Revised - April 2013

1. Chapter 11
Sculpture and Installation

2. Sculpture
Maman, Louise Bourgeois, 1999,
Bronze, steel and marble, St. Petersburg, Russia
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bourgeois-maman-t12625/text-summary

3. Sculpture
• Sculpture is 3D, the third dimension is depth
• One of the most ancient art forms
• Metal, wood, stone, clay
– Still very exciting today
• New materials
 fiberglass, fabric, plastic, found objects, actual light, flowers
• Installation
– incorporates the entire exhibit space

4. 4 basic methods for making sculpture
• Modeling
 Additive process
• Assembling
 Additive process
• Carving
 Subtractive process
• Casting
 Liquid is poured into a mold to harden

5. Modeling
• The most direct sculpture method
• Most common material is clay
• The pliable material is shaped and
formed with hands and tools
– Pinching, smoothing
– Gouging, scratching, making textures
• More material can be added
• While kept wet, clay can be worked
and reworked indefinitely

6. Ife head, terracotta, Africa,
probably 12-14th centuries
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ifet/hd_ifet.htm

7. Olmec baby-face figurine,
hollow, whiteware ceramics
Mesoamerica, 1400-400BCE

8. Venus of Dolní Věstonice, clay,
before 25,000 BCE

9. Empire of Dust, Beth Cavener Stichter
2006, Stoneware, antique wooden box
23 in. h x 41 in. l x 45 in. d
http://followtheblackrabbit.com/Beast_In_Process.htm

10. Humiliation By Design, Beth Cavener Stichter
2009, Stoneware, steel, cast iron gears, rope

11. Olympia, Beth Cavener Stichter

12. Hyperrealism
Keng Lye, acrylic and resin, 3D painting, built up in layers

14. Keng Lye, alive without breath series
3D painting, acrylic, resin, built up in layers

15. Casting
• Very indirect method of forming sculpture
– Sometimes an artist never touches the finished work
• Bronze is the most common material association
with casting
– the metal can be superheated until it flows easily to be
poured into a mold
– It hardens to extreme durability
• Other casting materials include:
– Glass, ceramics, fiberglass, resin, plastic, metals

16. Somaskanda (Shiva and his wife Uma)
12th century, Chola dynasty, Bronze

17. Ife, bronze casting from Yoruba,
13th century
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ifet/hd_ifet.htm

18. lost-wax casting
• 5000 year history
• Simple and ingenious
• Textbook, pg 241
• http://www.andresteadsculpture.com/casting.php
• Sometimes sculptures are cast in pieces and then
assembled, welded together over an armature
• Usually the mold is reusable & multiples are made
• The sculptures are not solid
• Other materials besides metal can be used for
finished cast artworks: fiberglass, resin,

19. Vaquero, Luis Jimenez,
Modeled 1980, cast 1990. Height 16’7”
Acrylic, urethane, fiberglass, steel armature.

20. Karen LaMonte, 2007, cast glass

21. Karen LaMonte

22. Ron Mueck
hyperrealism, large scale, fiberglass casting
Process: http://www.nga.gov.au/Mueck/director.cfm

25. The Thinker, Rodin, 1879-89

26. The Burghers of Calais, Rodin, 1884

27. carving
• More aggressive than modeling, more direct
than casting
• Sculptor begins with a block of material
– Wood, stone, plaster
• Jade is too hard to be carved, can only be shaped
through abrasion
• Basalt – a volcanic stone used by the Olmec
– The grain must be considered when carving

28. Dagger with horse head pommel. India, Mughal dynasty, 17th
century. Blade: Damascus steel inlaid with gold; hilt: jade with
carved decoration, inlaid with gold and semi-precious stones.

29. Colossal head of La Venta, Mexico,
Olmec, 700 BCE

30. Olowe of Ise, Bowl with figures,
early 20th century, wood, pigment, height 25”

31. Olowe of Ise

32. “The Dying Gaul” marble, 3rd cen
BCE, a roman copy of Hellenistic
bronze

33. Michelangelo’s Pieta

34. assembling
• Assemblage - Individual parts can be placed on
or near each other
• Construction – the pieces are joined together
• Sometimes the parts are called “found objects”

35. Joseph Cornell, 1945

36. Joseph Cornell, 1936
about: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-cornell-joseph.htm

37. Joseph Cornell, 1943

38. Bohyun Yoon, Unity Installation

40. Meret Oppenheim, Object, 1936
gazelle fur covered teacup, saucer & spoon

41. Alexander Calder

42. Alice Aycock, "The Uncertainty of Ground State
Fluctuations," installation view in Clayton, Missouri (2007)

43. John Kearney, chromed car bumpers
www.cedarhurst.org

44. John Kearney

45. Sculpture
• Low relief – the subject projects very slightly from
the background
– A coin, carved doors, an Egyptian tomb wall
• High relief – the subject projects much more
boldly from the background
– Projects at least half its depth
• sculpture “in the round” – the viewer can walk
completely around the sculpture, the view from
all sides is interesting
– Sometimes there is still a front and back

46. Pharaoh Akhenaten with his wife Nefertiti and daughters.
Sometimes called sunken relief or intaglio

47. Roman frieze

48. Lapith fighting a centaur, Parthenon,
ca. 447–433 BC

49. Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise
http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/ghiberti/themes.html

50. Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise, detail

51. Ghiberti, 1401

52. earthwork
• Art made for a specific place usually using the
materials found on the site

53. Spiral Jetty, Robert Smithson,
Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970 - present

54. Spiral Jetty
http://landscapelover.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/round-like-a-circle-in-a-spiral/

55. Serpent Mound, Ohio, 1070,
overall length 1300’

56. Serpent Mound

57. Nazca Lines, Peru, 200BCE-700CE

61. Nazca lines
The lines are shallow designs made in the ground by removing the ubiquitous
reddish pebbles and uncovering the whitish ground beneath.

62. Christo and Jeanne-Claude, pg 275
http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/#
The Umbrellas, Japan, 1991

63. The Umbrellas, California

64. Reichstag, Berlin, Germany

65. Wrapped Reichstag, 1995

66. Valley Curtain, Colorado, 1972

67. Running Fence, Sonoma, California,
1976

68. Jeff Koons, Puppy, 1992+, live flowering plants,
earth, geotextile, internal irrigation system
http://dalaigrandma.blogspot.com/2009/03/jeff-koons-puppy.html?m=1

69. End of chapter