Tag: sculpture

Do Ho Suh

Fabric Installations by Do Ho Suh

Do Ho Suh’s immersive architectural installations—unexpectedly crafted with ethereal fabric—are spaces that are at once deeply familiar and profoundly alien. Suh is internationally renowned for his “fabric architecture” sculptures that explore the global nature of contemporary identity as well as memory, migration, and our ideas of home.

The large-scale installations of the artist’s brightly hued “Hub” sculptures—intricately detailed, hand-sewn fabric recreations of homes where Suh has lived from around the world. The Hubs comprise a series of conjoined rooms and passageways that visitors can enter and experience from the inside.

Suh was born in Korea and moved to the United States at the age of 29 in 1991, and he currently lives between New York, London, and Seoul. He crafts his works using traditional Korean sewing techniques combined with 3-D modeling and mapping technologies. Suh sees these works as “suitcase homes,” so lightweight and portable they can be installed almost anywhere.

Pieces of the Classics

Photographers Unknown, Pieces of the Classics

“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favour of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”

Thomas H. Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays

Cleomenes of Athens

Cleomenes of Athens, “Marcellus as Hermes Logios (Mercury)”, 20 BCE, Marble, Musee du Louvre, Paris, France

This sculpture of Marcellus the Younger was executed by Cleomenes the Athenian two years after Marcellus’ death on the order of his uncle Imperator Caesar Augustus, first Emperor of the Roman Empire, as a funerary monument for his nephew. King Louis XIV placed it in the collection at Palace of Versailles in the year 1664. It was later moved by Napolean to the Louvre in Paris, where it now resides.

Katharina Fritsch

Three Sculpture Installations by Katharina Fritsch

German sculptor Katharina Fritsch is known for her sculptures and installations that reinvigorate familiar objects with a jarring and uncanny sensibility. Her works’ iconography is drawn from many different sources, including Christianity, art history and folklore. She attracted international attention for the first time in the mid-1980s with life-size works such as a true-to-scale elephant. Fritsch’s art is often concerned with the psychology and expectations of visitors to a museum.

Katharina Fritsch takes on relatively ordinary subjects in new, and often times jarring, ways. Most notably is the size of her works. Though many are meant specifically for museums, the size and scope of these works make a real impact. The images above are examples of that:  “Child with Poodles” (1995),  “Company at the Table (1998)” and “Rattenkonig” (1993).

The first, “Child with Poodles”, has rows of poodles facing in at a single child. This thick ring of objects creates a barrier between the viewer and the child, creating a dark or sinister feel to the piece. The second work, “Company at the Table”, leaves a haunting impression on many levels. The identical, faceless people and the size of the fifty foot table leave quite a cold and impersonal impression. Her sculpture “Rattenkonig” consists of a circle of large polyester resin rats painted black Facing out to the museum visitors. The scale of the piece is again quite large and formidable; nine foot rats in a circle forty two feet wide.

Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova, “The Sleeping Endymion”, 1822, Plaster Model for the Completed Marble Sculpture

In May 1819, the 6th Duke of Devonshire, on his first trip to Rome, paid a visit to the studio of the most celebrated sculptor of the time, Antonio Canova. He marvelled at what he saw and commissioned a marble statue from Canova, leaving both its size and subject to the sculptor to decide, and paying a deposit in advance.

The marble was roughed out by 1822, when Canova asked for a further £1,500. It was completed before his death later that year. It arrived in London the following year and caused a stir when first displayed at Devonshire House. The 6th Duke, who regarded it as his greatest sculptural treasure, also commissioned a large bronze copy of it from the sculptor Francis Chantrey.

The finished marble “The Sleeping Endymion and His Dog” is located in the Sculpture Gallery of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, England.

Source: hadrian6

Charles Jagger and Lionel Pearson

Charles Jagger and Lionel Pearson, The Royal Artillery Memorial, Hyde Park, London

The Royal Artillery Memorial is dedicated to the First World War casualties of the Royal Regiment of Artillery. It features a giant sculpture of a BL 9.2 inch Mk I Howitzer upon a plinth of Porland stone with stone reliefs depicting scenes from the conflict. Four bronze figures of artillerymen are positioned around the outside of the memorial.

Charles Sargeant Jagger was responsible for the bronze figures; architect Lionel Pearson designed the stone stucture of the memorial. The work was revised several times with much controversy about design, the siting of the memorial, the inscription, and the sculpture of the dead soldier at eye level.

The work was finished four months late, opening on October 18, 1925 by Prince Arthur and the Reverend Alfred Jarvis. Such was the toll taken on Jagger by finishing the Royal Artillery’s memorial that after its unveiling, he suspended work on all his other projects for six months to recuperate.

Gothic Raygun Rocketship

Gothic Raygun Rocketship, Pier 14, San Francisco, California

The sculpture installation first landed at Burning Man event in 2009, and has subsequently appeared at the NASA “Ames for Yuri’s Night” and is now at Pier 14 in San Francisco.

This spectacular forty foot tall sci-fi sculpture is the creation of Bay Area artists Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, David Shulman and the dedicated crew of the Five Ton Crane Arts Group, who helped to bring their fantastic vision to fruition – a larger than life 1930’s-1940’s pulp fiction space ship, gleaming silver legs forever prepped for lift off, three interior chambers fitted with all of the whimsical knobs and dials that you dreamed of as a kid.

Originally created as a 2009 art installation for the Burning Man Festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, the large-scale immersion based piece currently resides on Pier 14, illuminated and dreamy at night and flashing with retro ingenuity during the day. Its presence inspiring the imaginations of all who see it, it stands tall as a symbol of what could have been, but never was.

Emile Antoine Bourdelle

 

Photographer Unknown, “Emile Antoine Bourdelle and Model for His Bronze Herakles the Archer”, circa 1905, Gelatin Silver Print

Trained first in Montauban and then in Toulouse, Emile Bourdelle started work as an assistant in Rodin’s studio. The two men were bound together by mutual admiration and respect, even if Bourdelle’s desire for synthesis and construction in planes soon opposed him to Rodin’s analytical modelling.

From 1905, Bourdelle sought to simplify his lines: “Contain, maintain and master are the rules of construction,” he told his pupils over and over again. He looked to mythology for many of his subjects such as “Hercules the Archer” which enabled him to experiment on a large scale. In his own terms, Apollo was “undertaken in an attempt to master the purest aspect of my deep vision, going far beyond all past flights, I brought to it – more than human blood, bone, cartilage and muscles – the enveloping structure of its forces.”

Not only the hero’s victory over the monsters, but also Bourdelle’s victory over his own high-spirited inspiration, this work is remarkable both for its tension and for its balanced construction. The dynamics come from the interaction of solids and voids, brutal force and balance. The nude figure denotes power, high-strung energy, pulled taut between the arm bending the bow and the foot braced against the rock. The references to primitive Greek sculpture and Roman art – the almond shaped eyes, the nose extending in a straight line from the forehead, jutting cheekbones and brows – act as catalyst for a modern approach.

The gilded bronze sculpture “Hercules Killing the Birds of Lake Stymphalis” was completed in 1909. It is in the collection of the Musee d’Orsay, France.

The Erawan Museum

The Erawan Museum, Bangkok, Thailand

Located in Samut Prakan, Thailand, Erawan Museum is mostly known for its massive three-headed elephant art display. This elephant is said to contain ancient religious objects and antiquities, making up a priceless collection. The museum contributes to the preservation of the Thai cultural heritage.

The massive three headed elephant made of bronze weighs 250 tons, is 29 metres high, 39 metres long and stands on a 15 meter high pedestal. The inside of the museum is modeled after the Hindu representation of the universe, which consists of the underworld (1st floor), earth (2nd floor) and Heaven (top floor). The lower two floors are located inside the pedestal while the top floor is located in the belly of the elephant.

Michael Lantz

Michael Lantz, “Man Controlling Trade”, 1942, Limestone, Federal Trade Commission Building, Washington, D.C.

In 1938, Michael Lantz won the competition to design two sculptures for the Apex Building, home of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. The widely publicized “Apex Competition” was the largest American sculpture competition ever held, receiving almost five hundred models from more than two hundred artists. Lantz submitted small models of his designs, each showing a heroic figure straining to control a powerful horse. The final, seventeen-foot-long statues were completed in 1942 and installed outside the eastern entrance of the Federal Trade Commission building, where they can be seen today.

Carole Hetzel

Basketry by Carole Hetzel

Carole Hetzel has always been fascinated with the process of shape and the challenge of expressing texture. When she started adding metal to her hand-dyed woven reed baskets their simple forms and rich color took on a new dimension.

Hetzel received her BA degree from Trenton College (NJ). She studied basketry at John C. Campbell Folk School (NC) and metalsmithing at the Armory Art Center (FL). Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Design (GA), Atlanta Museum of Art and Design (GA) and Florida State University Museum of the Arts.

Hee Chan Kim

Sculptures by Hee Chan Kim, Wood Strips, Bamboo and Copper Wire

Heechan Kim was born in 1982 in Seoul, Korea, and received a BFA in Metal Craft from Seoul National University in 2006. Soon after, he immigrated to the United States to continue studying art. His interest in materials led him to study wood to broaden his horizons. He got an MFA in furniture design and wood working from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2010. By eliminating the limitations of making functional objects, Kim is continuing his art practice in sculpture in Brooklyn, NY.