Sculpture
Story Stream
Whistling in the Dark October 06, 2023
There is a new survey exhibition of the work of Hans Josephsohn (1920-2012) in New York, this time at Skarstedt gallery on 79th Street in Manhattan. This one closes on Oct. 28. It will most likely be as ignored as the Swiss sculptor’s previous solo e...
Pope Hosts Controversial Artists in Sistine Chapel July 03, 2023
As Pope Francis met with dozens of international artists at the Sistine Chapel on Friday, he sought both to reaffirm the Roman Catholic Church’s commitment to artistic endeavors and to enlist the artists to act as catalysts for change in areas like s...
Frieze Frame: Part I May 09, 2023
Shadows and Magnitude. It is easy to forget that, when John Keats (1795–1821) wrote his often-anthologized sonnet “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” in 1817, the eponymous Marbles were relatively new immigrants to England. They retained a frisson of recen...
John Ganz on Gerhard Richter May 08, 2023
In March, New York’s David Zwirner opened its first solo exhibition of Gerhard Richter’s work since the painter’s defection to the megagallery from Marian Goodman, his gallerist of thirty-seven years. The show featured fourteen of his last paintings,...
Why Are There No Paintings in Star Wars? May 04, 2023
Why are there no paintings in Star Wars movies?The question occurred to me recently, rewatching The Rise of Skywalker. I’m old enough to recall seeing A New Hope in a drive-in in summer 1977, as well as the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special on telev...
Reading into Brian Dillon’s ‘Affinities’ April 21, 2023
Eventually, turning the page, you encounter a mouth – or more precisely, a pair of lips, a set of shining teeth. The image is a still from a filmed performance of Samuel Beckett’s short play Not I (1972). The lips belong to the English actress Billie...
Why Poetry Is a Variety of Mathematical Experience April 18, 2023
wo hundred years ago, the poets and philosophers of the Romantic movement came to an intoxicating thought: art can express the otherwise inexpressible conditions that make everyday sense and experience possible. Art, the Romantics said, is our interf...
The Most Enigmatic Works in Art History April 03, 2023
In the last years of his life, German sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt created a series of busts depicting a wide range of emotions, from petulance (see The Vexed Man) to amusement (An Intentional Wag) to shame (A Hypocrite and a Slanderer). Cast i...
An Outsider in Paris March 17, 2023
In 2015, New York’s Museum of Modern Art mounted the first major retrospective of Pablo Picasso’s sculpture in a half-century, with over 100 pieces, from stylized ceramic heads to “found” metal weldings to wood deconstructions. His genius poured fort...
Into Great Beauty February 02, 2023
Some say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but is this really true, or have we come to accept such a statement without much reflection or analysis? Are we concerned with beauty in this chaotic, digitized world? Have we lost the ability to s...
Boring Art, Impotent Politics February 01, 2023
In 2019, Brooklyn-based multimedia artist Hank Willis Thomas was awarded a commission to create a sculpture celebrating the civil-rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. The monument was to be installed on Boston Common, America’s oldest public park, wher...
We Get the Sculpture We Deserve January 19, 2023
The 20-foot bronze is intended to depict the moment King learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s inspired by a photograph of him embracing his wife, Coretta Scott King. But it doesn’t depict the pair enjoying a hug. It’s just the arms, joined ...
A Masturbatory ‘Homage’ to My Family January 16, 2023
By now, I’m sure you’ve seen it. The new Boston sculpture “honoring” Dr. Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, looks more like a pair of hands hugging a beefy penis than a special moment shared by the iconic couple. Created by the orga...
Pubic Art January 16, 2023
This week, a massive sculpture honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. was erected in Boston. Literally. Inspired by an old snapshot of Dr. King hugging his long-suffering wife, the $10 million dollar bronze behemoth depicts two pairs of disembodied, headle...
Woke Ideologues Are Taking Over American Art Museums September 06, 2022
If you think of art museums at all, you probably imagine them as places that are filled with beautiful things, that put on high-profile so-called blockbuster exhibitions, and that throw glitzy—sometimes tacky—parties....
A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy. September 05, 2022
This year, the Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition gave out prizes in all the usual categories: painting, quilting, sculpture.But one entrant, Jason M. Allen of Pueblo West, Colo., didn’t make his entry with a brush or a lump of clay. He cre...
Chroma Chameleon August 30, 2022
"Who knew the Greeks had such bad taste?” This comment was overheard at the preview for Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color, a head-turning exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This slight wasn’t targeted at the current denizens of Greece, bu...
Myths Carved Into Motion August 29, 2022
The frieze from the temple of Apollo at Bassae in southwestern Greece is in the British Museum, around the corner from the marbles that Lord Elgin took from the Parthenon at Athens. Both temples were designed by the architect Iktinos. Both were adorn...
Greek Statues in Color July 26, 2022
Walk through the Greek sculpture galleries of most museums and you'll see pedestal after pedestal of white, marble statues with sightless eyes. That's just how Ancient Greek sculpture was, right?Nope. ...
Classical Raphael July 26, 2022
Raphaelaphael Santi (1483–1520), along with Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, is one of the three artistic titans of the Italian High Renaissance. Yet unlike the other two, he hasn’t gotten the widespread admiration in the United States that he des...
Chasing Color July 25, 2022
Focusing on the new reconstruction of The Met’s Archaic- period sphinx finial, produced in collaboration with the Museum, this video describes the work of Vinzenz Brinkmann and Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann to study ancient sculptural polychromy and to creat...
Claes Oldenburg, Iconic Pop Artist, Dead at 93 July 19, 2022
Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, who turned the mundane into the monumental through his outsized sculptures of a baseball bat, a clothespin and other objects, has died at age 93....
Tammany at Gettysburg July 05, 2022
Every day is Memorial Day at Gettysburg National Military Park. No visitor can fail to appreciate the near-incomprehensible sacrifices made here in July 1863, thanks to the over 1,300 monuments, plaques, and other memorials set up across the battlefi...
The Girl Behind The Famous Degas Sculpture November 26, 2018
"She is famous the world over, but how many people know her name?" asks Camille Laurens in her new book Little Dancer Aged Fourteen: The True Story Behind Degas's Masterpiece....
