Sculpture - and Art: an introduction

Sculpture - and Art

Introduction

[Last update 08/09/14: Huge Art]

Originally posted on the Sun Spot Pointers blog but deemed to be too large a subject in its own right and needing its own blog this introduces and starts to look at sculpture which covers and includes traditional sculptured objects such as stone statues and shapes as well as artistic objects (objects d'art).

How pieces are viewed and interpreted is very much an individual matter as with all art but with sculpture there tends to be a larger, more physical element to it.  Obviously there are always exceptions to such comments as some works are rather small.

NOTE 

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Ancient Sculpture

Many pieces have been around for thousands of years and are still intact.

Wikipedia says the Lion man from the Swabian Alps in Germany is the oldest known statue in the world, and dates to 30,000-40,000 years ago.

Huge Art

This is a link to Huge Art which refers to Art as a peaceful movement around the world.
Huge Art.Co is dedicated to helping artists sell their art on the Internet.

Take a look - you never know it may work for you!

Large Sculpture

There are some rather large pieces around and it is not a new phenomenon.
The Sphinx in Giza, Egypt from c. 2558–2532 BC is the largest monolith statue in the world, standing 73.5 metres (241 ft) long, 6 metres (20 ft) wide, and 20.22 m (66.34 ft) high.

Miniature Sculpture

How small can it be?

At the other end of the size scale the link provided with the heading provides just a glimpse into the world of miniature sculpture, an art form in its own right.

Here you will find examples of small items

Shay Aaron miniature sculpture

- and then there are absolutely tiny items.

Willard Wigan micro-sculpture

As with a lot of art, the limits are simply the imagination.

Large Art

The world's largest work of art is currently (April 2014) Mundi Man by Ando Art, an image of the head of a stockman created on the Mundi Mundi Plains in New South Wales, Australia covering over 4 million square metres.

Mundi Man by Ando Art
The World's Largest Work of Art
Source: Ando Art

Leave it to the imagination

A certain Italian sculptor in the Renaissance period who was also an architect, engineer, painter and a poet with visions of the futuristic engineering feats that have often come into being achieved fame in his own lifetime and worldwide renown beyond it.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475 - 1564) is more commonly known today as Michelangelo and he is said to have defined sculpture as the art of taking away - not that of adding on.

In each block of marble he saw a statue as plain as though it stood before him and he only had to remove that which was not a part of the statue to reveal the lovely apparition to others as his eyes saw it.  Once he saw an angel in marble and carved until he set it free.

Angel by Michelangelo (1494) Shrine of Saint Dominic, Basilica of Saint Dominic, Bologna, Italy

Conversely, instead of removing that which is not a part of the statue or whatever the sculpted object is, there are sculptors and other artists who purposely ensure that it is not all there just for the effect it provides.

In this example something is definitely missing, it is blatantly obvious - but nonetheless it is is a finished piece and many people seeing the work actually like this.

 World Citizens by Bruno Catalano

On the same theme providing some food for thought and no pun intended - is a circular doughnut simply a circle with its centre missing?

First Impressions Count - but First Impressions Can Also Be Deceptive

This is a topic that I have toyed with for years but when adding the topic to this blog I had what I believed to be a clear example in mind which will be described momentarily though it must be stressed that there are a really broad range of examples and just as broad a range of explanations of the concept possible.

The example referred to here shows a lion - a part of a sculpted monument.

Sculpted Lion
[PM080804]

To the beholder as a picture showing a sculpture it is perhaps impressive enough and one could be forgiven for assuming it is something you can get close to and touch or maybe even stroke.  The impression may even be that the power of the muscles and the ferocity of the animal can be imagined more readily by stroking it.

However it is just a picture.

In this case one cannot step back and look at the bigger picture, at least not with this picture.
So, another picture showing more of that 'bigger picture' will clarify what I am alluding to here.

As can be seen from this second, more expansive picture the viewer now realizes that getting up close and personal is just not a plausible, practical matter.

Being mounted on a stand, on a block on top of a pair of pillars you can now see that this imposing monument is for seeing but not for touching.  This is a monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus the Italian explorer.  Wikipedia says he completed 4 voyages across the Atlantic Ocean leading to the general European awareness of the American continents. Those trips and his efforts to establish permanent settlements on the island of Hispaniola, initiated the Spanish colonization of the New World.

Sculpted Lion on pillars
[PM080804]

Getting close to this lion may not be practical though, as the final picture shows, that in reality to even see the muscles or any other aspect of the lion itself in any sort of detail you may have wanted to stroke you will either need a pair of binoculars or a camera with a zoom.

This magnificent monument to Cristobal Colon, one of the international variants of his name, can be found in Murillo Gardens Seville, Spain.

Monument to Christopher Columbus with sculpted lion by Juan Talavera and Collaut Valera.
Murillo Gardens, Seville, Spain
[PM080804Seville]

Real or Surreal

Surreal: very unusual or strange, having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream - unreal, very unusual, fantastic or strange.

Here is an example of a combination of real and surreal with the real life character, author Jules Verne sitting on not a seat but a creature taken from his science fiction classic 'Vingt mille lieues sous les mers', or as it is widely and commonly known in English  '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' published in 1870.

Jules Verne by Jose Molares [1961], Vigo, Spain
[PM141010Vigo]

What is Next?

From A to Z...

[First published in June 2010 in Stronsy Art and Design blog]

More to come, more to follow where more has been.

There's always more - and what a wealth of it there is!

A design set of fridge magnets based on the alphabet with each letter occupying the left half of the image space and being filled with the relevant image, whilst on the other half the full image is with the alphabet letter on top of it as per this example of the letter A and the image of an Aquaduct.

Potentially great as a teaching tool, or simply as a decorative item, you can get quite stuck on these magnets (sic).