Sculpture
Related: visual arts - Pygmalion - landscape - soundscape
People: Emmanuel Frémiet
Gorilla and Woman (1887) - Emmanuel Frémiet
Brian Eno: Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978) - Brian Eno [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Example of a soundscape, an aural sculpture
Field (1991) - Antony Gormley
Field (1991) - Antony Gormley
Image sourced here. [Jan 2006]
Field (1991) is a sculpture by British artist Anthony Gormley. It consists of 35,000 individual terracotta figures, each about 25cm high, installed on the floor of a room facing the viewer. The figures were sculpted in Cholula Mexico by the 60 strong Texca family of brickmakers, under the supervision of the artist. The sculpture received a lot of media attention upon its first display, and many affectionate parodies. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_%28sculpture%29 [Jan 2006]
Antony Gormley (born 1950) is an English sculptor. He is best known among the general public as the creator of Angel of the North, a controversial piece of public sculpture in Gateshead. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony Gormley [Jan 2006]
See also: 1990s - sculpture - visual arts - contemporary art
Tilted Arc (1981 - 1989)
Richard Serra (born 2 November 1939) is an American minimalist sculptor known for working with large scale assemblies of sheet metal.
Richard Serra was one of the first artists to have a public work of art physically rejected by the public. In 1981, Serra installed Tilted Arc, a gently curved, 3.5 metre high arc of rusting mild steel in the Federal Plaza in New York City. There was controversy over the installation from day one, largely from workers in the buildings surrounding the plaza who complained that the steel wall obstructed passage through the plaza. A public hearing in 1985 voted that the work should be moved, but Serra argued the sculpture was site specific and could not be placed anywhere else. Eventually on 15 March 1989, the sculpture was dismantled by federal workers and taken for scrap. William Gaddis satirized these events in his biting 1994 novel A Frolic of His Own. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra [Jan 2006]
Tilted Arc (1981) - Richard Serra
Image sourced here. [Jan 2006]
Tilted Arc was a sculpture commissioned by the U.S. General Service Administration's Arts-in-Architecture program for the Federal Plaza in New York, NY. It was designed by Richard Serra and constructed in 1981, and dismantled, after much debate, in 1989.
Design
The sculpture was a solid, black-painted plane of steel, 120 feet long (36.6 meters), 12 feet high (3.66 meters), and 2.5 inches thick. As its name suggests, it was slightly tilted. Serra said of the design, "The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer's movement. Step by step the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes."
Controversy
For several reasons, the sculpture was strongly opposed by many, led by Judge Edward Re. First, there was outrage at the cost: $175,000 for a solid, black block of steel. Second, it was regarded as an eyesore by many, and was a genuine inconvenience to some, who in the course of walking through the plaza had to go out of their way to go around the massive sculpture. It also attracted graffiti and, according to some, rats.
A public hearing was held on the subject of the sculpture in March of 1985, with 122 people testifying in favor of keeping the stature, and 58 in favor of removing it. A jury of five voted 4-1 to remove the sculpture. The decision was appealed by Serra, but the sculpture was eventually dismantled by federal workers on March 15, 1989. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilted_Arc [Jan 2006]
See also: 1980s - sculpture - visual arts - contemporary art - minimalism - USA
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