The word sculpture comes etymologically from the Latin “sculpere”, which means “to cut” or “to remove pieces from a stone”. This definition, which distinguishes between “sculpture” and “modelling”, illustrates the importance given to stone cutting in Roman civilisation.
In the 10th century, the term “ymagier” was used, and most of the time, the work of a sculptor was a team effort involving a master and stonemasons. Several teams worked simultaneously on the major cathedral projects.
Venus Pudica – Reggia Caserta
There’s a big difference between fragility and sensitivity.
Sensitivity likes to quiver, to vibrate, to exalt itself.
Fragility is afraid of breaking.
Someone who is fragile is afraid of being made even more fragile, so they need to be spared, reassured and surrounded.
Sensitive people do not seek to protect themselves; they are constantly exposed to all that life has to offer.
Fragility dreams of solidity.
Sensitivity unfolds its musicality.
The human species is certainly precarious, and the human race particularly insensitive.
But the spiritual being is powerful: eminently sensitive, not fragile.
Impatience for the absolute.
Jacqueline Kelen
In his speech welcoming Nicolas Schöffer to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Louis Leygue defined sculpture as follows:
“Sculpture can be achieved through three processes: that which consists in taking material from a compact block, that which consists in shaping a soft material to create forms, and finally that which consists in making what you want to achieve.”
Model for flamingo, Alexander Calder
“Sculpture, like drama, is both the most difficult and the easiest of all the arts. Copy a model, and the work is done; but imprint a soul on it, make a type by representing a man or a woman, that is the sin of Prometheus. This success is counted in the annals of sculpture as poets are counted in humanity.”
Honoré de Balzac, La Comédie humaine.
Sculpture by Briony Marshall.
There are Beings who have,
Ocean in their eyes,
A poem in their heart,
Infinity in their soul.
John Joos
The materials used for sculpture range from mud to stone, wood, marble, wax, plaster and various other types of material. The use of new materials has led to the emergence of new variants of this art form. Certain resins or plastics have enabled sculpture to diversify its artistic styles.
Sculpture by Simon O’Rourke.
A tree toppled by lightning. An arm with one hand open towards the sky, symbolising nature’s call for help.
Originally, the sculptures had a religious function. They were used for magic rituals, funerary rites and cult practices. Later, they also acquired a political function: they showcased the power of monarchs and served as an element of commemoration.
“Sleeping boy”, Philippe Laurent Roland, 1774, Met of New-York.
Finally, sculpture acquired an aesthetic function, which is currently the most common. Artists sought to represent beauty or certain artistic aspects through volumes and shapes, or to create decorative objects.
Glazed stoneware sculpture by Laurence Morisse, a ceramic sculptor based in Marsanne in the Drôme department.
A tear of apology to wounded nature, sculpture by Willy Vergine
Sculpture by Dan Corbin.
Calamar by Elsa de Stonehouse
Crystal from the sea by Antonin Smit.
This work investigates the landscape of the soul. A fleeting glimpse of eternity. It leaves you breathless. Weightless – falling into the remnants of love.
The dimension of our reflection in the mirror of the universe leaves us gasping for immortality as we sink into the abyss of self.
“Death Star II. 2017-18”, by Robert Longo, (Art Basel 2018, Switzerland).
A work of art can have a social and political dimension. This sculpture was made using almost 40,000 bullets. Each bullet represents a life that was taken by the use of a firearm in the USA in 2017, when he began his work.
Valeria Corvino was born in Naples (1953) and grew up studying the astonishing artistic wealth of her native city. Roman sculpture, whimsical Baroque, everyday familiarity with fragments of antiquity and the architectural palimpsests of her homeland were her first ‘masters’, accompanied by a typically Mediterranean passion for the secrets of anatomy and the beauty of the human body. After studying at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, she went on to study the problems of composition by working with photography, and thus with cross-sections, zoomed-in images and the interplay of light and shadow. Combining her pictorial training, her passion for sculptural volumes and the secrets of photographic framing, she has perfected her innate propensity for balance and harmony.
The dancer, bronze and marble,1994Sculptor Jean Marc Demichelis
Be like the bird
Posed for a moment
On branches too frail
Feeling the branch bend
And yet sings
Knowing it has wings.
Victor Hugo
Catalina Leontescu, ceramic
Red Ball Project by Kurt-Perschke. American artist. Spirale Ball sculpture, Toronto.
“Urgence ” by Jean-Luc Brandily, contemporary sculptor
“Fountains”, Malgorzata Chodakowska (born 1965), sculptor.
Polish sculptor Malgorzata Chodakowska has been working in the field for over thirty years. Tired of the static concept of sculpture in art, she decided to break with this preconception by breathing life into her works. Water features give the statues a particularly dynamic effect.
She uses water like blood in a continuous flow, in bronze-clad clay statues that seem to move in front of the viewer.
Shiotsuki Juran , Japanese artist, bamboo
Andrea Berni is an Italian sculptor whose work has been shown in solo exhibitions in Lithuania, France and Norway. He is fascinated by the factors that motivate human behaviour and our relationships with society and nature. Berni describes his expressive figurative compositions as being linked to a “free interpretation and idealisation of nature”. Creating in series, his pieces are made of marble, terracotta and clay.
“Petites bonnes femmes”, Valérie Hadida, sculptor born in 1965
“The dancer Sasha Lyo”,
Serge Yourievitch(1875-1969), plaster, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris.
“Perfect form, flowing with poetic fluid… A small, round, placid figure, with the delicate features of a doll that has not yet awakened to life and that the first shock would shatter”. This is how the art critic and dance specialist André Levinson described Suzanne Schmitt, known by her stage name SACHA LYO, an acrobatic music-hall dancer born in Petrograd in 1914, who served as the model for this work.
This is a plaster cast of a bronze that was exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1932. The bronze was recast under the Vichy regime, and only this plaster has survived the passage of time. In this splendid work, the sculptor manages to convey, with great grace and elegance, the physical tension of the acrobatic dancer’s body, and we can feel the suffering endured in this extreme posture.
“Maiden with the Seagull” statue by Zvonko Car, in Opatija, Croatia
Sculpture by Berit Hildre
Goose Glass, the Splash. Glass sculpture.
Psyche in a fainting spell, Pietro Tenerani, first half of the 19th century, marble.
In his Metamorphoses, the Roman writer Apuleius tells how Cupid fell in love with Psyche, but her mother Venus was jealous of the young girl’s beauty and persecuted her. Venus sent Psyche to the Underworld for a bottle containing Proserpine’s beauty ointment, with strict instructions not to open it. But the young girl could not contain her curiosity and opened the bottle, immediately falling into a weak or deep sleep.
In developing this first work, Tenerani, one of the leading Italian sculptors of the 19th century, sought to realistically capture the pose of the body when someone falls into a sudden deep faint. He produced several sketches, four of which have survived in the sculptor’s studio and bear witness to his complex search for the right sense of movement. The graceful form, the noble, harmonious lines and the meticulous workmanship of the marble surface – all inherent features of Tenerani’s work – earned this sculpture great renown, and the artist repeated the figure at least seven times.
Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Glass sculpture by Eunsuh Choi.
Sculpture by Christien Dutoit.
There is nothing so precious as the time of our lives, this infinitesimal morning, this fine imperceptible point in the firmament of eternity, this tiny spring that will only be once and then never again. (…)
In a little while, it will be too late, because that hour lasts only an instant.
The wind is rising, it’s now or never.
Don’t miss your only chance in all eternity, don’t miss your only spring morning.
Vladimir Jankélévitch (Le je-ne-sais-quoi et le presque rien).
Pat Swyler, ceramist .
Eyes closed and hands offered. An offering to Life.
“Suzanne” -1925- Amber glass statue by René Lalique.
Coll. Musée Lalique, (Photo: Y. Langlois)
“Gravity” by Lorenzo Quinn.
Gravity is described by the artist….” It is essential to find balance in life.
Often this balance is achieved with the help of the people around us who hold us firmly to the ground and without whom we would float to perdition.
Photo taken at the Halcyon Gallery in New Bond Street, London UK.
Sculpture by Maria Angeles Anglada
Dear angel, you are beautiful
To make you dream of love,
For a single spark
Of your bright eyes,
The poet for a whole day.
The naive air of a young girl,
Plain forehead, azure veins,
Sweet vanilla breath,
Rosy mouth where sparkles
On the ivory a pure laugh;
Slender, arched foot, white hand,
Silky curls of jet,
A swan’s neck that bends,
Flexible as the branch
That in the evening a fresh wind caresses;
You have, on my word,
All you need to charm;
But your soul is so frivolous,
But your head is so mad
That we dare not love you.
Théophile Gautier, from Élégies (1830)
When marble catches fire!
Psyche revived by Love’s kiss, Antonio Canova, 1793.
“Young mother and child” by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917).
Bronze with a brown and green patina, designed in 1885 and cast by the Rudier foundry, of which there are several versions in various museums (Soumaya Museum in Mexico, National Gallery of Scotland, San Francisco Young and Légion Honor Museum and Musée d’Orsay), either in bronze or plaster.
The work shows a nude young woman sitting on a rock with a child on her lap.
Intended to adorn the lower part of “the gate of Hell ” and a precursor to “Young mother in the cave”, the sculpture was modelled after his young partner Rose Beuret and their son Antoine-Euget.
“Young mother in the cave” by Auguste Rodin, white marble, Rodin Museum, Philadelphia.
The first versions of the work were produced in 1860 while Rodin was working for the Manufacture de Sèvres.
He explored maternal love, taking as his model his companion Rose Beuret and her child Auguste – Eugène.
Intended to adorn “La Porte de l’Enfer”, the plaster model was made by Rodin in 1885 and then sculpted by the sculptor Jean Escoula in 1891 (the latter, while pursuing his own career, was the master’s practitioner).
Wonderful sculptures. It will be necessary to watch them several times. It’s the best article you made. I can say that it’s a real documentary. Congratulations!
merci Silvia
j’ai mis du temps à chercher les œuvres varier les styles, matériaux et rédiger .
Merci pour ton enthousiasme et fidélité sur facebook
Article à voir et revoir et en 2024 j’en ferai un autre sur les sculptures.