Sculpture

C

Casting

With careful handling and storage, as in a museum, plaster and terracotta can survive indefinitely but the rigours of its public role demand that modelled sculpture usually be cast in metal. Two methods of casting are used: the cire perdue, or lost-wax process, and sand-casting. Both methods have been used since antiquity, although the lost-wax process is more widely employed. Sand casting is an intricate process in which fine, cohesive sand, mixed with a small amount of clay, is used to produce a positive model and slightly larger negative mould of the artist's original, between which molten metal is poured and allowed to harden. Since the 1920s it has been normal to control the issue of bronze casts by means of limited editions to preserve quality, maintain rarity value, and protect artist and collector alike from unauthorized copies. Bronze casting has been used to give permanence to other fragile, three-dimensional works such as wood constructions or even carvings.

D

Construction and Assemblage

Although traditional techniques are still employed, much 20th-century sculpture is created by construction and assemblage (see Cubism and Constructivism below). It is essentially an additive process that has its origins in collage.

E

Free Standing and Relief

The fully free-standing sculpture usually stands on a plinth or base. It can often be viewed from different angles and it is even argued that this gives it a superiority over painting. The most common form is the single figure and the more figures that are introduced the more sculpture tends to be viewed like a painting, that is to say from a single angle. Therefore, in the case of more complex scenes, which involve a number of figures or in which figures need to be related to a background, it is usual to employ relief. This is designed to be viewed like a painting from a single angle and can employ painterly devices to give the illusion of depth. In some sculptural monuments a free-standing figure is placed on a base, which itself contains reliefs that comment on the person commemorated.

F

Colour

Sculpture is above all the art of three-dimensional form, but colour can play a role. Sculpture can be painted, as was done by the ancient Greeks. Different colours of wax can be used. Baroque sculptors such as Gianlorenzo Bernini employed coloured marble to vivid effect. Twentieth-century sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth have tended to prefer stones with varied colours and textures to pure white marble. Bronze casts if unprotected will discolour anyway, so the process is stabilized by finishing them in different colours by a chemical procedure known as patination. Up to the late 19th century, dark browns and near blacks were favoured, but some 20th-century sculptors such as Constantin Brancusi preferred the golden sheen of natural bronze, suggesting a machine-like precision. Also popular in the 20th century has been an emerald green, a rather lurid and stylized version of the effect achieved by burying bronze in the soil for centuries. The spectator today tends to associate the sculptures of Auguste Rodin in terms of dark brown bronze casts. His contemporaries would think of them primarily as white, either as plasters or marble carvings.

III

History

This article traces the history of Western sculpture from prehistoric times to the present day; for non-Western sculpture, see African Art and Architecture; Chinese Art and Architecture; Indian Art and Architecture; Iranian Art and Architecture; Islamic Art and Architecture; Japanese Art and Architecture; Korean Art and Architecture; Oceanian Art and Architecture; Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture.