ARTH 391: Modern and Contemporary Sculpture

The Human Factor: The Figure in Contemporary Sculpture brings together the work of over 20 leading international artists, in whose practice the human form plays a central role.

Learning to Look at Sculpture is an accessible guide to the study and understanding of three dimensional art. Sculpture is all around us: in public parks, squares, gardens and railway stations, as part of the architecture of buildings, or when used in commemoration and memorials and can even be considered in relation to furniture and industrial design. This book encourages you to consider the multiple forms and everyday guises sculpture can take. Exploring Western sculpture with examples from antiquity through to the present day, Mary Acton shows you how to analyse and fully experience sculpture, asking you to consider questions such as What do we mean by the sculptural vision? What qualities do we look for when viewing sculpture? How important is the influence of the Classical Tradition and what changed in the modern period? What difference does the scale and context make to our visual understanding? With chapters on different types of sculpture, such as free-standing figures, group sculpture and reliefs, and addressing how the experience of sculpture is fundamentally different due to the nature of its relationship to the space of its setting, the book also explores related themes, such as sculpture's connection with architecture, drawing and design, and what difference changing techniques can make to the tactile and physical experience of sculpture.

This student textbook is organized by medium, progressing from fundamental to more advanced applications. Using step-by-step illustrations, it covers all sculpture media, and presents both classic and contemporary styles, examining traditional methods as well as modern tools and techniques.

Here are the most exciting developments in sculpture across the globe since the mid-1990s. Identifying the key trends, Anna Moszynska discusses the artists who are forging new paths and setting the contemporary agenda. She examines major shifts that have taken place in the last two decades, including the move from a concern with the discrete object to the more complicated and dynamic relationships found in installation-based practice, as well as the increased concern with the experiential nature of sculpture and the participatory role of the viewer. The world's most promising new talent is discussed alongside established contemporary artists including Cai Guo-Qiang, Maurizio Cattelan, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Isa Genzken, Thomas Hirschhorn, Mike Kelley, Christian Marclay, Bruce Nauman, Gabriel Orozco, Doris Salcedo, James Turrell, and Ai Weiwei.

A comprehensive and beautifully illustrated overview of contemporary sculpture during the past fifty years.

Contemporary art maintains an ongoing fascination with the key issues of modern sculpture, from the readymade to the specific object, and artists today are returning to them again and again, with fresh and often surprising results. At the same time, artists are striking out into new territory, harnessing the medium to confront today's commodity world in its own materials, from the Latin American junk assemblage of Marepe, Gabriel Kuri and Abraham Cruzvillegas to the wittily reworked objects of Peter Coffin, Tom Friedman and Allora & Calzadilla.