens, Jews, the Templars and even Pope Boniface VIII. The charges against the Templars concerned their supposed worship of a talking head (plausibly identified as a headreliquary), while those against Boniface related to the statues of himself which he commissioned and had set up. There were, however, more general charges of idolatry which could be levelled against the Christians, with their attachment to images and icons. One of the crueller ironies of the Middle Ages was the use of the slur of idolatry by the image-loving Christians against the aniconic Jews and Saracens. There was, thus, a double problem: making the charge of idolatry stick on the Jews and Muslims, while at the same time defending Christian images as legitimate. The strategic use of accusations of idolatry was further complicated by the development of non-religious images. Images of Romance and courtly love exploited and even parodied Christian iconography. In time, also, appreciation of antique statuary, finally divested of its pagan overtones, developed, with the result that Camille is able to trace a line from pagan god to idol to work of art, and to set this alongside another development, the increasing importance of the creator or artist. At times Camille directs his discourse towards a very specific audience. Thus, in dealing with the image of Venus he attacks Panofsky's perception of medieval attitudes towards statues of the goddess: 'He looks back at medieval representations from the standpoint of their subsequent transformation in the Renaissance.' This concern to address the scholars of later periods is confirmed by the final chapter, which deals with Renaissance, Reformation and Postmodern perceptions of idols. The interest and complexity of Medieval Art is being expounded to the uninitiated. Or to be more exact, the interest of Gothic Art is being championed. Reasonably enough Romanesque and preRomanesque Art is only lightly touched on. Nevertheless, it is possible to think that Camille's criticism of Panofsky has a touch of the pot calling the kettle black in the light of the assertion that 'sculpture was revived in the twelfth century after nearly a millenium during which the fear of idolatry precluded its production'. It would be difficult to think of a less accurate way of characterising the history of sculpture in the early Middle Ages; not only does plenty of sculpture survive from that period, but it is clear from descriptions that much has been lost, and to judge from the Anglo-Saxon evidence some of that was unquestionably monumental in scale. Again, Camille rightly comments on the need to 'replace our notion of lifelikeness as photographic realism with the capacity of images to seem to live, move, and breathe', when discussing the Essen Madonna, but he does not recognise the extent to which scholars of the tenth century have discovered an emphasis on suffering in the crucifixes of that period. While making a case for the complexity and ambiguity of images in the Gothic period, the author has underestimated the extent to which that had been true for the preceding millenium. Camille addresses the Renaissance art historian; he also addresses the historian. 'Once we see that the transfer of power is a more important factor in the history of art than the tedious transmission of models, and that this is the mechanism by which content is carried down into tradition, the capacity of image-makers constantly to reinvent rather than refer to meaning becomes clear and the more easily will art history become essential to all historical enquiry.' The point is a powerful one, but it would be all the stronger if Camille's historical touch were surer. This is not a matter of misplacing John of Damascus after the ninth-century Byzantine Nicetas, but rather of ignoring the growing awareness among historians of sources being texts. Thus, the author stresses 'the problem of privileging these objects as works of art. This does not affect historians proper because they can analyse even the most horrific documents (witch trials and mass murders, etc.) without having to evaluate the special formal status of the document itself.' Although literary texts, which constitute a sizeable proportion of medieval sources, may not be privileged as 'works of art' in the same way as manuscripts, painting or sculpture, an historian fails 'to evaluate the special formal status of the document itself at his or her peril.

Lesotho Silkscreens and Block Prints

tions is the silkscreens and block prints of the nine-year-old Roma Valley Co-operative Society, and another is the recently developed mohair tapestry-weaving industry.' The products of these new crafts workshops show exciting potential. Local geography and culture are the inspiration for this artistic activity. Located 33 kilometers south of Maseru, the Roma Valley encompasses both mountainous areas and grasslands. Roma, a typical Lesotho community, includes a central town and surrounding villages. The villages are terraced on the sloping hillsides and consist of clusters of circular and rectangular huts built of mud and stone with thatched roofs. Principal dwelling huts face east to catch the morning sun and to avoid the prevailing cold west wind. The villagers are Basotho, a group of approximately one million people who were united in the nineteenth century under the leadership of Moshoeshoe the Great. Most Basotho are Sesotho-speakers. They lead a rural village existence and keep traditional customs, such as chieftaincy, belief in ancestral spirits, initiation schools, and marriage ceremonies that include the payment of a bride-price (bohali). Many of these social customs have been represented in silkscreen prints or block-print designs in the Roma Valley workshop. This activity is new to the Basotho, who have no history of sculpture or painting. It is easy, however, to view the recent development of sophisticated craftwork in Lesotho as a logical outgrowth of the traditional crafts of the women hatand basket-weaving, pottery and house decoration. Familiarity with the ways of village life and with these traditional crafts, especially house decoration, has provided the novice artisans a rich fund of artistic resources.

The Cassin Medal

W HEN Benvenuto Cellini designed medals and jewelry as well as monu ental sculpture or Peter Paul Rubens (an ardent collector of coins and medals) wished to publish a book on antique cameos, there was no dividing line among men of taste between sculpture large and sculpture small. In modern times, history of sculpture is usually written without including glyptic and medallic art, and it is thereby poorer. In early days of our Republic, design of medals was a keen interest among men of high intelligence such as Franklin and Jefferson; it engaged services of talented artists such as Joseph Wright and Thomas Sully and formed a significant element among arts. It is gratifying that The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum-notable for showing ensemble of arts in which large and small, grand and intimate, all find their place-should acquire an outstanding piece of American medallic art. This object is original gold medal (Fig. 1) awarded by resolution of Congress, October 2o, 1814, to Lieutenant Stephen Cassin, who six weeks earlier had commanded a ship in Macdonough's squadron that won (according to resolution) the decisive and splendid victory gained on Lake Champlain, on eleventh of September, in year one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, over a British squadron of superior force. 1 Characteristically, this medal is interesting both as history and as art. It adds value to Winterthur collection already so rich in imagery of War of 1812.

Medical News

<h3>CALIFORNIA</h3><h3>Physicians' Art and Garden Societies.—</h3> The Los Angeles Physicians Art Society opened the fall season with a dinner at the Los Angeles County Medical Association on November 28. Mr. Roger Noble Burnham, Los Angeles, modeled a portrait in relief of a member of the audience, and Mrs. Burnham discussed the history of sculpture. The Los Angeles County Medical Garden Club recently held its fall flower show. Officers of the garden club include Drs. Robert B. Hope, president; Hyman Miller and Albert G. Bower, vice presidents, and Samuel Ayres Jr., secretary. <h3>New Comprehensive Study of the Common Cold.—</h3> The University of California Medical School, San Francisco, began a comprehensive two year study of the common cold and other respiratory diseases in November. Ten members of the staff of the university will carry on the research under the direction of Dr. William J. Kerr, professor of medicine. One phase will be