Rationales or justifications for sculpture

[fritchie]

[A bit of justification here; this post essentially continues a thread started by Hanee Patenaud - hpatenaud - under Figurative Sculpture, and I bring it here after a short pause in the original thread. Discussion wandered far from the original post, and I think this is a better location. The current subject area continues to be of interest, I believe.]

Hanee - I had a busy day yesterday, also, and got your post but decided to wait overnight before replying. I’m glad I did, because I have gathered much better ideas overnight.

It’s easiest, as usual, to mark these with numbers.

(1) Your remarks on Completeness or Indeterminacy. Clearly, you’ve discussed two distinct concepts under these terms, though you are not confusing them. What I called Completeness, suggesting it might be inherent in Unity, is the property of not requiring elements which are absent, such as the literary panoply of Ugolino or Laocoon. You brought this over into Indeterminacy, or absence of elements or specificity typically present, as limbs on a human form, or vagueness in poetry or painting.

(2) Indeterminacy, using your brief descriptions and examples, bothers me a great deal, partly because somewhat truncated torsos have been my primary focus for several years now. In effect, I think the concepts you describe as justification for truncation of this sort are way off the mark. I though so last night in one regard, but overnight, many other objections occurred to me. I’d like your reaction to these remarks, if you have the time.

(2a) My first reaction, last night, was one of economy in both materials and time. Those were among my primary conscious reasons for adopting the truncated figure rather that the full figure for further exploration. (Of course, artists generally have unconscious directives as well, but leave that for now.)

I preferred to concentrate my efforts at conceptualizing the human form on the torso, the central portion, and leave head, limbs, and so on for later. Omitting the head also has a special justification. It has seemed to me, through my local gallery, that people prefer anonymous or even faceless figures, to those which might seem to be looking back. As I have no particular wish to insist on full figures, I prefer the greater sales associated with these partial (anonymous) forms.

I expect there is a philosophy of economy in means or ends which would address this issue, but it’s not the main point here.

(2b) Overnight I became aware of a preferred rationale for truncation of this sort, two distinct rationales, in fact. It seemed to me from the beginning that analysis in line with your statement “The biggest critique I've heard of incomplete [indeterminate might be more specific in this case] forms is that our love of them is not the form itself but the imaginative flights in our own head that occur as we try to complete the form.” missed the mark badly. The two, better rationales, it seems to me are:

(2b1) Simple surprise or curiosity about the absence. This explanation actually runs extremely deep, so let me just outline a few points. We know that children must be taught not to “stare at people who are different.” Attention to a human form outside the norm clearly is instinctive behavior, and I think forms which are deliberately incomplete simply use this element of surprise as a means of gaining viewer attention. (Generally not in a socially awkward or undesirable way at all, simply as a “gotcha” for attention. None of the art-philosophical rationale to which you allude.)
This instinct probably derives from early predator - prey interactions when primordial humans were subject to hunting by packs of wild animals such as dogs or hyenas. Observers today clearly have documented pack behavior in identifying and attacking animals which stand outside the norm. “Merging with the crowd” became inherently safe, and “standing out” attracted predators, to the danger of everyone present.

(2b2) The second explanation for this process of truncation, I think, is perhaps even more interesting, and it is this second reason that occurred to me overnight. This is the “television effect” and/or “computer effect”. To a lesser, it might be called the “movie effect”. Since about 1950, we have observed much of the world through a box, the TV screen, and lately the computer screen. Much as painters and paintings have had to contend with arbitrary limits on visual space from the beginning, in the television/computer age everyone contends with this limit each day. Of course, movies preceded television and common computer usage by as much as fifty to a hundred years, but they are viewed in much more limited circumstances, and probably had less influence in altering common perception.

We are inoculated today to close truncation, usually in a rectangular format. This truncation generally is used by the director, editor, or cameraperson to concentrate the viewer’s attention on specific attributes of the human form, when humans are the subject. Parenthetically, photography introduced a similar characteristic possibly as early as about 1830 or 1840 but, just as movies, lacked the profound consciousness-altering power of television.

In short, I think my use of torsos rather than full figures reflects both economy of resource and the new state of visual perception.

[hpatenaude]

Haven't read the whole thing just yet, and might not be able to give it a proper read and response for a couple days... but one quick comment:

It's possible to be missing a head, arms, and legs and be perfectly determine. Though, with the human form specifically like this, it is difficult. What makes it determinate or not is if it can exist as a single object in the mind, moreover, a type. Torso's have developed as a type in themselves, distinct from the type of Full Body. We are able to percieve also an arm as an arm, a head as a head, and so forth. We don't leverage complaint to one who does a portrait, so we shouldn't leverage one to one who does a torso for some formulaic sort of analysis where "it must have arms and legs otherwise it's an indeterminate form." I would say that determinate form is form that is completed in the object, not in your mind. This means, if a torso in our perception of it leaves us jaunting along through our imagination of what many heads and arms it could have, the work is indeterminate. If on the other hand, we say "my what a torso!" and our appreciation lies in the object, not in our self-indulgencies of imagination, then it is definite. I thought I should clear this up as soon as possible, as from what I scanned, most of your response is against the idea of determinacy as you supposed it to be (and this is my fault, as I brought in the word without sufficiently making clear what was meant by it).



The philosophical underpinning of this sort of way of looking at art, has to do with one centered on the object, to some degree. If we place the value in the viewer's imagination, our philosophy ends up being less about artwork and more about people's random associations or fantastical self-indulgences, at worst; or their natural imaginative completion and discover of the grounds for completion of the things in front of them, perhaps, at best. The more we value the imaginative aspects that the viewer engages in, the less important the art object and the artist becomes. Canvases filled with smoky amorphous colors with roughly anthropormorphic shapes, become of higher value than either something containing individualized expression--like Rembrandt--or something that is a more formal endeavor of understanding the relations of parts and working towards a determinate whole--like Cezanne.

As I said, sculpture has the benefit, to some degree, of always being perfectly determinate. We can't make form that has unclear boundaries--besides perhaps in kinetic sculpture. So to this degree it is always determinate and will be perceived as a specific object. The same isn't true of hte amorphous blobs of colour. So we're dealing with much higher degrees of determiniteness at the heights, and lows, of determinateness in sculpture, than, say in painting. It may be said that there is something in the art of sculpture itself that makes determiniteness the proper aim of the art all the more than painting--which has to embrace a certain amount of indeterminiteness in being only one view, and so forth.

In any event, I saw briefly something about economy which I'll also say you are right in emphasizing. Adding more than what is essential for the object-nature of what you are making, can make it less determinate rather than more. It can also violate it's unity. A sculpture in which I am selecting and emphasizing the effective points of skeletal structure as it is seen in human form, would be greatly damanged if I attemplted to render hair--or at least, if I did not do so with absolute genius, as I will not say the greatest of masters can't succeed in achieving something that is both about skeletal structure and about texture and about this and the other. But the integration of these is difficult, and unity can be easily lost if it's not handled just right to not be an "and" but a true integration.

And the old axiom of "knowing when to stop" on a work of art may have something to do with these laws of economy. When we achieve a great torso, in whatever effective points of the torso we are emphasizing, it's hard to imagine that one could add legs, arms, a head, this that the other without destroying the beautiful, economic unity of it. And it very well may be complete, and of extremely high quality without anything added.

I think the issue becomes one of quality/quantity distinctions. But let us not discount works that succeed on both, like Dante's Divine Comedy, in favor of those that are of the highest quality but not the highest breadth of experience, like Bird in Space...

The question remains if, as artist, we should be aiming for that breadth of the Divine Comedy or content ourselves with the singularity of Bird in Space. And this is I imagine would be quite hte discussion, because both are valued differently depending on what your view of humanity and what your view of time is.

-- just a few thoughts... I'm in the middle of a week of final crits, so I may delay proper reading and response of your post till later. Hopefully other's will join in...

[hpatenaude]

Eep! I made the grave mistake of partially reading something before responding. I should have taken the extra 2 minutes to read the rest instead of being in such a rush. I don't have time to respond now but just want to acknolwedge that my last response may have seemed unrelated to your post.

I'm not a fan of anthropological or sociological causes for our actions, but there is some truth in some of them. They usually miss the mark and almost always take an effect for a cause: as in television causes us to be a certian way versus the more likely case of us causing television to be a certain way.

Now, the framing, as you call it, is off I think. The cropping your describing is in the nature of EVERY TWO DIMENSIONAL IMAGE. So, it was part of painting, part of photograph, part of film, and now television. I think it's wrong of you to judge past eras as not sufficiently socially effected by these things. If the phenomenon you describe exists, it has existed for a very long time. And if anything, it should be most prononced at the beginning of the wide use of photography--I could argue on your behalf for this, but I think the phenomenon doesn't exist. Because, though I can find a correlation of a high frequency of indeterminate forms beginning with modern art which began with the camera, arguably, I don't think it's because of the nature of cropping/framing, it's because of the nature of the changing of bad art. Bad art, before the camera, had recourse to Craft as its means of entertaining people [and bad art is just that: entertainment or amusement], or as a means of being valued for purely practical means.

After the camera, bad art couldn't have recourse to craft, and had to look elsewhere. So bad art, rather than being precise [though indeterminate!because they have not an exact form but an aglomeration of well-rendered forms--multiple things that don't create a unity in any way; the forms they painted were perhaps beautiful, in the form sthey were, and perhaps unities, in the form they were, and perhaps determinate, in the forms they were, but this doesn't mean a painting that agglomerates them onto a canvas, or perfectly represents a single one of tem, has the beauty of the original object it is represent]... {breath}... So bad art, rather than being precise, had to go another way, went towards a bad mannerism of 'expression' [falsely called] or surrealism or any of the other failures. And, with Craft requirements falling away, bad art got worse. It excluded essential things because it could get away with it, and because it allowed it to be different [wow factor below] than what we saw last week, as well, sure. But much of it had to do with the gates being open for bad art to not even have discipline in the Craft... this doesn't mean Good Art requires Good Craft. Just that Craft, as a given, is gone...


The "wow" factor that you describe, though, I think is on the mark, though not necessarily as you interpret it to be in terms of causes--but as a phenomenon, yes. "Wow" factor or surprise is a huge factor in contemporary art. It makes for a short lived aesthetic satisfaction, because it bases its entire value on its disfamiliarity with experience. as soon as it becomes familiar it becomes meaningless, and it rapidly looses value ssecond by second after the "wow" has hit us.

The "wow" factor is worthy of much discussion, certainly, as it's the most virulent disease currently affecting aesthetic perception. It is what in the past would have been called 'the grotesque' which works on a different level than the beautiful. It doesn't mean 'ugly' per se, it means unusual or jarring. And discussions of the grotesque and the tragic have always been interesting, becaue both of them at surface would seem to be contradictory to a view of beauty as a pleasurable or desirable thing. For the tragic the question is: why would we want to see something painful? And for the grotesque: why would we want to see something jarring or disfigured?

Even in your anthropological excursion, you didn't answer this: okay, so we have a function to look closer at things that are discontinuous with our experience than things that are continuous with it. But: why would we feel pleasure or desire to look at things discontinuous? Why would we come to value those things. And, many things are discontinuous with our experience--an unusually beautiful thing is just as discontinuous as an unusually disfigured.


Anyhow, I think the wow factor, and the corruption of artists in considering their art as a game of arousing emotions or reactions or what have you in the audience is really the answer at hand.


And, the lack of determinacy becomes a problem quickly when you stop considering the audience. Especially if you've been donig somethng for a while, you tend to crave higher and higher degrees of determinacy and of fullness [or breadth, as I described, i.e. The Divine Comedy]. it's only when your art is helping you get by and you've got a steady satisfying hobby, are well respected, and it pleases and sells, that I think you can labor for many years without feeling that constant dissatisfaction and inadequacy of your work that is what leads to the great masterpieces, determinant in form and full in breadth. That don't need to omit in order to order something. And I think that's what we see in latter works of those who did not make their art facile (as Rodin and, say, Raphael, did) but were constantly grappling with a fuller work--Le Corbusier is a good example here. His early works worked merely by omission, his latter tried t fully grapple with all the problems at hand and still achieve unity and a tight relation of parts, as well as perfect determinacy.

But I'm just grinding an axe there--I've never liked facile artists, though I can certainly find beauty in a facile work. This is because I'm talking about art in terms of the artist, as I'm talking to artists. The speaking of whether something was facile or an absolute battle and mastery over a fluxative thing, is perhaps not proper to either the art work it's self or the audience. But, since we're talking motives, as you brought them up, by questioning your ends in the work you make, it's appropriate to bring in the artist and his approach to the artwork, rather than just the artwork itself or it's relation to the audience.



Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I can't imagine, if I were on a desert island with no audience to my work, that I would be satisfied with a mere gesture of something--at least, not always. Sometimes the gesture would seem to be quite wonderful. But across 50 years I'd certainly find times where I could not understand something by mere gesture, and in my desire to fully understand, I'd reach to try to "flesh things out" as they say. Or perhaps "head/leg/arm/musuclo-structure/skeletal-structure/nature and structure of pose/intent/nature of thng being expressed" things out. Perhaps I am just leveraging a complaint against my own minimalist tendencies as 'cop outs.' Or formalist tendencies. I think all these are great, but in time, we need things that are as consummate and full of everything they can be full of at once [and thus the formalist begins to think about expression, as he has experiences that efed into his life that seem disconnected from his work, and the work doesn't seem to consummate those into it in any way].

So, my formalist critique of the torso in my last post, where I say that a torso can be great, should be augmented by: on a personal level, I can't see how someone could spend their whole life just doing torsos.

But then I think of Cezanne, and his work was absolutely never facile, despite remaining formal and working with only those essential elements to the form. To me it seems he had a constant battle to achieve that. Beecause his eyes saw form so well that he could continue to find disparity between what he was able to imagine or undrestand or see and what he was able to create. And that disparity is the key to our artistic endeavors as far as I'm concerned. To develop both at the same time is essential. If they are become equal we becomes Raphaels, n the other hand if the gap grows too wide we give up unless we are extremely strong willed.

[fritchie]

Thanks for taking a quick look at this and replying, but I think you misinterpreted my current approach to the torso. I’m working with it at the present to gain a better understanding of sculpture at the conceptual level, without a model directly present. It’s not what I expect to do indefinitely. At the same time, I consider it an excellent summation of the human form and valuable in itself. I think you make both these points yourself, in different words.

Also, I think you missed my meaning about the issue of Gotcha! or Wow! I don’t expect that to be the end or purpose of my work in any way, and I agree that artists who use this factor that way are the bane of current (and recent) art. Certainly truncation, as in the torso, is not sufficiently unusual to warrant the excursions taken by these people.

And on your objection to my saying TV has altered our perception to the degree that truncation, as in a box, has become a sort of norm, many if not all experts say the power of TV (and more recently computers) is not similar to that of photographs or paintings, or even of movies.. Likely, this property arises because we experience TV in our own, personal environments, and it has unusually lifelike qualities.

You report the truncated human form or torso as valid because it has a history of validity. I think the basis of its validity has altered in the TV age. It has validity in itself as a truncation, because our universe of perception has altered. I know that you objected to technological extensions of perception (such as with a microscope) earlier, but I think this development has become part of human perceptual evolution and won’t vanish, short of major cultural catastrophe.

BTW, best wishes with your crits!

[hpatenaude]

(Only responding for clarification on personal level:)

I didn't mean to make any assumptions about your personal work, as I haven't seen it, and even if I did, I couldn't know your intentions or the nature of how you perceived or labored through your work. I meant more general comments coming off of the things you said were a factor, albeit minor, in the way you thought of your choices and the choices of other's, not specifically grounded to you. I was responding to the issues you brought up of: (1) sculpting a torso as an object independent of arms, legs, head and doing this perhaps because of (2a) surprise, as you put it, and I renamed to "wow" and (2b) the "expert" supported effect of television in "evolving perception" [I quote because I have problems with this idea, but cannot spend the time to explain why I feel it to be suffering in the same way I feel sociological interpretations in general to be suffering; but as I said I'm not going to post anymore, I am holding back from talking about the ideas, and just qualifying what I said in terms of how it was directed].

So I'm hoping you didn't take any of it as a personal comment about /your/ working process being facile or anything else. I have no idea why or how you're doing the torso, and I know it can be done for good reasons (in terms of the artist) and done well (in terms of the artwork)--I only knew the potential influences, which might have been very minor and I took ot just be /some influences/ not even reasons so much as things you felt going on that may play a role.


[Also, I will divulge, to continue dealing with personal things, that I have not really looked at a television for more than a moment in the past 6 years, so I may be a biased party--though, like anyone else, I watched a good deal of television when I was a kid. Also, I disagree that computers have, as a medium, changed the world--and I used to think otherwise as I was once an idealistic softare designer. I will admit, that computers and televisions, just like, say, Vaudeville shows, can help reinforce various evils, but they have no causative effect on the world nor do they alter us evolutionarily speaking--it takes more than one or two generations for an organism to alter via evolution so dramatically. Now, if you mean "evolved perception" as in "supported those with a bad will and tendency to evade self-knowledge in slowly bankrupting themselves emotionally via discharging all their energies into imaginary worlds of amusement, and perhaps becomign increasingly inattentive to their own senses and unable to differentiate qualities, only quantities or intensities." Then, yes, some people's diseases were exacerbated. Probably less by the nature of the medium than the nature of what's available to them through that medium.]

[I'd love to blame my youtfhul indulgences in television, or a socially or evolutionarily defect of lack of conservation, or computers "changing the way we process and work with information", for my lack of will in not responding to your comments about television, but, unfortunately, the error is in my self. I really don't think the structure of human nature, the nature of our desire to make art or experience art, the nature of what art is or is not, or any of that, changes overnight, let alone in 1000 years. Perception is perception, human nature is human nature. What society [technology being a part of this] does is merely to provide conditions that foser or inhibit development of various human faculties. Perception is certainly malnourished these days, but it is individual cases of malnourishment that we're dealing with, not a change in 'we' as a whole. And, except in particualrly tragic cases, it is possible to nurse ourselves back to health--and art can have quite a wonderful role there.]

[hpatenaude]

Thanks for the luck, too...

[ExNihiloStudio]

My hard drive is cluttered with many aborted theories and statements about art and sculpture that never get past the first page and will never see the light of day…

The thing about doing torsos that puzzles me is how to decide where to crop it, and this is one reason why I have so far stayed away from fragments. I’ve done complete figures and broken off parts to see how they looked, or changed the look, but right now I’ve been content to leave it there. I’ve been wondering about the possibility of leaving the decision to chance. I mean the decision of how to fragment a figure. What if I made a complete figure, brought it to a finished state, and then threw it out a window onto pavement where it would shatter? I haven’t tried this approach yet because it would still leave the decision of which fragment to pick as the best an arbitrary one.

I did a little bedtime reading of Margaret Livingstone’s “Vision & Art The Biology of Seeing”. I really like this book because it’s comprehensible to a lay reader such as myself. Chapter nine covers stereopsis. Quoting Livingstone: “Since our two eyes view the world from slightly different positions, the images on the two retinas differ slightly. Stereopsis is the ability of the visual system to interpret the disparity between the two images as depth.” (p.138). I think (I could be wrong) that Hanee was referring to this in an earlier post as binocular vision, and it’s the way we naturally perceive 3 dimensions. Painting has to fake this phonenom, but sculpture does not, which is special. I think I’m restating Hanee here, but this is my attempt at understanding.

I’m intrigued by the theory of determinacy as a way of explaining the drive to make a better work of art. I’ve had different ways about ways of describing that drive to take a new piece a step further than the one before, and the danger (or even delusion) of self-satisfaction.

The “Wow Factor”. I’ve thought of this as novelty or otherness, in other words the insane chase for the latest “hot new thing” that just arrived moments ago, and will be boring in just a few more moments. It gets boring quickly because chase is about whatever slim difference makes something novel, and the moment familiarity sets in and the novelty wears off the chase moves on to the next novel thing. My musty copy of “Aesthetics & History” by Bernard Berenson has a pretty good description of this concept. If I thought novelty and otherness was all there was to art, and parts of the contemporary scene may lead one to believe that it is, I would not still be making art. So I’m interested in the theory of determinacy because it does suggest there is something better for an artist to be striving for than to create the latest “hot new thing” to keep the chase for novelty going.

[hpatenaude]

Glad to hear from you again!

Thanks for the quote about stereopsis, I'm going to have to research more about it this winter break... I'm interested in some day making a clear materialistic differentia between sculpture and faked-3d. This hasn't been done adequately yet, in my opinion, or at least not as part of a broader aesthetic theory. Knowing hte technical term for the binocular vision phenomenon helps...


w/r/t thinking about determinacy and what all that means: the theory comes from Santayana's The Sense of Beauty, and though the idea is touched on by others, I believe it is in fullest form here. If you're a regular reader, and want a substitute for reading my rather mediocre prose and dispersed and unrelated bits and pieces of philosophy, while I abstain from posting here on this subject as best I can, you could take a look there [it wouldn't make any sense unless you read the whole first three chapters--the idea comes in in the third chapter entitled 'Form'] for a much more thorough understanding of this idea than the one I've poorly provided here. It has much to do with apperception, or the forming of types in the mind by which we classify objects. So it's much more of a specific thing than it may sound like, in this particular case.



[re: fragments; I was thinking at the met the other day that I found aesthetic satisfaction in some of the broken early greek [copies, I think] statues. They are mostly torsos, of course, but the patterns of break in the torsos are quite nice in the way they indicate masses and the direction of forces in the stone. Or maybe I was just in a sentimentalist mood, let's hope it wasn't just that--but in either case, I can imagine that another route, outside of randomness, would be to consider the material your using and what it's nature is in how it can be taken apart or naturally falls apart based on physical conditions. Most the stones, for examples, seem to get these very particular angle breaks that are nice diagnols... often running from one shoulder to one hip. Perhaps there's a formal principle about the body to learn from that, perhaps not. Just a passing fancy I thought I'd share.]

[ironman]

Hi, WOW, fritchie & hpatenaude, you guys were made for each other! I'd respond to these very intelligent and thoughtful posts but I haven't read them all AND I'm TOO BUSY ACTUALLY WORKING IN MY STUDIO, CREATING beautiful sculpture or crap, depending on your point of view, which by the way doesn't interest me in the least. By that I mean, if you like it, fine, and if you don't like it, that's okay too. There are no rules in art, only the ones that we self impose.
As far as Ugolino is concerned, I visit it every time I go to the Met and I think Carpeaux did a wonderful job in expressing his (Ugolino's) anguish in the face and also that hand under the chin is marvelous, all curled up and tense. It is a great piece of sculpture and (I believe you used the term- cartoonish) as far as the face is concerned, there's a long history of that but I guess, as far as you're concerned, he went too far. Maybe a better sculptor would have done it more subtly but I'm willing to give old Carpeaux a break here and assume he did the best that he could, after all, he's only human and limited as all of us are by our intelligence and skill as artists to do the best that we can do.
So, you guys have a great day and keep up the discourse while I and most of the other sculptors on this site go into our studios and work.
Sincerely,
Jeff

[fritchie]

ExNihilo:
‘The “Wow Factor”. I’ve thought of this as novelty or otherness, in other words the insane chase for the latest “hot new thing” that just arrived moments ago, and will be boring in just a few more moments. It gets boring quickly because chase is about whatever slim difference makes something novel, and the moment familiarity sets in and the novelty wears off the chase moves on to the next novel thing. My musty copy of “Aesthetics & History” by Bernard Berenson has a pretty good description of this concept. If I thought novelty and otherness was all there was to art, and parts of the contemporary scene may lead one to believe that it is, I would not still be making art. So I’m interested in the theory of determinacy because it does suggest there is something better for an artist to be striving for than to create the latest “hot new thing” to keep the chase for novelty going.’

This isn’t what I described at all with my reference to “Gotcha”, but an elaboration that Hanee added in response. I, too, deplore the tendency of current art movements to twist from New to Newer. By “Gotcha”,as I elaborated at some length earlier, I simply meant the instinctive tendency of humans to take a second look at something outside the norm, such as an incomplete human figure. Incompleteness draws the viewer’s attention, if only momentarily. If there’s nothing worth considering, he or she simply will move on.

As far as where to truncate the human form or “torso”, generally I have included less of the legs than is traditional. As I also said earlier, my intent is to sharpen my own internal conception of the figure, in its many natural variations, and I have chosen a more-or-less standard format for convenience: a common overall height, a minimal bit of the neck, enough of the arms to get past the deltoid and into the bicep/tricep, and enough of the upper legs for an overall sense of balance.

I have noticed a tendency to simplify the truncated portions - to make the neck and legs, especially, into simple cylinders - which I consciously have to fight. I cut the arms at an angle in one early piece, and decided that a square cut fits my esthetic better, possibly as a result of the “TV effect” I also suggested as rationale for the current plethora of deliberately truncated imagery.

As a bit of aside, I mentioned Rodin’s frozen and fragmented early works. In retrospect, these clays simply may have dried and fragmented in his studio, but biographies I have read usually described them as fragmented through “freezing”. His St. John the Baptist, the next public work after Age of Bronze, sometimes is shown as a torso on two legs which have broken at the hips, with head that may have been reattached, and no arms, as I recall.

From that point, or thereabouts, he received lifelong support from the French government, and was aided by a multitude of influential intellectuals.

[hpatenaude]

Jeff,

I am only curious as to why you took the time away from your studio to post such a comment and betray--that is, exhibit the symptoms of--your emotions so fully to us all. What could you have wanted in doing so? Why did you make such efforts, or rather, restrain yourself so little?

I wont bother to respond to any of the counter-arguments you've very indirectly indicated in your attack here, as, for one, I'm too busy working in my studio right now, and in fact just got home to it after 11 hours in a woodshop--but this you might not have expected as you've projected some foolish idea of me without having any idea where my 'discourse' ends and my work begins, and for two, it is clear that you are not interested in understanding your self, your art or others. Best of luck in your work and in whatever it is that you think you do it for.

As I stated several times in this post, I'm quite the advocate of telling philosophizing artists, including myself, to shut up and make something, and I thank you for reiterating that calling, though after the post has died and everyone has, I am guessing, shut up and gone off to make things.

[oddist]

On fragmentation, truncation, etc....

I had questions where this might have begun on another thread here (http://www.sculpture.net/community/showthread.php?t=1167) and got some reference to Rodin's work.

I have been searching ever since for some reference to this and have finally come up with this second paragraph (http://www.artsacred.com/statuesantiquity/fineartstatuereproductionaugusterodinthecathedrale homedecorstatue.htm) reference.

I'm still researching this and am reaching some of my own conclusions though not ready to release my thoughts.

Keep thinking...

[ironman]

Hi, Hpatenaude,Sorry about that, I"m glad to hear that you're in your studio working on your art. You're obviously a bright, intelligent and well read person but to me the important thing is to get in the studio and make something, then make something else. As Theodore Roethke said, "I learn by going where I have to go". Armature, no armature, clay, bronze, stone, Carpeaux, Rembrandt, Cezanne, Kierkegard, Gilson, Warhol, concrete, steel, etc. My first reaction is to say, who gives a shit, JUST DO IT! You've certainly covered a lot of ground but the best thing that I've read in your posts is about your experience with Carpeaux's bust from one of the figures of La Danse. Obviously a very moving experience for you and although I'm not familiar with the piece, perhaps I didn't look close enough (my loss), but you can be sure I'll take a good long look next time I'm at the MET. Thanks for sharing your take on that piece.
You know, art, or should I say a COMMITMENT to art and the making of it is a lifelong endeavor, I've been seriously (I eat, breath and sleep art) involved for 34 years. It is a journey of learning about yourself and your fellow man & woman, without very much in the way of monetary rewards and sometimes not much recognition either. To go into that studio every day and work on your craft with little hope of anything but self satisfaction is what it's about. To do work that you know is good (maybe the best you've ever done) and have clients just walk by it and not or hardly look at it and not say a word, is disheartening but quite common. Then go back in your studio and have the enthusiasm to work and persevere, expending time, money and energy, is what it's about for most of us. You seem to have a real and genuine passion for art and so do I and I can't imagine how anyone can live a life without a passion, whatever it may be. We're either blessed or cursed depending on your point of view. I feel blessed to be able to go into my studio and do my work, my way, and follow my path, wherever it may lead. I think what I should have said in my last post (instead of, your point of view doesn't interest me in the least) is that I work for ME and no one else.
Have a great day,
Jeff












o

[hpatenaude]

ironman,

Thanks for your second post here... it's both reaffirming and sincere. And yes, passion, if not love, is the important thing. No amount of either theory or patient craft can substitute for that.

[fritchie]

Oddist: “Mitoraj's pieces are great!

Does anyone know the history behind the modern figurative sculpture technique of having work appear like broken greek sculpture? (heads, arms, legs missing...)”

I believe I gave the example of Rodin in my response to your earlier post (quoted above) and also have just repeated it. I think that is the answer. I'd like to hear your thoughts, when you formulate them for the public.

[ironman]

Hi fritchie, Yes, I believe you're right about Rodin being the one who started that but I think that I read somewhere that he got the idea after seeing the Venus de Milo at the Louvre. That may only be conjecture on the part of author, whoever that was, I can't remember where I read that.
Hi hpatenaude, I think this thread started with you asking about armatures and also expressing an aversion to using them, or how to get around using them. You know that if you go into your studio every morning and that clay figure you've been working on has taken a header off the sculpture stand, you either need an armature or use different materials. If you do a great piece of sculpture and cast it in bronze, no ones going to give a rats ass whether or not you used an armature.
Another thing, that head that you so lovingingly described by Carpeaux (part of La Danse), was probably worked and worked and worked, until suddenly (you could say luckily) he arrived at the eureka moment when he knew it was right. But, he set himself up for that moment by all his training, introspection and the hard work that went into every piece that came before it. OR, he may have gotten it on the first try, who knows?
Do you or will you use pneumatic chisels in your stone work? I had a friend who wouldn't use them, muttering something about Michelangelo wouldn't have used them (I don't know how he knew that) while complaining about carpel tunnel and the thought that they might influence the work. I think that the big M would have gobbled up a compressor and those chisels in a Florentine heartbeat. New technologies and industrial processes are filtered down to us every day and I think that if we can, we should investigate them and use the ones we think will suit us to our advantage. I for one am not willing to give up indoor plumbing either!
Have a great day,
Jeff

[hpatenaude]

I don't agree with you on your estimations that what went into a work does not show through in the work. It is most often distinguishable on the surface, but it's distinguishable in the form as well. I'm not up for an argument on this, and my past posts should indicate my position.

But, as point of fact, Michelangelo already shunned the technology of the bow-drill, which he used in his early work with the David but ceased using soon after that. The bow-drill had been used extensively as far back as the greeks. There is absolutely every indication that if he discouraged teh use of even that degree of deatchment and insensitivity, he would have thoroughly discouraged the use of power tools, if he already rejected bow-operated drills and preferred, completely without precedence, to exclusivel use the claw-chisel. His work couldn't have been accomplished without (1) the use of the claw chilsel (2) a process that was directly from one side to the other side of the marble, not the modeller's ideal of the slowly working at things from all sides and (3) the use of the claw chisel by hand. Canova or Rodin would be more likely to approve of pneumatic tools--Rodin for his assistants, of course.

I have no idea why on earth you would have thought otherwise.



Further, there are even technical problems with pneumatic tools: you can't feel the feedback of the stone, so, you might not be as sensitive to the softer and harder areas of stone, and the likelihood of where the stone might break or the differentia of what direction to carve in. The feel with your hand along the shaft of the tool as you strike and the relative kickback as well, allow you to glean all this valuable information. I'm sure some magnetic scan of the thing would do the same, but then, since you're arguing expediency here, you start ending up with a million dollar technological setup to do what you could do in a split second with a piece of steel. Not to mention, at that point, you ahve to admit some serious detachment in being able to think-and-act at once. The two get pretty seperated if you're typing coordinates into a magnetic scanner and then calibrating your laser cutters and programming them with information from VectorWorks modelling software, where you have to go back to everytime after you look at the result of what your action in the software ended up looking like in the stone. We can debate all day whether this latter process would qualify as art, but, besides, it's just banal and unsatisfying, independent of its products.

[ironman]

Hi hpatenaude, I'm not looking for an argument on this armature subject either but I don't know any sculptor who hasn't used one or a prop of some sort to hold up a piece that's too top heavy to stand on it's own. I hope you find a solution to that dilemma.
I wasn't aware of that claw chisel as opposed to bow drill business that you speak about with Michelangelo. You're probably right, he wouldn't go out and get pneumatic tools. It's funny, (I am a steel sculptor 99% of the time) but when I do work in stone, (I've got two 500lb blocks sitting outside my studio door) I grab the hammer & chisels first, not the pneumatics
I wouldn't expect anyone to use pneumatics when getting down to the nitty gritty details of a piece but wouldn't it be expedient for the roughing out part and maybe large areas which might not have much detail in them? Oh, I just reread your last paragraph, so I guess not.
I''m 58 yrs. old, with a blown out left shoulder (baseball), a bad right knee (skiing) and an almost constant case of carpel tunnel syndrome. So you can see where I'm coming from when it comes to making the work easier, but without sacrificing quality. I, pig headed as I am, just ignore these physical problems and work away but I've noticed that they get worse as the years go by.
have a nice day,
Jeff

[fritchie]

Hanee: "His work couldn't have been accomplished without (1) the use of the claw chilsel (2) a process that was directly from one side to the other side of the marble, not the modeller's ideal of the slowly working at things from all sides and (3) the use of the claw chisel by hand."

Just to clear things up, since this is a different description of Michelangelo’s technique than I have seen: My impression of his working technique, as shown in the four Giants in Florence, intended, I think, for Pope Julius’ tomb in Rome but never completed, and also his two Slaves in the Louvre, for the same project, is that he worked across or along the form, nearly finishing each section as he went, and not necessarily jumping from place to place, as if roughing out the basic shape.

The parts that are touched are nearly finished, and others sections of the stone appear virtually undisturbed.

Is this basically what you meant?

[obseq]

"As I stated several times in this post, I'm quite the advocate of telling philosophizing artists, including myself, to shut up and make something, and I thank you for reiterating that calling, though after the post has died and everyone has, I am guessing, shut up and gone off to make things."


Hanee,

First, a late welcome to you. I've enjoyed reading your thoughtful contributions to the forum thus far.

Per your advocacy above, I'd offer instead, that a great deal of art is devoid of careful consideration and forethought. While the philosiphizing artist is often guilty of using expensive laguage, cheaply, the (practicing) artist can be equally guilty of wasted motion. This becomes especially evident in sculpture where committing oneself to a given material (should) betray expedience.


:)

[hpatenaude]

firtchie, from what i read he worked in many of his mature works nearly as if it was recess sculpture. from frontal face directly through in one direction, finishing each part completely as it was revealed further and further. Cellini describes this method and others do too... usually relating it to a figure in a tub of water and slowly draining the water... i've seen images if incomplete works that seemed to indicate this to a more or lesser degree... in any event... as far as i know even where he deviated and did a bit from a few other faces he never really worked in his mature works in the round as we'd expect a sculptor to usually... at least, not in stone. this is from what i've seen and read. and my knowledge my well be faulty.

obseq, not sure what you mean by: "the (practicing) artist can be equally guilty of wasted motion. This becomes especially evident in sculpture where committing oneself to a given material (should) betray expedience."

I'm guessing by wasted motion you mean working in a thoughtless and haphazhard manner, or placing an emphasis on production rather than on the quality and consequence of the work. But I don't understand the comment about betraying expedience--is there a missing word or am I just incapable of reading this evening [the latter may well be possible tonite!].

don't mean to debate, just wanted to understand whta you meant.

[i think thinking is important, of course--this should be clear in my posts; the situation isn't clean really, in any way... obviously i place great value in both action and theory. but theory only so far as it has consequence in action or in self knowledge. and, frankly--i just get frustrated at myself becuase i've spent a lot more time in life understanding than i have making complete and full things that manifest that understanding.]

[anyhow your words sounded very specific and i wanted to undrestand them].

[fritchie]

Hanee - I think we're describing more or less the same thing in regard to Michelangelo's working methods, insofar as that he followed a specific surface quite awhile before moving on to something else. However, he very clearly worked fully in the round when it was appropriate, and sometimes even when that might have seemed obsessive. His David is fully in the round, and his somewhat earlier Bacchus.

I think the Risen Christ, which he started and which someone else is thought to have finished in some details, also is mostly if not fully in the round. Many of his pieces were intended as “ornamentation” for positioning before a stone wall or in a recess of some sort, such as the Julius tomb, and he generally did not work the rear of these figures. I don’t think he had any difficulty thinking “in the round”, though his busy schedule after the early years kept him from his earlier attention to full detail.

[dwright]

"i just get frustrated at myself becuase i've spent a lot more time in life understanding than i have making complete and full things that manifest that understanding.]"

Have just slogged through all the preceding posts, and feel ready to throw a hat into the more serious side of the discussion over here.
On the above quote, it's easy to understand where the frustration would come from there. However, with your crossover background in architecture, Louis Kahn comes to mind as a role model, with few completed works, but each considered a masterwork by his peers, so your approach is not wrong, just slow and considered.
I have always been fascinated with the 'transformation' of wax (or clay) into a new material, bronze. In the beginning I created numerous small wax sculptures and directly cast them into bronze, experimenting how certain surface textures, rendered in wax, would make the 'transition' into metal. That's why I am so familiar with wax, and Victory Brown is always my first choice. On a technical note, for a wax that is more durable for the ages, any candlewax will do, though the workability is not good.
Of course, as the years pass, I look with greater and greater disdain at my earlier works. I rarely display anything that I created in the first ten years.........they simply aren't up to my current standards. Even though I have never analyzed my work or influences to the degree that you apparently do, my work has grown and matured. I have actually avoided such introspective deconstruction, prefering to let my subconcious run rampant and surprise me.
I have also never considered a wax as a finished sculpture, but only as a means to arrive at an end, the bronze. However, I was oddly touched by your quest for purity. If you hang out in large art foundries, you will eventually see sculptures come through where the 'sculptor' has utilized actual tennis shoes, or other articles of clothing, on a life-size figure, rather than sculpt his own. I have always held these actions to be pretty disgraceful, indicating lapses of character or worse, but it does make for a bronze sculpture with very attractive shoes.
Armatures do not bother me now, but my current practice is to have the sculpture very much 'preconcieved' through an extensive sketching process.

Another thing I have noticed about this discussion, and which may even have contributed to it's length, is a very common communication problem, that of 'definition'. We all develop individual terms and phrases to explain ourselves, and then bandy them about as if everyone understands what we mean. To truly discuss these topics it's almost needful to first discuss the definitions, and arrive at a unified terminology, so all understand exactly what is meant by each.

[hpatenaude]

well, i think definition was precisely what made it long... not sure in which way you meant it... what usually makes something short, is when people don't specify definitions and everyone just makes assumptions or associations on what the word means... i try, when speaking seriously about anything, to nest definitions directly when i use the word in that sentence using clauses... makes for long sentences, and long paragraphs... my philosophical background teaches that no word has determinate meaning, but that you have to fix the meaning of each word in your writing...


re: kahn; well, maybe i wasn't specific enough with concrete-ness... working towards something concrete, until it is such, i think is the key to any serious growth. and i think it was the same with a lot of those we consider to be not big producers, but good in quality. i don't plan on producing a ton, and production isn't important to me. one great work is enough for a lifetime and worth infinitely more than 1000000000 works that are 1 degree less great, at least in my book... what i meant to say is: the other option, is to back off things before they've been finished. and i've had many more projects started than finished. so it has to do with taking everything to absolute closure, and then seeing that thing, reflecting upon it, maybe it's horrible, and you smash it back down and start again... but the point is taking things far enough to know their full consequences, instead of changing something early-on again and again and again and being abortive in the end... stone carving is good for this, i think [for being ofrced to not change things again and again].

finally, re: wax as a final; thanks for the details on wax-types. it is something i will look into in time...


your process of extensive planning is waht i'm trying ot break... whether or not that's for the long term... i think some works have been made through great planning... but i think the core of the intuition people liek those have used, has been developed from a good deal of direct-manipulation or from many many pre-planned things... i do tend to think that pre-conceived works sometimes lack a bit of life in them... not that partial or even near-total pre-conception in-the-head is goign to make sure it's dead... but, some degree of discovery must be in the work itself... for example, i have an image in my head of female fallen asleep on a park bench which head tipped back and neck exposed that i'd like to sculpt some day... but, iu'm saving it for the sculture to teach me how exactly the image is going to work... what park bench it would be, and so forth... and the exact angles and lays of things, the person, the thinness of the cloth, where it lays... i could work all those out on paper, or even in words... but i think that the end result will be better if i don't... i don't think you should go into everything having NO conception of anything... it's about having that bit of an image in your head, that sense of it... the initiation of any creation is always that way, unless it's put up to chance and then random association with that chance (like dropping something on the floor and then seeing the whales and ships in it and moving it around to emphasize those)...

anyhow, it's great to hear so many people's processes and values... i don't mean to say mine is right for anyone else... my background requires different emphases (to counter it)...

[oddist]

Just a small voice from the background concerning definitions....

Check this for "Words of Art"...http://www.arts.ouc.bc.ca/fina/glossary/gloshome.html

[dwright]

The 'Words of Art' glossary is cool, but it didn't have the term "facile artist", which is one I had questions about the way it was used. Obviously, facile means skillfully or easily done, but a second definition in Websters cites "superficial" as well.
When asked if painting was hard, Whistler replied "It's either easy, or it's impossible".
It's easy for me to create what I want in wax or clay, and I have a pretty good idea of what the finished product in bronze will look like, but it's a facility that I have acquired over years of constant work and practice.
The medium has its limits, but I have long since either become accustomed to them, or have overcome them in my way, so that the limitations become mere background noise as I pursue the vision. So, in a way, the medium has placed a stamp upon my work simply by being the medium. But I place my stamp upon the medium by being the artist, in a complicated sort of dance.
Technical note:
H, keep your eyes open for various sized crockpots, turkey roasters, etc, that you can pick up cheap. Throw away the ceramic or porcelain coated inner pots, and use them for heating wax. When in the midst of it, my studio is a veritable cauldron, with multiple pots of wax either heating or cooling, to be poured, painted, spatulaed, or molded by hand, as the need strikes. Tape heavy plastic on the floor.
As for working everything out in my head, no matter how well thought out or sketched in advance, the sculpture always imposes its own nature in three dimensions. I use the drawings to keep my initial concept clear, but allow the sculpture to flow into being.
Recently I made one sculpture in four different sizes. Starting with a 6" model (wax with no armature, now that I think of it), I scaled up to 14", 36", and then 8'. A mathematical scale up didn't work for me, as I quickly realized that each size brought it's own perspective and detailing problems. In the end? Four recognizably similar sculptures, but each one different in perceptible ways, that I felt actually made them more alike to a viewer.
How did I justify the changes? They simply looked right to me. No hard fought rationalizations or analysis.
An early commission to create a sculpture based on the latest theories of hemispheric brain dominance required much advance study. I read Julian Jaynes 'The Origin of Conciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind', as well as 'Left Brain, Right brain' (author temporarily forgotten), and these, among others, have had a lasting influence over my approach to sculpture, which is very Zen.
Possibly the difference in outlooks is simply that of a newcomer to the art as opposed to experience, but also the academic environment is designed to foster questions, even to the very roots of established principles.
But it's really the journey that matters, and which will direct you to your eventual conclusions. This has been an excellent dialogue, and you should print a hardcopy and save it. Reread it in about 25 years, and see your roots.
Okay, other things calling. Gotta go.

[obseq]

Hanee,

I lost your reply in the fray, and never got a chance to find it until now.

My point, specifically, is that sculpture doesn't readily foster impulse(s) as with other disciplines; grabbing a paintbrush or loading a camera--contending with a given sculptural material requires a precise committment. We cannot readily bypass details like gravity, so sculpting itself, requires exhalations not from physical exhaustion(sculpting) but from careful deliberation, forethought, and oftentimes frustration before any actual physical work is completed.

It just seems that a lot of modern sculpture displays a lack of forethought--I think the advent of certain technologies allow for a bit too much of an intellectual crutch in creating modern sculpture, and this is why I particularly admired your vehement stance on attempting an armature(less) piece.

Forgive any lack of clarity--I just finished a 14 hour work night and am spent to say the least, but wanted to respond to your question.








"obseq, not sure what you mean by: "the (practicing) artist can be equally guilty of wasted motion. This becomes especially evident in sculpture where committing oneself to a given material (should) betray expedience."

I'm guessing by wasted motion you mean working in a thoughtless and haphazhard manner, or placing an emphasis on production rather than on the quality and consequence of the work. But I don't understand the comment about betraying expedience--is there a missing word or am I just incapable of reading this evening [the latter may well be possible tonite!].


[i think thinking is important, of course--this should be clear in my posts; the situation isn't clean really, in any way... obviously i place great value in both action and theory. but theory only so far as it has consequence in action or in self knowledge. and, frankly--i just get frustrated at myself becuase i've spent a lot more time in life understanding than i have making complete and full things that manifest that understanding.]

[anyhow your words sounded very specific and i wanted to undrestand them]."

[hpatenaude]

obseq,

thanks for rendering explicit what you had said previously. i think it's sort of odd the way this era is w/r/t the arts (and for that sake, most everything). we're both too impulsive and too, how should i say it bet, conceptual? both thinking and being spontaneous are good for art, when the thinking is real thinking and the spontaneity is real and directed inspiration, not chance or randomness. so i agree with you, that there's not enough thought put into sculpture these days (the proof is in the mediocre compositions, independent of how the materials are handled; even rodin's seemingly spontaneous and undiliberated works often are superbly composed, and obviously a lot of thought was put into it--which is precisely why his gestural handling of hte material seems to be applied as some sort of stylization, not as part of the process always)...

but i also think there's not enough action in them either sometimes (the proof here is in how the materials are handled as well)...

i think you're right to place some blame on technological crutches--these don't influence us, they aren't big scary hands messing up the world [a lot of people make Technology out to be a sentient being controlling society], but they allow those who haven't the patience for something to enter into a previously un-enterable field through the use of, say, pneumatic tools... and the armature just may be one of these. plastalina may be one too. expedients are wonderful, don't get me wrong, but not when we don't maintain high discipline and thoughtfulness, not when they make us hasty.

so, in other words, i think you've hit on something that may be a more pragmatic (where pragmastism is what's aimed at human action and what has to do with how we act) and less metaphysical (than my original argument of purity) argument against the armature. the patient waiting of terra cotta to dry enough to support a new layer of various outcroppings, or the building up of outcroppings with masses of clay underneath them, then scraping those supports away when drying has happened sufficiently, gave a great deal of time to reflect on the form, and, overall, required a lot of careful thought every step of the way... or at least that's what i imagine, as i haven't had significant first-hand experience in terra cotta... (course, this would be where i'd argue for stone sculpture if i cared to right now... i have my own gripes there, recently... i'm on a dedicated 3 week sculpting-vacation right now, and in the process of buying some new chisels and some stone, i keep running across people who tell me "oh no you can't carve marble with steel, you can only do it with carbide. it's not possible to do with steel."--i think everyone thinks stone is supposed to carve like wood, do they forget that carbide tipped chisels are a new invention? i had another person at a stone supply place tell me it's really not possible to carve marble without pneumatic carbide tools...)

[hpatenaude]

dwright... much good in your post; but thanks most particularly for the advice on crockpots/turkey-basters... i've been using a tin can with a 100 watt reflector light, per recommendation in richard [mcdermot?]'s book on wax+plaster... but the heat's not terribly consistently distributed, burning hot on top and tough underneath...

[fritchie]

dwright... much good in your post; but thanks most particularly for the advice on crockpots/turkey-basters... i've been using a tin can with a 100 watt reflector light, per recommendation in richard [mcdermot?]'s book on wax+plaster... but the heat's not terribly consistently distributed, burning hot on top and tough underneath...

Hanee - A practicing sculptor recommended a crockpot to me for heating wax almost immediately after I started in my own studio about a dozen years ago, and it’s all I have used since. Before that, I think I used an alcohol lamp and tin can. A small soldering iron also helps with quick, localized heat.

I do regularly use a 100-watt lightbulb over a large plastic container of oil-clay to warm it, and I find this works very well, though it’s a little slow at first. Commonly, I turn on the bulb as soon as I enter the studio, while getting other things ready.