Protean attempts were made without success, while functional objects such as weathervanes were cast in the base metals of lead or iron. American sculptors either relied on European foundries or, more often, had their works carved in the preferred medium of marble.
Between and , the remarkable development of specialized foundries and the proliferation of trained labor and equipment enabled sculptors to work on native shores rather than abroad, as most American Neoclassical marble sculptors did. If not less expensive than marble, bronze was seen as stronger and more practical for both public monuments and domestic statuettes , and during the late nineteenth century eclipsed marble as the medium of choice. One of the first and most determined advocates for the patriotic medium of bronze was Henry Kirke Brown.
With the assistance of two French workmen and a little ingenuity, by the late s Brown had established a foundry in his Brooklyn studio to cast his earliest bronze sculptures and utilitarian objects. Also a cannon and sword producer, Ames was the first foundry in this country to gain a proficiency in bronze casting, and worked with Brown on several major monuments and exquisitely finished smaller works The naturalistic aesthetic pioneered by Brown, and furthered by his former student John Quincy Adams Ward Following a hiatus during the American Civil War —65 , the development of bronze casting expanded to several East Coast cities.
Foundries such as L. Amoroux, John Williams, and Henry-Bonnard in New York, and Robert Wood in Philadelphia offered sculptors diverse choices beyond the exclusive working relationships between sculptor and foundry such as Brown and Ames in the pre-Civil War era.
Artists were able to comparison shop for fair prices and select the foundries best equipped to achieve the technical results sympathetic to individual sculptural aesthetics. They were also able to choose between American and European facilities, and indeed certain sculptors, such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Frederick MacMonnies , alternated freely between foundries at home and abroad, especially those in Paris , in pursuit of the highest quality craftsmanship.
While the act of modeling a sculpture was the creative decision of the artist, the final bronze was usually the shared responsibility of the sculptor and founders—mold makers, casters, chasers, and patineurs —who jointly made decisions regarding surface, color, texture, scale, and form.
Some of the most remarkable American bronzes are the tangible products of symbiotic collaborations between a sculptor and a foundry. Before , American-made bronzes were produced in the French sand-casting method. Furthermore, artists from other nations started flocking to Paris in order to study the technique.
Never before or since the Industrial Revolution has a single form of art held so many captivated in its trance as bronze did in Paris during the mids and what the artists did back then eventually established a platform that allowed the birth of the modern bronze sculpture. Although the general consensus dictates that the ancient bronze statues are the greatest works of art of its kind, many still believe that modern bronze sculptures are actually the material's creative peak.
This remains debatable, of course, but there's no denying that bronze artworks had some amazing moments of brilliance in the 20th century. Following the First World War, numerous foundries were established because of the expanding demand for bronze statues required for war memorials that were springing up in almost every European town and city. This effectively opened the doors for artists to start experimenting with the material and see how much bronze was able to offer them in their avant-garde quests.
We will now go through the most essential and impressive examples of modern bronze sculptures made during the 20th century. Constantin Brancusi made this masterpiece in the year of and it represents the subject that occupied him for almost twenty years.
In conceiving and executing his Sleeping Muse , the sculptor abstained from unnecessary drama and detail, instead opting for a reduction to fundamental forms. All of the fast pace and mechanical power of the modern world that captivated the Futurists was summed up in Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.
Made in , this revolutionary sculpture depicts a marching silhouette that appears to be deformed by wind and speed, warped in its own movement. The figure's sleek metal contours allude to machinery of World War I. Between and , Jacob Epstein made this remarkable sculpture and titled it Rock Drill. The figure is sharp-edged with its limbs square in profile and its head is a long beak-like armored visage. The sculpture's torso has what appear to be armored ribs, while the abdomen area is an indentation containing an embryonic form.
Raymond Duchamp-Villon was an expert horseman who served as an auxiliary doctor in a cavalry regiment during the World War I. The Major Horse was devised from the artist's studies of a leaping horse and its rider who synthesize into a single being, becoming an abstract evocation of dynamic energy and power.
Often compared to the works of Futurism created at the same time, The Major Horse also aimed to capture the sense of motion. Remembering how his brother Diego's cat "passed just like a ray of light" , Alberto Giacometti attempted to portray this grace of movement with a sculpture appropriately titled as Cat. Squeezing its predatory form between close objects without ever touching them , Giacometti's cat is one of only a few sculptures of animals this artist made during his career - the others are a dog and two horses.
Moon Head is a bronze sculpture comprised of two irregularly shaped disc-like forms, each stemming from a tubular neck mounted on a bronze base. Henry Moore positioned the "disks" in parallel with each other and just a few centimeters apart, in a fashion that a part of one can always be seen behind the other.
The way these two segments appear to gravitate towards and away from each other leaves an impression that the abstract sculpture had, at one time, been a single unit. Just like he did with more than a few of his artworks, Jasper Johns blurred the line between the actual object and its artistic recreation with the 's Two Beer Cans. Johns fashioned the original sculpture in response to Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning 's boast about art dealer Leo Castelli - de Kooning stated that "you could give him [Leo] two beer cans and he could sell them".
A true marvel of contemporary sculpture , Maman is a bronze, stainless steel and marble artwork Louise Bourgeois created at the turn of the last millennium.
The piece, which depicts a spider, is among the world's largest sculptures still in existence. The sculpted spider has a sac containing 26 marble eggs, which is what gives the piece its name - Mom. The hallmarks of ancient Egyptian civilization, such as art, architecture, and many aspects of religion, took shape during the Early Dynastic period and lasted until about 2, BCE.
During this period, the pantheon of the gods was established and the illustrations and proportions of their human figures developed; and Egyptian imagery , symbolism , and basic hieroglyphic writing were created. The first-known portraits were also completed. At the end of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptian style moved toward formalized seminude figures with long bodies and large eyes. Reverse and obverse sides of Narmer Palette, this facsimile on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada : The Narmer Palette, named after Egyptian King Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological relic dating from about the 3, BCE, containing some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found.
In the East, civilization emerged in the Indus River valley, and from the Yellow River came the beginnings of Chinese civilization. In addition to numerous large sacrificial tripods known as dings in Chinese, there are many other distinct shapes.
Ritual bronzes were highly decorated with taotie motifs , including highly stylized animal faces, in three main types: demons, symbolic animals, and abstract symbols. Many large bronzes also bear cast inscriptions that comprise the bulk of surviving early Chinese writing and have helped historians and archaeologists piece together the history of China.
Ritual cooking vessel : China, Shang or Zhou dynasty bronze, c. Taotie — a mask of an imaginary animal with eyes, horns, snout, and jaw.
Motif common in Shang and early Zhou dynasties. It is marked by economic and cultural exchange. Commercial contacts extended to Denmark and the Mediterranean. The Atlantic Bronze Age was defined by a number of distinct regional centers of metal production, unified by a regular maritime exchange of products.
Bronze sword blade c. Migration brought new people to the islands from the continent. Recent tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves indicate that some of the migrants came from the area of modern Switzerland. Burial of the dead, previously communal, became individual as bodies were interred in barrows and cists covered with cairns.
The greatest quantities of bronze objects in England were discovered in East Cambridgeshire—especially in Isleham, where more than 6, pieces were found. Alloying of copper with zinc or tin to make brass or bronze was practiced soon after the discovery of copper.
The earliest identified metalworking site Sigwells, Somerset is much later, dated by Globular Urn style pottery to approximately the 12th century BCE.
The Bronze Age in Ireland commenced around 2, BCE, when copper was alloyed with tin and used primarily in the field of metallurgy. One of the characteristic types of artifact of the Early Bronze Age in Ireland is the flat axe, notably the Ballybeg-type flat axe. Ireland is also known for a large number of Early Bronze Age burials. Petroglyphs, or rock engravings, exist around the world and range in purpose from ritual to communication to narration.
Rock carvings are found worldwide, with the highest concentrations in Africa, Scandinavia, Siberia, southwestern North America, and Australia dating between the late Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, approximately 10, to 20, years ago.
However, some carvings date to the Bronze Age. Many rock carvings were produced by hunter-gatherers who inhabited the area and typically depicted animals and humans as well as some narrative scenes.
Petroglyphs in Tanum, Sweden c. Traditionally, individual markings are called motifs , while groups of motifs are known as panels. Rock carvings are found across a wide geographical and temporal scope of cultures. Scholars have devised numerous theories to explain their purpose, depending on location, age, and image type. Some petroglyphs are thought to be astronomical markers, maps, or other such forms of communication.
A petroglyph that represents a land form or the surrounding terrain is known as a geocontourglyph. Glyphs from the Nordic Bronze Age c. It also appears that local or regional dialects from similar or neighboring peoples existed. Many researchers have noticed the notable resemblance of different styles of petroglyphs across different continents.
This could be mere coincidence, an indication that certain groups of people migrated widely from some initial common area, or indication of a common origin. One common symbol called the cup-and-ring mark has been found on petroglyphs in the British Isles as well as on the European continent in locations as diverse as Spain, Scandinavia, and Greece.
This symbol consists of a concave depression, no more than a few centimeters in diameter, pecked into a rock surface and often surrounded by concentric circles also etched into the stone. Sometimes a linear channel called a gutter protrudes from the middle. Laxe dos carballos fourth-second millennium BCE : Cup-and-ring mark and deer hunting scenes.
The cup-and-ring mark lies to the right of the deer. Campo Lameiro, Galicia, Spain.
0コメント