Perspective On Contemporary Sculpture
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A Roman
Table Of Contetns
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A three-meter-high tall scrap of plain brown carpet upended and hanging on the wall, serving as the background for four short lines of white type. Two very large mirrors joined at a right angle, mounted to the wall and rotating continuously. A boat built out of a disassembled shed and send down river, where it is reconstructed into its original form and displayed in a gallery. Small sculptural forms made of paper, rocks, copper, plastic and tree branches, each acting as a character in a series of short films. Graphic silkscreen panels - their patterns inspired by mid-twentiethcentury modernism and urban design -- that can be moved around the room
bibliographic work, as well as a help in organizing the illustrations, was provided by a College undergraduate, Annelisa Stephan, during the 198890 academic years. I owe a debt of a gratitude to her and to many other students. I want to thank the graduate students in Classics and in the History of Art who have listened to my ideas and presented many of their own. Countless undergraduates have also passed through my courses on Roman art and architecture, and I am grateful to them for their enthusiasm for the study of Roman art and especially for their many challenging questions and astute comments.
Preface
I am grateful to the J. Paul Getty Trust for its generous grant in support of the publication of this book, and I would like also to acknowledge another grant from the John F. Enders Fellowship of Yale University, The latter enabled me to benefit from the expert research assistance of Eric Varner in securing bibliographic references. Additional
to serve as the stage for a series of performances. These are just a few descriptions of the innumerable works created during the past ten years that fall under the category of sculpture.
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I wrote this book durring the 198788 academic year. My greatest debt is to the president of the University, Benno C. Schmidt, Jr., who granted me a special leave of absence from teaching and administrative duties to write Roman Stulpture, which would not have come into being at this time without President Schmidt’s wise advice and generous support. I am also grateful to the former provost, WIlliam D. Nordhaus, and to the former dean of the Graduate School, Jerome J. Pollitt, for their counsel and encouragement.
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Basic characteristics of the medium, to embark on an ontological investigation into sculpture seems to be heading in the wrong direction. For it is not necessarily the ‘nature of sculpture’ that we are seeking to define here: we learned some time ago to be suspicious of efforts towards defining a medium solely through its physical attributes -- in essence, to produce or reify the medium to one dominant characteristic. If postmodernism has a consistent argument, it may well be that medium-specificity, especially one inscribed within a hierarchy of media, often does not mesh with how contemporary artists are working. Indeed, the most noteworthy sculptural production of recent decades has
everyday. The 1960’s and early 1970’s, of course, was a period of tremendous experimentation and inquiry into the question of just what constitutes a work of art. We witnessed the dematerialization of the object. Artists opened restaurants, Sculpture left the gallery and found itself in remote sites in the American West. Buildings earmarked for demolition became monolithic forms to be cut into, making us aware that the absence can be every bit as physical as the presence. Language, instructions and definitions -- the very idea of art -- were presented as the artworks themselves. This ‘postmedium’ condition, as it has been called, has endangered some of the most experimentation and truly avant-
Installation
come out of artists feeling free enough to loosen themselves from the tethers of artistic tradition, to cress over and combine media, and to propose new possibilities for their chosen medium. These types of transgressions may have started with Marcel Duchamp and his ready-mades early in the twentieth century, but they began to gain real traction in the 1950’s with Frank Stella’s resistance to a predetermined picture plane for painting, Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘combines’ of painting and sculpture, and the burst of happenings and performance onto the scene, which ignored traditional artistic mediums by way of a desire to combine art with life and embrace vernacular vocabularies of the
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garde practices of the twentieth century. Artists often acknowledge what they understand to be the existing parameters of a medium, its history and its shift over time, and then build upon and embellish, or try to tear down, what has become accepted practice. A desire to add to the category of sculpture things that has previously been denied its status -- whether commodities purchased from a shop and displayed in the gallery largely unaltered, or a nearly invisible length of white rope nailed to the wall -- has allowed artists to push against the methodologies of art history and to challenge that which we think is now.
Monica Sosnowska
Untitled, 2004 MDF, gloss paint Dimensions variable
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Tara Donovan
Untitled, 2004 MDF, gloss paint Dimensions variable
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S. Ildefonso Group
Corydon and Alexis, 25 B.C. White Marble and Carrare 161 cm x 106 cm x 56 cm - 496 kg
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Oscar Tuazon
Kunsthalle Bern, 2010 Wood, Steel, Concrete Occupys Entire Gallery
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Damiรกn Ortega
Controller of the Universe, 2007 Found tools and wire
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Tarek Zaki
Monument X, 2007 Concrete Plaster 500x700,250 cm
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There is no doubt that sculpture has proven itself to be an intensely malleable and generous medium. Of course, despite its heterogeneity, there is also no denying the unique physical, material and technical attributes that constitute the medium of sculpture and thus inform out analysis of any given artwork. While artists thrive on discursive space and a desire to offer something new (or at least something fresh and innovative), at a moment of arguably unprecedented activity within contemporary art worldwide, it certainly seems worthwhile to consider the ways in which they are approaching the medium of sculpture and to examine what continues to make for this medium unique and
Of the number of artists addressed in these introductory remarks is necessarily limited, a mere teaser for the more in-depth descriptions to follow. Each work can be appreciated for its sensitivity to form or its physical flair -- these are, after all, objects in space that we encounter with our bodies -but the conceptual underpinnings are often as complex and layered as their forms and encourage a certain amount of unpacking. While many of the artists’ preoccupations, inspirations and inquires will be addressed, there are equally as many subjects and allusions that will remain unaccounted for in these pages. Each work acts as an orientation of sorts -- a starting place from which to position oneself
Bust
What follows is a number of thematic sections aimed at beginning to articulate some of the myriad sculptural practices today. Specific artists discussed under any given category could easily be explored under another. Indeed, the headings themselves share characteristics and frequently overlap in meaningful ways.
distinct from others. ‘For’, as Krauss so beautifully articulated,’in order to sustain artistic practice, a medium must be a supportive structure, generative of a set of conventions, some of which, in assuming the medium itself as their subject, will be wholly “specific” to it, thus producing an experience of their own necessity.
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within a larger whole, and a fragment of a much longer conversation. The generosity of this work rests in its ability to keep giving. We will scratch the surface here, but if you keep digging, your archaeological investigation will reveal stratum upon stratum of historical precedent, critical inquiry and incisive material exploration in a field that continues to resist easy definition.
Unknown
Portrait of Julia Mamaea, 220s White Marble
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Thomas Houseago
Untitled (TBC), 2009 Plaster head on wood base 208.3 x 61 x 50.8 cm
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Unknown
Portrait of Octavian,30B.C. Marble
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Unknown
Portrait of Julius Caesar, 44 B.C. Green Diabase
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Nathan Marby
Vanitas-He and Vanitas-She, 2008 5” x 5” x 10.5”
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Museo Capitolino
Portrait of Marcus Aurelius, 140 B.C. Marble
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Roman Sculpture cannot be examined in isolation. It was an integral part of everyday life and was exhibited in public places like fora, basilicas, temples, theaters, and baths. State reliefs recorded the great deeds of renowned emperors and generals, and it can be argued that Roman columns and commemorative arches were little more than supports for sculpture. Portraits preserved the facial features of Roman public figures for posterity, and veritable portrait galleries were created in such major public structures as the Forum of Augustus, where the historical heroes of the republic were juxtaposed with Augustus’s human and legendary ancestors. Dynastic groups were displayed interspersed with
and Hellenistic kings, and were a wide variety of mythological conceits. In the villa of Papyri in Herculaneum, for example, portraits of such Hellenistic rulers as Seleukos Nikator of Syria and Philetarios of Pergamon were displayed not far from a bronze replica of the head of Polykleitos’s Doryphoros and a copy of classic Amazon.
Statue
images of divinities and mythological beings (some copies of famous Greek masterpieces) in theater stage buildings; and baths were ornamented with portraits of the imperial family and local patrons, as well as sea creatures and gods like Neptune, powerful heroes like Hercules, and statues of well-built athletes. Some of these statues came from earlier locales, others were commissioned to enhance a specific program, such as Carcalla’s Herculean imagery for his baths in Rome. In the private sphere, the nobility showcased their distinguished ancestry in the armaria of their houses, and the gardens and porticoes of country and maritime villas were filled with portraits of Greek writeres
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David Altmejd
The Center, 2008 wood, foam, epoxy clay resin, horse hair, metal wire, paint, mirror, glass beads, plaster, glue, feathers, glass eyes 358x183,121 cm
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Imperial Palace
Herclules, Date Unknown Black Marble
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Gary Webb
Title,Date Material Dimensions
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Frank Benson
Title,Date Material Dimensions
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Unknown
The Three Graces Roman, second century A.D. Marble (123 x 100 cm)
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Valentin Carron
Lasciatemi vivere la mia vita, 2007 Metal, polystyrene, fiberglass, acry;ic resin,paint 370x160x90 cm
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In any case, the scope and organization of this book are different from those of earlier surveys. Above all, I have strived from those of earlier surveys. Above all, I have strived for a balanced perspective on Roman sculpture, concentrating not only on art commissioned by the court in Rome and the aristocracy in the provinces, but on the art of freedmen and slaves. Of equal importance is the interrelation between the art of those of different social status. I have also included portraits and reliefs representing women and children who are largely ignored in studies of Roman art. Even portraits of the empress, which are sometimes
come to be understood as operating under the umbrella of sculpture: an earthwork by Mary Miss, a Bruce Nauman corridor, Hamish Fulton’s documented walks, Robert Smithson’s mirror displacements and michael Heizer’s monumental cuts into the landscape. Her concern that the ‘rage to historicize’. as she put it, ignored these works’ important differences in a favor of arguing for an evolution within the medium led her to speculate that the category of sculpture may, in fact, collapse under the weight of all that it was now expected to encompass. Ultimately, however, Krauss argued that these wide-ranging practices were emblematic of a move
Collaboration
Thirty years ago, at the beggining of her 1978 essay ‘Sculpture in the Expanded Field’, Rosalind Krauss described a number of then-current types of artworks and actions that had
more original and interesting than those of their husbands, are rarely included in surveys of Roman art. Attention is given, therefore, not only to major monuments but also to less well-published works of lower quality that are, however, of high historical and cultural interest. This material is important not only for our understanding of Roman art but also of Roman society and Roman patronage.
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away from modernism and into postmodernism. She understood that the enormous display of artistic cross-pollination and experimentation she was witnessing was something profoundly meaningful .
Paul Rodgers
Stone Wash,2012 Marble, Steel, Bristles 200x60x36 in
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Danial Yates
Busty Blue,2012 Contrete, Painted Wood, Marble 64x36x40 in
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Derrik Knox
Smash,2012 Marble, Drywall 134x134x96 in
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Aei Baibai
Tea Bab, 2012 Marble on Tea, 64x64x76 in
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Randy James
Invading Bust, 2012 Marble against plaster 200x 300x70 in
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Octalious
Octavion and Cube Marble, drywall, stucko 96x110x96 in
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......................... 56-57
......................... 16-17
Valentin Carron
d Tara Donovan
e f
q
......................... 40-41 r Paul Rodgers s Monica Sosnowska
p Imperial Palace
......................... 64-65
Octalious
.........................52-53
b Frank Benson
Ai Baibai c Museo Capitolino
o Damiรกn Ortega
......................... 46-47
n
a David Altmejd
......................... 14-15
......................... 58-59
......................... 48-49
......................... 68-69
......................... 22-23
Index
m Nathan Marby
k Derrik Knox l
j Randy James
......................... 38-39
......................... 62-63
......................... 66-67
......................... 32-33
h Thomas Houseago
i
......................... 18-19
g S. Ildefonso Group
......................... 30-31 ......................... 34-35 ......................... 36-37 ......................... 54-55
......................... 50-51
u Unknown Unknown Unknown Unknown v w Gary Webb
......................... 23-24
z Tarek Zaki
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......................... 60-61
y Danial Yates
x
......................... 20-21
t Oscar Tuazon
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namoR A -cepsreP nO evit -metnoC yrarop erutplucS