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Other Sculptural Materials
Other traditional materials employed to
create sculptures include ivory and whalebone, as well as precious metals.
The earliest known examples of ivory/bone
sculpture include: the celebrated mammoth ivory carvings of prehistoric
animals, birds, and therianthropic figures (c.33,000-30,000 BCE) discovered
in the Vogelherd caves of the Swabian Jura, Germany; the Bone Venus
of Kostenky (c.30,000 BCE), a mammoth bone carving of a female figure,
found in Russia; and the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel (c.28,000
BCE) a mammoth ivory statuette found in the Swabian Jura.
Famous sculptures made from precious stones
include: The Ram in the Thicket (c.2500 BCE), a small statue made
from gold-leaf, copper, lapis lazuli, and red limestone, dicovered in
the Great Death Pit, Ur, Mesopotamia (Iraq); and the Maikop Gold Bull
(c.2,500 BCE), a gold sculpture (made using the lost-wax casting method)
from the Maikop Culpture of the North Caucasus, Russia.
Modern Materials
Used in 20th Century Sculpture
These include secondary materials such
as concrete, as well as an endless list of modern materials such as stainless
steel, fibreglass, aluminium, foam rubber, papier mache, bicycle-parts,
plastics, stained glass, sand, ice, "found" items, and so on.
Notable 20th century sculptures made from non-traditional materials include:
• Merzbau (Merz building) (1923)
made from paper scraps, multi-media.
By Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)
• Lobster Telephone (1936)
made from plastic, painted plaster, mixed media.
• Mae West Lips Sofa (1937) made from wood & satin.
Both by the Surrealist artist Salvador Dali (1904-89)
• Object ("Furry Breakfast")
(1936) Fur-covered cup, saucer & spoon.
By the Dadaist/Surrealist sculptor Meret Oppenheim (1913-85)
• Young Shopper (1973) made
from polyester and fibreglass.
By the Superrealist American sculptor Duane Hanson (1925-96)
• Floor Burger (1962) made
from canvas, foam-rubber and cardboard
By the American Pop-artist Claes Oldenburg (b.1929)
• Berlin Junction (1987) made
from steel
By the monumental contemporary sculptor Richard Serra (b.1939)
• Puppy (1992) made from flowering
plants, steel, wood, and earth.
By the contemporary Neo-expressionist artist Jeff Koons (b.1955)
• Maman (1999) (spider) made
from steel and marble.
By the "contemporary Surrealist" Louise Bourgeois (b.1911)
• For the Love of God (2007)
made from human skull, platinum and diamonds.
By the postmodernist sculptor and artist Damien
Hirst (b.1965)
Types of Sculpture
The basic traditional forms of this 3-D
art are: free-standing sculpture, which is surrounded on all sides by
space; and relief sculpture (encompassing bas-relief, alto-relievo or
haut relief, and sunken-relief), where the design remains attached to
a background, typically stone or wood. Examples of relief work can be
seen on Trajan's Column in Rome, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and the
Parthenon. Gothic architectural reliefs appear on all major European Cathedrals
of the period: witness the Saints on the south trancept of Chartres cathedral,
and the apostles on the north trancept of Rheims cathedral.
It can also be classified by its subject
matter. A statue, for instance, like the two versions of David
by Donatello and Michelangelo, is usually a representational full length
3-D portrait of a person, while a bust usually depicts only the head,
neck and shoulders - see the bust of George Washington (1788) by
Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828). A statue of a person on horseback, such
as the one by Giambologna (1529-1608) of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence,
is termed an equestrian sculpture.
Sculpture as
Public Art
A sculpture's vivid physical presence makes it an ideal form of public
art: supreme examples in Western culture being the monumental megalithic
forms at Stonehenge, the classical sculptures of the Parthenon in Athens,
the Celtic High Crosses of Ireland, and the 12th/13th century Gothic column
statues and reliefs in the cathedrals of Northern France and Germany.
Religious wood-carving was taken to new
heights during the Northern Renaissance by master carvers like: Tilman
Riemenschneider and Veit Stoss, known for their intricate wooden altarwork
and figurines, while the Baroque Counter-Reformation stimulated supreme
examples of public art in the form of bronze and marble sculptures by
(inter alia) Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), known for the Cornaro Chapel
series (1645-52) including The Ecstasy of St Teresa.
Modern secular public art features famous
sculptures like the Statue of Liberty, the Chicago Picasso
- a series of metal figures produced for the Chicago Civic Centre and
the architectural sculpture The Spire of Dublin, known as the 'spike',
created by Ian Ritchie (b.1947). Contemporary public sculpture continues
to challenge traditional concepts of 3-D art through its new spatial concepts
and its use of everyday materials assembled or created in numerous installation-type
and fixed forms of sculpture.
Modern versus Postmodern Sculpture
Since the 1960s, so-called modern
art has been replaced by contemporary
art or postmodernism. Unlike the earlier modernists, today's postmodernist
sculptors (eg. Pop artists like Claes Oldenburg, Robert Indiana and Neo-Pop
artist Jeff Koons), feel free to use a wider variety of materials, images
and methods of display. Styles tend to be more localized, as today's tendency
among contemporary art movements is to distrust the grand ideas and internationalism
of the modern art movements of the late 19th century and early-mid 20th
century.
Irish Sculpture
Although sculpture in Ireland developed
in ultra-traditional ways during the nineteenth century, and much of the
twentieth century, since the 1950s it has witnessed an increasing diversity
of style, subject and media. At present, the Republic is blessed with
a wealth of talented artists working in bronze, stone, steel as well as
a wide variety of contemporary materials. Among the most noted of Irish
sculptors, past and present, are the following: the 'Anglo-Irish' sculptor
John Henry Foley (1818-74);
the Neo-Classical John Hogan
(1800-58); the Continentalist John Hughes (1865-1941); the lyrical Rosamund
Praeger (1867-1954); the nationalist realists Oliver
Sheppard (1864-1941), Andrew O'Connor (1874-1941) and Jerome Connor
(1876-1943); the traditionalists Albert
Power (1881-1945) and Seamus
Murphy (1907-1975); the versatile Oisin
Kelly (1915-81), the Surrealist F
E McWilliam (1909-92), the miniaturist Melanie Le Brocquy (b.1919),
the German-Czech Gerda Froemel (1932-75), and the steel sculptors Alexandra
Wejchert (b.1921) and Conor
Fallon (b.1939).
Other important Irish sculptors of the
second half of the twentieth century include: Hilary Heron (1923-76),
Patrick McElroy (b.1923), Ian Stuart (b.1926), Deborah Brown (b.1927),
Edward Delaney (1930-2009),
John Behan (b.1932), Michael Bulfin (b.1939), Brian King (b.1942), John
Burke (b.1946), Rowan Gillespie
(b.1953), Eamon O'Donoghue,
and Dorothy Cross (b.1956).
For a contemporary Irish sculptor working
in clay, see: Ayelet
Lalor.
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