SCULPTURE

a form of aesthetic expression in which hard or plastic materials are worked (as by carving, molding, or welding) into three-dimensional art objects. The designs may be embodied in freestanding objects, in reliefs on surfaces, or in environments ranging from tableaux to contexts that envelop the spectator. An enormous variety of media may be used, including clay, wax, stone, metal, fabric, wood, plaster, rubber, and random found objects. Materials may be carved, modelled, molded, cast, wrought, welded, sewn, assembled, or otherwise shaped and combined. Sculpture is treated in a number of articles. For a treatment of the art of sculpture, see below. For the history of sculpture in antiquity, see Anatolian arts; Arabian arts; Egyptian art; Iranian arts; Mesopotamian arts; Syro-Palestinian arts. For a treatment of the history of sculpture, see sculpture, history of; African arts: Sculpture and associated arts; Central Asian arts: Visual arts; East Asian arts: Chinese visual arts; Islamic arts: Visual arts; Native American arts: Visual arts; Oceanic arts: Visual arts; South Asian arts: Visual arts of India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon); Southeast Asian arts: Visual arts. For related art forms, see mask; pottery. Sculpture is not a fixed term that applies to a permanently circumscribed category of objects or sets of activities. It is, rather, the name of an art that grows and changes and is continually extending the range of its activities and evolving new kinds of objects. The scope of the term is much wider in the second half of the 20th century than it was only two or three decades ago, and in the present fluid state of the visual arts nobody can predict what its future extensions are likely to be. Certain features, which in previous centuries were considered essential to the art of sculpture, are not present in a great deal of modern sculpture and can no longer form part of its definition. One of the most important of these is representation. Before the 20th century, sculpture was considered a representational art; but its scope has now been extended to include nonrepresentational forms. It has long been accepted that the forms of such functional three-dimensional objects as furniture, pots, and buildings may be expressive and beautiful without being in any way representational; but it is only in the 20th century that nonfunctional, nonrepresentational, three-dimensional works of art have been produced. Again, before the 20th century, sculpture was considered primarily an art of solid form, or mass. It is true that the negative elements of sculpturethe voids and hollows within and between its solid formshave always been to some extent an integral part of its design, but their role has been a secondary one. In a great deal of modern sculpture, however, the focus of attention has shifted, and the spatial aspects have become dominant. Spatial sculpture is now a generally accepted branch of the art of sculpture. It was also taken for granted in the sculpture of the past that its components were of a constant shape and size and did not move. With the recent development of kinetic sculpture, neither the immobility nor immutability of its form can any longer be considered essential to the art of sculpture. Finally, 20th-century sculpture is not confined to the two traditional forming processes of carving and modelling or to such traditional natural materials as stone, metal, wood, ivory, bone, and clay. Because present-day sculptors use any materials and methods of manufacture that will serve their purposes, the art of sculpture can no longer be identified with any special materials or techniques. Through all of these changes there is probably only one thing that has remained constant in the art of sculpture, and it is this that emerges as the central and abiding concern of sculptors: the art of sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that is especially concerned with the creation of expressive form in three dimensions. Sculpture may be either in the round or in relief. A sculpture in the round is a separate, detached object in its own right, leading the same kind of independent existence in space as a human body or a chair. A relief does not have this kind of independence. It projects from and is attached to or is an integral part of something else that serves either as a background against which it is set or a matrix from which it emerges. The actual three-dimensionality of sculpture in the round limits its scope in certain respects in comparison with the scope of painting. Sculpture cannot conjure up the illusion of space by purely optical means or invest its forms with atmosphere and light as painting can. It does have a kind of reality, a vivid physical presence that is denied to the pictorial arts. The forms of sculpture are tangible as well as visible, and they can appeal strongly and directly to both tactile and visual sensibilities. Blind people, even those who are congenitally blind, can produce and appreciate certain kinds of sculpture. It has, in fact, been argued by the 20th-century art critic Sir Herbert Read that sculpture should be regarded as primarily an art of touch and that the roots of sculptural sensibility can be traced to the pleasure one experiences in fondling things. All three-dimensional forms are perceived as having an expressive character as well as purely geometric properties. They strike the observer as delicate, aggressive, flowing, taut, relaxed, dynamic, soft, and so on. By exploiting the expressive qualities of form, a sculptor is able to create images in which subject matter and expressiveness of form are mutually reinforcing. Such images go beyond the mere presentation of fact and communicate a wide range of subtle and powerful feelings. The aesthetic raw material of sculpture is, so to speak, the whole realm of expressive three-dimensional form. A sculpture may draw upon what already exists in the endless variety of natural and man-made form, or it may be an art of pure invention. It has been used to express a vast range of human emotions and feelings from the most tender and delicate to the most violent and ecstatic. All human beings, intimately involved from birth with the world of three-dimensional form, learn something of its structural and expressive properties and develop emotional responses to them. This combination of understanding and sensitive response, often called a sense of form, can be cultivated and refined. It is to this sense of form that the art of sculpture primarily appeals. This article deals with the elements and principles of design; the materials, methods, techniques, and forms of sculpture; and its subject matter, imagery, symbolism, and uses. For the history of sculpture in ancient Egypt, see Egyptian arts. For the history of the development of sculpture in the West, see sculpture, history of. For treatments of sculpture as practiced in non-European cultures, see African arts: Sculpture and associated arts; Native American arts: Visual arts; Central Asian arts: Visual arts; East Asian arts: Visual arts; Islamic arts: Visual arts; Oceanic arts: Visual arts; South Asian arts: Visual arts; Southeast Asian arts: Visual arts. Additional reading Edward Lanteri, Modelling and Sculpture: A Guide for Artists and Students, 3 vol. (1965; previously pub. under the title Modelling, 3 vol., 190211), still an outstanding work on traditional methods; Jack C. Rich, The Materials and Methods of Sculpture (1947), comprehensive coverage of all except the most recent methods and materials; Wilbert Verhelst, Sculpture: Tools, Materials, and Techniques (1973), a wide-ranging survey with good coverage of modern materials; John W. Mills, The Technique of Casting for Sculpture (1967), and Sculpture in Concrete (1968), two useful technical handbooks; Trevor Faulkner, The Thames and Hudson Manual of Direct Metal Sculpture (1978), an informative work on a variety of historical and modern methods; Udo Kultermann, The New Sculpture: Environments and Assemblages (1968; originally published in German, 1967), a comprehensive account of these two recently developed forms of sculpture; Rudolf Wittkower, Sculpture: Processes and Principles (1977), an authoritative account of the interaction of techniques and aesthetics in the history of sculpture; L.R. Rogers, Sculpture (1969), and Relief Sculpture (1974), two books dealing with the principles and techniques of sculpture and their bearing on its appreciation as an art form. Leonard R. Rogers