Tag: metal work

Persian Helmet and Shield

 

Persian Helmet and Shield, 1700s,

This Persian Helmet was fashioned circa 1700s in the style called chichak. It has a conical fluted skull, terminating in a short square spike, ear protection and a sliding nose guard passing through the peak. This style was commonly used by the cavalry of the Ottoman Empire.

The Persian and East Asian versions might have developed independently, with both influenced by earlier Mongol helmets. Conquest-era Mongol helmets were fairly diverse, bowls of various types of construction, but usually dome-shaped rather than conical. The danglies varied from small ear and back of neck flaps, often fashioned from textile, through to wrap-around versions, often leather or bone, giving good face protection, as seen on later Qing helmets.  into more recent times.

Image with thanks to ; historic blog: https://historical-nonfiction.tumblr.com

Jaume Plensa

 

Jaume Plensa, “Heads of Nuria and Irma”, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, England

With 30 projects spanning the globe, Jaume Plensa is probably one of the most renowned Catalan sculptors in the contemporary art scene. Though he is mainly known for his large-scale ethereal sculptures, he has worked with a very diverse array of media, ranging from video projections to acoustic installations. Plensa’s work juxtaposes the intellectual and the poetic. Though these two concepts are often mutually exclusive, the artist somehow manages to create extremely evocative sculptures with a strong conceptual basis.

While many conceptual artists feel the urge to refuse beauty in order to convey an idea, the beauty and romanticism of Plensa’s sculptures manage to provide tangibility to his ideas. One of the many aspects in which the artist manages to do so is by introducing his works in the public space, thus allowing his sculptures to be animated by the city and its inhabitants.

Alexannder Calder

Alexander Calder, “Five Swords”, Painted Steel, 1976, Storm King Art Center

Alexander Calder’s sculpture “Five Swords” is on display at Storm King Art Center in the Hudson Valley of New York. In 2015, this sculpture underwent its “generation” treatment on site – a treatment that is designed to withstand another 40 years with only periodic top coating for fading. The work included taking all coatings back to metal, protecting the steel substrate with a zinc rich primer, applying a subsequent epoxy primer and Calder Foundation approved Calder Red topcoat.

The topcoat is a custom-made, adapted military coating that was developed through a collaboration between the Calder Foundation, the Army Research Laboratory, NCP Coatings, and Mack Art Conservation. Care was taken during the conservation treatment to collect and contain all debris in compliance with federal and state specification owing to the presence of a lead containing primer that was applied in the 1970’s.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor, “Memory”, Cor-Ten Steel Installation, 2008, Deutsche Guggenheim Museum, Berlin

Anish Kapoor’s 2008 “Memory” is a site-specific work that was conceived to engage two different exhibition locations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin and New York. Utilizing Cor-Ten steel for the first time, the sculpture represents a milestone in Kapoor’s career. Memory’s thin steel skin, only eight millimeters thick, suggests a form that is ephemeral and unmonumental. The sculpture appears to defy gravity as it gently glances against the periphery of the gallery walls and ceiling. However, as a 24-ton volume, Memory is also raw, industrial, and foreboding.

Positioned tightly within the gallery, Memory is never fully visible; instead the work fractures and divides the gallery into several distinct viewing areas. The division compels visitors to navigate the museum, searching for vantage points that offer only glimpses of the sculpture. This processional method of viewing Memory is an intrinsic aspect of the work. Visitors are asked to contemplate the ensuing fragmentation by attempting to piece together images retained in their minds, exerting effort in the act of seeing—a process Kapoor describes as creating a “mental sculpture.”

Memory’s rusting exterior creates a powdery surface, which relates this commission to Kapoor’s early pigment pieces from the 1980s. Rather than necessitating an additional coat of paint to smooth the interior curvature, the sculpture’s Cor-Ten tiles, perfectly manufactured to prevent light from seeping through, create the necessary conditions for darkness within. The work’s square aperture—wedged precisely into one of the gallery’s walls—allows a view into this boundless interior void.

The endless darkness seems to contradict what visitors know about the work’s delimited exterior. This contradiction between the known and the perceived is one of Kapoor’s central interests. The window also defines a two-dimensional plane that can be read as a painting rather than an opening. Kapoor’s interest in this pictorial effect is best reflected in his statement “I am a painter working as a sculptor.”

Alfred Gilbert

Albert Gilbert, “Anteros”, Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, Piccadilly Circus, London

The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain is located at the southeastern side of Piccadilly Circus in London. It was erected in 1892-1893 to commemorate the philanthropic works of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who achieved the replacing of child-labor with school education.

Albert Gilbert’s statue of Anteros was the first sculpture in the world to be cast in aluminum, which was just becoming in wide public use in the early 1890s. The statue is set on a bronze fountain, which inspired the marine motifs that Gilbert used on the statue. The model for the sculpture was Albert Gilbert’s studio assistant, a 16 year-old Anglo-Italian, Angelo Colarossi who was born in Shepherd’s Bush. Italian-born piece-moulder and figure maker fernando Meacci was involved in the moulding of the fountain which was most likely cast by George Broad & Son, a major foundry established in the 1870s.

Henry Moore

 

Henry Moore, “Nuclear Energy”, Bronze Sculpture, The University of Chicago

On December 2nd of 1942, a team of scientists led by Italian émigré Enrico Fermi set the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in motion at Chicago Pile 1, the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor built under the original site of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field.

This event was a decisive step toward the creation of the age of atomic energy, and critically, at the time, to the production of the atomic bomb for use in World War II. On December 2nd of 1967, the sculpture “Nuclear Energy” was unveiled on the campus of the University of Chicago as a memorial to the accomplishments of Fermi and his fellow physicists.

The twelve-foot tall bronze sculpture was commissioned by the University of Chicago and created by British artist Henry Moore, one of the most preeminent public sculptors of his generation. Moore designed, modeled, and cast the bronze sculpture between 1963 and 1967,  To Moore, it was both a celebration of this incredible human achievement, and also a warning against the dangers of harnessing such natural, physical power.

Winifred Turner

Winifred Turner, “Crouching Youth”, 1943, Cast Bronze and Plaster Model, 103 cm Height. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

Winifred Turner, the daughter of the stone sculptor Alfred Turner, attended the Royal Academy Schools in London between 1924 and 1929. She was elected Fellow and Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1930, exhibiting at the Royal Academy between 1924 and 1962. Turner taught at the Central School of Art and Design, a London public school for fine and applied arts, in the 1930s and into the early 1940s.

This highly stylised figure of “Crouching Youth” reflects Turner’s interest in ancient sculpture and also her passion for dance. The bronze has a green patina and smooth surface suggesting the sinuous forms of the young male body.