Understanding Sculpture

  1. Sculpture: 3D dimensional art made by carving, modeling, casting, and constructing.
    • Requires engineering knowledge
      • Objects have weight, need to make that weight stable
      • Ankles are overbuilt in sculptures to hold up the weight
  2. Dimensionality: how dimensional is it
    • In the Round: Standing free, all sides shown, carved in relief against the ground. Very difficult needs engineering.
    • Relief Sculpture: Work which figures projects from supporting background.
    • Partially Full Round (high relief): Similar to relief but it looks like if the pieces were attached to the place with super glue
    • Linear: Made by line. Constructed from materials such as wire, pipe, etc.
  3. Execution:
    • Subtraction: removing material to create a finished work
      • Hard, if you mess up, fix it in a creative way
      • Most of the greek statues are made this way
    • Additive: adding material to create the final work
    • Construction: taking pre-formed pieces of material to create something new
    • Substitution: starts with the additive shelter, create mold, and use that mold to create something
    • ○ Lost Wax Method: create a model out of clay, cover with wax and carve it, put metals on top
      • Metals are expensive, wanna use little amount
      • Common for statues
    • Manipulation: shaped by skilled hands
      • Pottery
  4. Elements of composition:
    • Mass
    • Line and form
    • Open form: directs eye through the piece and out beyond the work
      • Start with center of mass or face
      • Look where arms and eyes are pointing
    • Closed-form
      • Directs eye through the piece
      • Common with religion
    • Negative space
      • Space around and the subjects of an image
      • Missing element can be the most important element of the piece
    • Color
      • Come from the material
      • Renaissance, ppl stopped painting
      • Not always white
      • Understand sculpture as it was painted back then, not the current
        white color
    • Texture
      • Convey emotion and movement
    • Proportion
      • Dimensions and relationships between height, width, and depth of
        different parts
      • Ideas of proper proportions change in different places
  5. Other factors in sculpture:
    • Articulation/Eye movement
    • Eye will move in predictable ways
      • Center of mass is usually where the eye starts or face
      • Follow parts, first leg, back up, then next leg, etc.
    • Focal area
      • Center of mass or face (human sculptures)
      • Movement
      • Arrows
    • Found art
      • Created by objects that are not perceived as art most of the time
      • Ex: urinal
      • What is art?
    • Sense Art:
      • Touch sculpture
      • Ex: finger pressing into the skin → get a sense of the soft human touch instead of the hardness of marble
    • Temperatures:
      • Warm and cool colors affect the temperature we may perceive
      • Red→ hot
      • Blue → cold
      • Wood → warm
      • Marble → cold
    • Age:
      • Can add weathering
      • Something that looks older will make us think about the past
    • Dynamic:
      • Get a sense of movement of the statue
    • Lighting:
      • Gives us a sense of color which gives us a sense of temperature and emotion
      • With light is on this is read differently
    • Environment:
      • Where the sculpture is → the read will be differently