Sculpture Overview – Art Notes (200 Level Couse)

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Sculpture Overview – Art Notes(200 Level Couse)

•At is always a transformation of reality, never a duplication
•Sculpture, along with painting and architecture, is usually, but not very usefully, classified as on of the visual arts.
•Most sculpture, whether abstract or representational, returns us to the voluminosity (bulk), density (mass), and tactile quality of things.
•The primary subject matter of most abstract sculpture is the density of sensa

•The space around a sculpture is sensory rather than empty

Sculpture and Density
•Sculpture occupies space as a three-dimensional mass, whereas paining is essentially a two dimensional surface that can only represent (“re-present”) three-dimensionality

•Painting may suggest density whereas sculpture is dense
•We can only fully apprehend sculpture by senses that are not only alive to visual and tactile (touchable) surfaces but also to the weight and volume lying behind those surfaces

Sculpture and Painting Compared
•The distinction between abstract and representational sculpture is worth making, just as with painting, for being clear about the subject matter of a work of art is essential to all sensitive participation. It is the key to understanding the content, for the content is the subject matter interpreted by means of the form.

Sensory Interconnections
•The sensa of touch, for instance, are normally joined with other sensa – visual, aural, oral, and olfactory.
•Even if only one kind of sensum initiates a perception, a chain reaction triggers off other sensations, either by sensory motor connections or by memory associations

Surface-Relief Sculpture
•There are some clearly noticeable projections out into space, but almost every device available for creating the illusion rather than the actuality of spatial depth – foreshortening, landscape vistas, perspective effects, etc. – is used.

Sunken-Relief Sculpture
•Has grooves or lines cut into the surface while the surface remains clearly perceptible
•Usually carved
•This work, when you stand before it much more than when you see it in a photograph, has significant tactile appeal

High-Relief Sculpture
•A term used in sculpture for figures in wood, stone, marble, etc., so cut as to project at least one-half from the tablet.
•Has a front or back and can be hung on a wall

Low-Relief Sculpture
•Relief sculpture projects relatively slightly from a background plane such as a wall or column
•It projects relatively slightly from its background plane, and so its depth dimension is very limited

Sculpture in the Round
•Sculpture meant to be viewed from any side. Any sculpture that can be walked around
•When the human body is portrayed in the round, we may have the most vivid material counterpoint of our internal feelings and mental images of our bodily existence.
•All sculpture always evokes our outward sensations and sometimes our inward sensations. Sculpture in the round that has as its subject matter the human body not only often evokes our inward sensations but also interprets them

Space Sculpture
•Emphasizes spatial relationships and tends to de-emphasize the density and materiality of its materials
•Usually made by assembling preformed pieces of material
•Usually abstract sculptures

“Truth to Materials”
•A carving from wood, shaped so as to reveal the grains of the wood

“Ready – Made” Sculpture
•A man-made object used as a major part or totality of the sculpture

Earth Sculpture
•A design that uses the earth as the base for the sculpture

Machine Sculpture
•A kinetic or moving work energized by a machine
Idealized Sculpture
•A natural figure made more beautiful

Sculpture and Architecture Compared
•Architecture is the art of separating inner from outer space in such a way that the inner space can be used for practical purposes.

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