Sculpture: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Sculptor redirects here. You may also be looking for Sculptor (constellation).

Sculpture is any three-dimensional form created as an artistic expression.

Sculpting is the art of assembling or shaping an object. It may be of any size and of any suitable material. The artist who does this is called a sculptor.

Traditional materials

Traditional sculpting materials are:

• stone
  • marble - see marble sculpture
  • limestone
    • Portland Stone
  • granite
  • basalt
  • sandstone
  • soapstone
  • pipestone
  • alabaster
  • jade
• clay
  • porcelain
  • terracotta
• plaster
• papier-mâché
• metal
  • bronze - see bronze sculpture
  • iron
  • copper
  • gold
• wood
• living plants

Other materials used in modern and contemporary sculpture include:

• the environment
• polymers, and many other synthetic materials
• textiles
• metal
  • aluminum
  • mercury
• glass
• sand
• water, ice, snow
• balloons
• liquid crystals
• frozen blood, dead animals
• found objects
• sound

In his late writings, Joan Miró even proposed that some day sculptures might be made of gases; see gas sculpture.

Perhaps the least elitist of these media is sand, as it is used by young and old to create sand castles.

Some of the forms of sculpture are:

• Relief - sculpture still attached to a background, standing out from that ground in "High Relief" or "Low Relief" (bas relief)
• Free-standing sculpture
• Mobile (See also Calder's Stabiles.)
• Statue
• Bust
• Site-Specific
• Equestrian
• Jewellery

Perhaps the majority of public art is sculpture. See also sculpture garden.

Sculptors include the Classical Greek masters, through Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance masters, to modern sculptors such as Henry Moore and Felix de Weldon.

See also: List of sculptors

The Australian copyright case of Greenfield Products Pty Ltd v. Rover-Scott Bonnar Ltd (1990) 17 IPR 417 is authority for the proposition that a thing not intended to be a sculpture is not a sculpture. This seems contrary to some famous examples of sculpture, including Marcel Duchamp's 1917 sculpture consisting of a porcelain urinal lying on its back, entitled "Fountain", and Carl Andre's sculpture "Equivalent III" exhibited in the Tate Gallery in 1978, consisting of bricks stacked in a rectangle.

Nude sculptures are more common and accepted than public nudity of real people.

• Sculpture basic topics
• Sound sculpture
• List of artworks
• Kouros
• Hologram