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Sculpture is as old
as human culture and has appeared in almost every culture throughout
the world. Clay engravings have been found on the walls of caves
inhabited by prehistoric peoples of the Gravettian period (c.21,000
BC; Dordogne, France).
Carving, a direct subtractive process, is one of the two ancient
SCULPTURE TECHNIQUES. Carved or glyptic sculptures were fashioned
from such durable materials as stone, ivory, and wood. The other
technique is modeling, a direct additive process in which a pliable
material is built up around an armature or skeletal framework.
Casting, either by the LOST-WAX PROCESS or in sand, is an indirect
process (see BRONZES); a carved or a modeled sculpture is its
starting point. Sculpture may be created in two dimensions--relief
sculpture--or in three--in the round. Relief may be of varying
degrees--low (called BAS-RELIEF), middle, or high--depending on how
far the figures emerge from the background plane; or forms may be
recessed beneath the background plane, a method favored by the
Alongside the pharaonic tradition in sculpture stood another
tradition, equally old but more naturalistic. It has survived for the
most part in painted wood and limestone images of scribes, stewards,
and other dignitaries, rendered to reveal their human qualities, as
in the Seated Scribe (2750-2625 BC; Louvre, Paris), a painted
limestone statuette with eyes of inlaid rock crystal.
GREEK AND ROMAN SCULPTURE
Until the 20th century, Greek and Roman sculpture was the most
important and, except during the early Middle Ages, the most
continuous influence on sculptors in the West. The Greco-Roman blend
of realistically observed detail and ideally conceived form has
profoundly affected the whole course of sculptural styles in the
Aegean and Greek Sculpture
In the Hellenistic period (330-100 BC), sculptors showed a growing
interest in the depiction of violent motion and emotion, as in the
Borghese Warrior (1st century BC; Louvre, Paris).
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE
After the shift of the empire's administrative center (AD 330)
from Rome to Constantinople, official interest in monumental
sculpture declined. Large sculptures in the round were viewed as
idolatrous by the early Christians. On a small scale, carving in
relief continued on diptychs (portable ivory panels), such as the
Diptych of Justinian (527; Louvre, Paris).
CAROLINGIAN, OTTONIAN, AND ROMANESQUE
In the West stone carving gradually revived and first appeared in
the form of religious narratives on the piers and tympana,
semicircular spaces above the main church portals. The models for
these large sculptures seem to have been figures from ivory diptychs
and manuscript illuminations, treasures that were slowly disseminated
westward and northward from Byzantium and its colonial outposts in
the Mediterranean. A well-preserved example is the tympanum The
Second Coming of Christ (1110-20; south portal) at the Church of
Saint Pierre in Moissac, France. One of the most classicistic
works to have survived from this period is the large brass baptismal
font (1107-18) attributed to Reiner de Huy at the Church of Saint
Barthelemy, Liege, France.
The great Royal Portal (c.1150-70) at Chartres Cathedral in
France, whose tympana depict, from left to right, the Ascension, the
Apocalypse, and the Incarnation of Christ, with columnar figures
forming the door jambs below, is a transitional monument, with
Romanesque features in an emphatic Gothic framework. Regional and
national differences made themselves felt as sculpture became less
unbendingly columnar and more supple and expressive, as in the two
groups, the Annunciation (c.1220) and the Visitation (c.1230-40), on
the west facade of Reims Cathedral in France.
RENAISSANCE AND MANNERIST
The Italian Renaissance style in sculpture was carried to France
by Cellini, who worked in the court of Francis I. The Italian master
strongly influenced an entire generation of French artists, including
Jean GOUJON, who was notable as a sculptor of elegant Mannerist
reliefs with strong classical tendencies. Goujon's elongated and
smoothly curved nymphs in fluid poses survive in five relief panels
on his Parisian Fontaine des Innocents (1547-49); altered
BAROQUE AND ROCOCO SCULPTURE
Rococo sculpture and architecture developed in France after the
death (1715) of LOUIS XIV. Sculptors in the ROCOCO STYLE
abandoned the strong architectonic balances of the baroque in favor
of asymmetrical detail. The greatest triumphs of the rococo were in
architectural decoration and ornamental carving.
The neoclassical style (see NEOCLASSICISM, art) began in Rome in
the 1750s with the archaeological researches of Johann Joachim
WINCKELMANN, who sharply distinguished Greek classical art, which he
praised, from Roman classical art, which he denounced. Antonio
CANOVA, whose foremost patrons were Napoleon Bonaparte and his
family, was one of several influential sculptors who dominated the
neoclassical movement, which became international in scope from the
1790s to the end of the Victorian era. Jean Antoine HOUDON produced
many popular sculptures in the neoclassical style. The French
19th-century sculptors Francois RUDE, Antoine Louis BARYE, and Jean
Baptiste CARPEAUX, working in a romantic style, created sculpture of
surpassing quality in an age that preferred empty academic or cloying
sentimental sculptural wares.
The late-19th-century French sculptor Auguste RODIN exploited all
aspects of classical sculpture. In his art, Rodin was not so much a
shaper of 20th-century developments as he was a sculptor who shred
neoclassicism of its sentimentality and its disguised eroticism. His
carved marble sculptures are imbued with sexual intensity; his bronze
busts project the strong personalities of many famous contemporaries;
and his monumental sculptures are overwhelming in their balance of
mass and form. This concern for monumentality is reflected in the
work of his gifted pupil Emile Antoine BOURDELLE.
During the 20th century, sculpture underwent the most radical
changes in its history. The emergence of CUBISM and ABSTRACT ART
brought down the dominance of Greek and Roman principles of ideal
form and realistic detail. Representational sculpture, continuing
under the influence of such late-19th-century artists as Rodin,
Augustus SAINT-GAUDENS, and Medardo ROSSO, remained the primary mode
of expression for numerous sculptors. Aristide MAILLOL and Henri
MATISSE continued figural representation within their national and
stylistic traditions, many of them variants of EXPRESSIONISM.
Georges BRAQUE and Pablo PICASSO applied to sculpture the cubist
theories they had invented, with such sculptors as Aleksandr
ARCHIPENKO, Raymond DUCHAMP-VILLON, and Jacques LIPCHITZ following
their lead. Other revolutionary movements followed: Italian FUTURISM,
exemplified by the work of Umberto BOCCIONI; Russian CONSTRUCTIVISM,
established by Vladimir TATLIN and perpetuated by the brothers Naum
GABO (Pevsner) and Antoine PEVSNER; DADA, with "found objects" by
Marcel DUCHAMP; SURREALISM, as in the disparate works of Max ERNST,
Alberto GIACOMETTI, and Man RAY; and the biomorphic abstractions of
Jean ARP and Constantin BRANCUSI.
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