Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help
- To what extent does your respect for size affect your response to the sculpture?
104 5Source: Karl Knappe, quoted in Kurt Herberts, The Complete Book of Artists—Techniques (London: Thames and Hudson, 1958), p. 16. Published in the United States by Frederick A. Praeger. jac16871_ch05_091-120.indd 104 12/11/17 11:37 AM 105
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Henry Moore, sculptor of Recumbent Figure (Figure 5-11), has stated that “every material has its own individual qualities. It is only when the sculptor works direct, when there is an active relationship with his material, that the material can take its part in the shaping of an idea. Stone, for example, is hard and concentrated and should not be falsified to look like soft flesh—it should not be forced beyond its constructive build to a point of weakness. It should keep its hard tense stoniness.”6 Jeff Koons has made a career by pushing against the idea of truth to materials. His Balloon Dog (Magenta) (Figure 5-12) is a whimsical piece and amuses young and old alike. Much of his work seems to be an attempt to call the entire question, What is art? to the forefront. After looking at Balloon Dog in Versailles, will you see birth- day-party balloon dogs differently? At the behest of Creative Time Kara E. Walker has confected: A Subtlety, or the Marvel- ous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant (Figure 5-13) was constructed in the now- defunct Diamond Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, New York. The setting is ironic, and the depiction of a “black Mammy” as a sphinx is a protest aimed at reminding us that the demand for sugar in the Americas was central to the increased demand for African slaves to work the sugar plantations in the West Indies. The sculpture was site-specific and stayed in place from mid-May to mid-July, slowly decaying. 6Quoted by Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Sculptor (London: A. Zwemmer, 1934), p. 29. FIGURE 5-11 Henry Moore, Recumbent Figure. 1938. Green Hornton stone, 54 inches long. Tate Gallery, London, Great Britain. Recumbent Figure is one of an enormous number of similar sculptures by Moore in both stone and bronze. This stone piece distorts the figure in ways reminiscent of Picasso’s paintings of the same period. ©The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2017/www.henry-moore .org. Reproduced by permission of The Henry Moore Foundation. Photo: ©Art Resource, NY jac16871_ch05_091-120.indd 105 12/11/17 11:37 AM 106
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FIGURE 5-12 Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Magenta). 1994–2000. Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating. 121 × 143 × 45 inches. 307.3 × 363.2 × 114.3 cm. Balloon Dog (Magenta), among Koons’s most popular works, has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, the Chateau de Versailles, Venice, and elsewhere. Several examples exist in blue, yellow, orange, and magenta. Koons often works against the principles of truth to materials. ©Jeff Koons Installation View: Chateau de Versailles, Jeff Koons Versailles, October 9, 2008 - April 1, 2009, Photo: Laurent Lecat FIGURE 5-13 Kara Walker, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, 2014. 35 feet high by 75 feet long. Photo: Jason Wyche, Artwork ©Kara Walker, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York jac16871_ch05_091-120.indd 106 12/11/17 11:38 AM 107
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As technology has gained more and more ascendancy, reverence toward nat- ural things has receded. In highly industrialized societies, people tend to revere artificial things, and the pollution of our environment is one result. Another re- sult is the flooding of the commercial market with imitations of primitive sculp- ture, which are easily identified because of the lack of truth to the materials (test this for yourself). Even contemporary sculptors have lost some of their innocence toward things simply because they live in a technological age. Many sculptors still possess something of the natural way of feeling things, and so they find in- spiration in primitive sculpture. Despite its abstract subject matter, Barbara Hep- worth’s Pelagos (Figure 5-14), with its reverence to wood, has a close spiritual affinity to the Maternity Figure (Figure 5-25). Truth to materials sculpture is an implicit protest against technological ascendancy. FIGURE 5-14 Barbara Hepworth, ©Bowness, Hepworth Estate. Pelagos. 1946. Wood with color and strings, 16 inches in diameter. Tate Gallery, London, Great Britain. Pelagos was inspired by a bay on the coastline of St. Ives in Cornwall, where Barbara Hepworth lived. The strings, she said, represent the tension between “myself and the sea, the wind and hills.” ©Bowness. Photo: ©Tate, London/Art Resource, NY PERCEPTION KEY Truth to Materials 1. Examine the examples of twentieth-century sculpture in the book. Assuming that these examples are fairly representative, do you find a pervasive tendency to truth to materials? Do you find exceptions, and, if so, how might these be explained?