Tag: sculpture

The Kneeling Archer

Armored Kneeling Archer, Teracotta, Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE), China. Terracotta.

This Kneeling Archer, one of many terra-cotta figures, was excavated from Pit Number 2 at the Qin Shihuang Tomb Complex in 1977.

These remarkable figures are representatives of the army amassed by China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huang some 2,200 years ago to guard him in the afterworld. Though Qin Shi Huang lived to be just 49, he is a pivotal figure in Chinese history—responsible for unifying all of China under one powerful leader and creating a legacy of a centralized bureaucratic state that was carried on to successive dynasties over two millennia.

Obsessed with the concept of immortality, he began to make plans for his immense burial complex at a young age while greatly expanding his power base in real terms.  By defeating or allying with the seven independent warring principalities that had battled among themselves for generations, he ended China’s brutal Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) and creating a vast kingdom.

It is near Xian, that he built his massive mausoleum guarded by the Terra Cotta warriors.   At 250,000 sq. ft., it’s the length of four football fields, and includes a replica of the imperial palace with stables, offices, an armory, an amusement park, a zoo, and an aviary filled with elegant bronze replicas of waterfowl.

Helen Thompson

Helen Thompson, “Dogs”, Wire, Natural Linen, Vintage Textiles

Surprisingly expressive dogs are completely handcrafted and made using wire, natural linen, and vintage textiles by UK-based artist Helen Thompson. The imperfections of the materials and their raw edges make the sculptures look vivacious and animated. Each stylized mutt, from stitched muzzle to threadbare tail, is one of a kind.

The sculptures are quite different in size, starting at 20cm in a sitting position, and the highest standing at 60cm.

Reblogged from “Holy Smoke”, the artist’s site: http://holy-smoke.co.uk

Antoine Bourdelle

Antoine Bourdelle, “EL Arquero (The Archer)”, Bronze, 2007, Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Antoine Bourdelle was and influential and prolific French sculptor, painter and teacher. He left school at the age of 13 to work as a wood carver in his father’s cabinet making shop. He learned drawing with the founder of the Ingres Museum in Montauban, then sculpture at the art school in Toulouse. At the age of 24 he won a scholarship to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, worked briefly in the atelier of Alexander Falguiere, and frequented the studio of Jules Dalou, who was his neighbor.

He became one of the pioneers of 20th century monumental sculpture. Auguste Rodin became a great admirer of his work, and by September 1893 Antoine Bourdelle joined Rodin as his assistant where he soon became a popular teacher, both there and at his own studio where many future prominent artists attended his classes, so that his influence on sculpture was considerable.

Tam Van Tran

Tam Van Tran,  “Beetle Manifesto XII”, 2006, Sculpted Paper, Chlorophyll, Spirulina, Acrylic, Staples, Aluminum Foil

Tam Van Tran (b. 1966) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Tran received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1990 from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He later attended the Graduate Film and Television Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 1996.

Tran is the recipient of the 2001 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the 2000 Pollock Krasner Fellowship, the 1993 Ucross Artists Residency, and the 1991 Creative Fellowship in the Visual Arts, Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities.

“In the last ten years, my work has focused on ideas of personal transformation in a dialogue with nature and culture. I use organic vegetable matters such as spirulina, chlorophyll and food materials like cabbage and carrots, which are mixed with acrylic paints to form a biodegradable soup and drafted onto paper as a drawing. In all my work and the 3-dimensional paper ‘beetle manifestos’ series, the circle shapes are printed by bottle caps referencing the negative space of bottles, and punch holes are used as way to create lines and zeros. Staples provide shimmer as well as structural support of the layered paper.

I transform ordinary materials into objects of abstraction that touch on how a painting is put together with lines, mark making, and surface tension. I’m interested in beauty as an abstract experience, free of subject and object, beyond the generalization of language. This is related to how perception is spatially experienced through cause and effect of actions of the body, speech, and mind.” – Tam Van Tran

Tutankhamun’s Burial Dagger

Tutankhamun’s Burial Dagger, Blade Composit of Nickel and Cobalt, Egyptian 18th Dynasty

A team of researchers have confirmed that the iron in one of the daggers found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, as well as a number of other precious artifacts from Ancient Egypt, have celestial origins as they were made from meteorites. The research was undertaken by an international team of scientists from the Polytechnics of Milan and Turin, the University of Pisa, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the CNR, the University Fayoum, and the XGlab company. Archeologists had suspected for many decades that the iron used during the reign of the New Kingdom Dynasties and earlier, could come from meteorites.

The composition of iron used in Tutankhamun’s dagger, is nickel and cobalt, which is commonly found in meteorites. In addition, the study of the iron beads from Gerzeh, which are c. 5,000 years old, confirmed that in the times of the eighteenth dynasty, ancient Egyptians were advanced in working iron and that the iron used to create them comes from meteorite.  Previously, it had been believed that the Egyptian Iron Age started after 600 BC.

James Brunt

Land Art by James Brunt, Stones, Trees, Leaves

James Brunt creates elaborate ephemeral artworks using the natural materials he finds in forests, parks, and beaches near his home in Yorkshire, England. This form of land art, popularized and often associated with fellow Brit Andy Goldsworthy, involves detailed patterns, textures, and shapes formed using multiples of one kind of material.

Brunt collects twigs, rocks, and leaves and arranges them in mandala-like spirals and concentric circles. He photographs his finished work to document it before nature once again takes hold of his materials. Brunt offers prints of his photographed artworks on his website.

Thanks to https://skogshaxa.tumblr.com

Renee Sintenis

Renee Sintenis, “Donkey”, Bronze, 1927, Overall: 30 ½ × 9 × 26 ½ Inches, Detroit Institute of Art

From her early years spent in a small rural town, Renee Sintenis felt drawn to animals, and her sculptures of them formed the basis of her later popularity. from 1908-1912, she studied at the Kunsigewerbeschule in Berlin under Leo von König who instructed her in painting and drawing. She learned the fundamentals of sculpture from Wilhelm Haverkamp.

Her early sculptures are characterized by stylized forms and smooth surfaces. Statues of femal nudes apperar alongside the animal sculptures, such as those of foals, deer and donketys. In the mid 1920′s her style changed to one evoking a sense of natural movements, with rough surfaces emphasizing vitality. Her sculptures of athletes included boxers and football players. Sintenis won the Olympia Prize in 1932 for her sculpture of runner Nurmi.

Ian Rank-Broadley

Ian Rank-Broadley, “Heroic Torso”, Bronze, Size 1.5 m, Edition of 3

Ian Ramk-Broadley is a British sculptor, one of Britain’s foremost medallic artists.  His effigy of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II appears on all UK and Commonwealth coinage since 1998. He has recently completed work on one of the most important war memorials since WWII, the Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. .

The “Heroic Torso”, cast from bronze,  was inspired by Classical fragments but given a contemporary twist. The lizard attempts to conceal the maleness of the figure, and yet becomes the focus. This edition of the sculpture is in a private collection.

Long-Horned Bulls

Hattian Standard with Two Long-Horned Bulls, 2300-2000 BC, Copper Alloy, Central Anatolia, Metropolitan Museum of Art

During the Early Bronze Age in central Anatolia, a number of nonliterate, localized cultures having little contact with urban Mesopotamia produced spectacular metal vessels, jewelry, weapons, and musical instruments to be buried with their rulers.

This pair of long-horned bulls probably served as a finial for a religious or ceremonial standard. Cast separately, they are held together by extensions of their front and back legs, bent around the plinth. A pierced tang at the base suggests that the pair was connected to another object.

The bulls’ elaborate, curving horns are half again as long as their bodies, and though impossible in nature, constitute an effective stylistic convention. The tendency to emphasize important features in the representation of animals is a common motif in ancient Near Eastern art.

Pectoral Ornamental Necklace

Pectoral Ornamental Necklace, Egypt, 18th Dynasty

This pectoral necklace clasped with three scarab beetles was discovered in the intact KV62 tomb of Tutankhamun who ruled during the 18th dynasty of Egypt’s New Kingdom. This jewellry depicts Scrab Beetles or Kehpri, pushing the sun. The pectoral is today part of the collection of the Cairo Museum. This photo was taken at the King Tut exhibition at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington State, USA.

Anna Reivilä

Sculpture / Photography by Anna Reivilä

“In Japanese religious ceremonies, ropes and ties symbolise the connections among people and the divine, as a means to identify sacred space and time”, Anna Reivilä, a graduate from Aalto University, Finland, explains.

With the ‘Bond’ series, Reivilä bridges the gap between Scandinavian nature and Japanese rituals. Inspired by Nobuyoshi Araki’s images, the nature of bondage and a mix of raw violence and beauty, her photographs study the relationship between man and nature. “The Japanese word for bondage, kinbaku, literally means ‘the beauty of tight binding’. It is a delicate balance between being held together and being on the verge of breaking”, she adds.

According to her gallerist, Reivilä chooses spaces where nature’s elements, once combined, reveal natural tensions; she then creates a new form of dialogue by extending, wrapping and pulling these indigenous forms. From these existing components, she projects a new sense of volume.

“Using ropes as lines is my form of drawing. The lines create interactions; connect the elements. I’m interested how the volume of any given site can be stretched by the use of several simple lines. More, these three-dimensional drawings are physically unstable: they exist only for the moment. Photographing them gives them another dimension in time,” says Reivilä.