Sculpture

Late 19th Century SculptureCarpeaux, Ugolino and His Children• Inspired by Dante’s Inferno, Canto 33• Ugolino locked in a tower with his sons for treason• Food not brought, they die of starvation• Sons cling to him for help• Ugolino bites himself to suggest hunger, or perhaps cannibalism• Heads display a variety of emotions• Interweaving of five bodies in a complex formula• Little negative space• Pyramidical composition• Knees jut and fold• Enhanced musculature

1860-61

Late 19th Century SculptureSaint-Gaudens, Adams Memorial• Placed in Rock Creek Cemetery, memorial to Mrs.

Adams who committed suicide• A holly grove provides shelter around the sculpture• It is both indoors and outdoors at the same time; in

the cemetery yet removed from it• No official title to memorial, no markings, no artist

signature, no words• Figure has eyes barely shut, head surrounded by a

heavy veil• The long arm points to the face, which is difficult to

see• Sits on an ageless rock, clothed with flowing

drapery• Long verticals mark composition• Figure ponders the meaning of life and death

Auguste Rodin

• 1840 –1917• Stunning Strength and realism• Confronts distress and moral weakness as

well as noble themes• Emphasis on Hands and feet in his works• A turn away from the smooth neo-classical

styling common in sculpture

The Gates of Hell 1880-1917

Pennsylvania Ballet

‘Dancing with Monet’, ‘Rodin - Mis en Vie’

June 2002

Late 19th Century Sculpture

Rodin, The Burghers of Calais• Six citizens of Calais offered

themselves as hostages for their city in 1347 to King Edward III of England who besieged the town

• King demanded they wear sack cloths and halters, and carry the keys to the city

• King impressed by their generosity of spirit, spared their lives last minute

• Figures were individually conceived, then moved until a relationship was formed

• Thin and weak, unagreeable to look at

• Conceived for no pedestal, get as close as possible

• Not portrayed as brave, but as mortal, afraid, resigned, forlorn

• Swollen hands, battered faces, emaciated looks

• Many emotions: pensive, determined, courageous

• No rhetorical gestures• Modeled firmly in clay, imprint

of the hand on clay visible in the bronze casting

• Unheroic complex of figures

The Burghers of Calais 1884-86

Balzac by Nadar

Honoré de Balzac (May 20, 1799 – August 18, 1850), born Honoré Balzac, was a nineteenth-century French novelist and playwright. His work, much of which is a sequence (or Roman-fleuve) of almost 100 novels and plays collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, is a broad, often satirical panorama of French society, particularly the Petit bourgeoisie, in the years after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815—namely the period of the Restoration (1815–1830) and the July Monarchy (1830–1848).

Along with Gustave Flaubert (whose work he influenced), Balzac is generally regarded as a founding father of realism in European literature. Balzac's novels, most of which are farcical comedies, feature a large cast of well-defined characters, and descriptions in exquisite detail of the scene of action. He also presented particular characters in different novels repeatedly, sometimes as main protagonists and sometimes in the background, in order to create the effect of a consistent 'real' world across his novelistic output. He is the pioneer of this style.

Brancusi, Mademoiselle Pogany, Bronze, 1912

Studio shot taken by Edward Steichen, 1925

Constantin Brancusi,

1876 - 1957

Bird In Space,

1932 - 40

Naum Gabo, Column 1920 -21

•Constructivism

•Used synthetic materials: glass, plastic, metal

•Industrial design methods

•Forgoes traditional sculpture: stone or bronze

•Opens up column’s structure, see into interior

•Viewer can experience interior of volume of space

•Two intersecting planes rise up through the middle

•Vertical and horizontal elements balanced by circular looping forms

Naum Gabo

Constructed Head No. 2

1916/66

Rodin, 1905 Brancusi, 1912 Gabo, 1916

Alberto Giacometti

(1901 – 1966)

•Greatest Surrealist Sculptor

•Tabletop sculptures meant to be viewed from above

•Echoing the theme of existential loneliness

City Square, 1948

Jean-Paul Sartre

1905 - 1980

Conformity versus authenticity

Giacommeti, Man Striding

Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976)

East Building Mobile, National Gallery

Monogram 1955-9

Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living1991

Donald Judd

PostmodernismRobert Arneson, California Artist

• Self-portrait in a ceramic sculpture• Artist enshrined on a mock-pedestal, answering back

critics of his work• Pedestal overgrown with weeds, flaked plaster reveals

simulated marble base that is really a covering for common brick

• Smart, smug, hip artist knowingly confronts his critics• Stereotype of a Californian: pedestal has the artist’s

signature bricks, a marijuana plant, an empty wine bottle, a drawing of a Buddha and an etched graffito "No Nukes"

• Depicting himself as a typical California hippie, Arneson is dressed in a denim jacket with no shirt, arms crossed defiantly in front of him, wearing dark glasses.

Duane Hanson

Jeff Koons, Pink Panther, 1988•Porcelain figure that glorifies mass culture•Influence of Pop Art•Koons advocates materialism and sexual bliss•Part of the Banality series which consists of gigantic tchotchkes executed in polychromed wood and porcelain of which Pink Panther is a prime example•Mating of actress Jayne Mansfield and a cartoon character in Pink Panther is an ironic statement of heterosexual pleasure and celebrity romance•The passing and the ephemeral have no place in Koons’ art, so he makes indestructible totems to things that never lived and so cannot perish

Serra, Tilted Arc• 12’ high and 120’ long• Tilted and curved steel arc bisecting a plaza before a government

building• Erected 1981, but many claimed it inhibited access to the building• Removed in 1989• Serra claimed it was built with this site in mind and to move it would

be to destroy it• Meant work to be noticed, even intrusive, but also to match the

environment

Serra, Tilted Arc•12’ high and 120’ long•Tilted and curved steel arc bisecting a plaza before a government building•Erected 1981, but many claimed it inhibited access to the building•Removed in 1989•Serra claimed it was built with this site in mind and to move it would be to destroy it•Meant work to be noticed, even intrusive, but also to match the environment

Earth Art

Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah

• Used black rocks and earth from the site to create a coil 1500 feet long and 15 feet wide

• Stretches counterclockwise into the lake

• Dump trucks, a tractor, and front loaders used

• View of object changes depending on vantage point

• Viewer walks on a broad, flat avenue into the lake

• Desolate area of Great Salt Lake

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Surrounded Islands, Miami

• Floating material suspended over water surface around 11 islands near Miami

• Bright pink material in contrast with the cool greens and blues of the water and the island

• Temporary works extensively photographed and documented

• 6.5 million square feet of pink woven polypropylene fabric covering the surface of the water, floating and extending out 200 feet from each island into the bay

1983

Feminism

Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face) 1981 - 83

• Ready-made photograph• Female bust of a classical face• Words run vertically down left hand side in alternating

black and white boxes• Print is black on white shadowed boxes alternating with

white print on black boxes• Criticism of portrayal of women in print media

Guerrilla Girls, The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist•Anonymous artists who seek to promote women’s issues in art•Satiric listing of “advantages”•Challenges political, social and institutional biases against women

Judy Chicago

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #35• Poses herself in 69 scenes of black and white

prints• Seeks to understand the male fascination with

the female form as seen in the movies and in popular culture in general

• Since Sherman's characters in the Untitled Film Stills are not specified, the viewer is free to construct his or her own narratives for these women

• Sherman encourages our participation by suggesting, through the deliberate nature of her poses, that she is the object of someone's gaze

• Film stills are not isolated frames from movies but rather reenactments that are used to advertise a film

Video Art

Nam June Paik, Video Still from Global Groove• Video art• Broadcast in 1974 on television in New York• Paik’s multifaceted Global Groove became one of the most influential and

legendary examples of video art• Global Groove integrates and unites diverse elements — films and

videotapes by other artists, interviews and voiceovers (including appearances by Allen Ginsberg and John Cage), pop music (such as “Devil with a Blue Dress On” by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels), appropriated commercials and broadcast fragments — in a series of short segments driven by a rapid, energetic pace and comprehensive image processing

http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Global_groove