The first true monograph on the work of celebrated French conceptual artist and sculptor Bernar Venet Bernar Venet is one of France's most celebrated living artists. Having emerged from the late 1960s avant-garde scene in New York, Venet developed a personal aesthetic based on an innovative use of mathematics and science, where control, chance, and chaos converge to form a fine equilibrium while investigating their relationship with the environment. Conversant in many media, Venet is mostly known for his monumental outdoor sculptures in major cities worldwide and, in fall 19, his Arc Majeur is due for completion at a site in Belgium - at almost 200 feet in height (60 metres), Venet's sculpture will be taller than New York's Statue of Liberty.

Colour is at the core of our perception, the very essence of how we see and understand the world, but the question to ask is: how does one interpret it? Six well-known British artists - David Batchelor, Ian Davenport, Lothar Goetz, Jim Lambie, Annie Morris, Fiona Rae - have interpreted in different ways, the relationship of colour within space. Colour is the main protagonist of their works: it can be found in Batchelor's sculptures assembled with found objects, in the coloured trails of Davenport's paintings, in Fiona Rae's delicate, floating marks on white surfaces, and in Annie Morris' sculptures that powerfully define the environment. Finally, the colour comes out of the paintings to invade the walls and the floor of the Gallery itself, with two site-specific creations: an entire wall painted by Lothar Goetz, and Zobop, the floor made of vinyl by Jim Lambie. Text in English and Italian.

This book investigates how British contemporary artists who work with clay have managed, in the space of a single generation, to take ceramics from niche-interest craft to the pristine territories of the contemporary art gallery. This development has been accompanied (and perhaps propelled) by the kind of critical discussion usually reserved for the 'higher' discipline of sculpture. Ceramics is now encountering and colliding with sculpture, both formally and intellectually. Laura Gray examines what this means for the old hierarchies between art and craft, the identity of the potter, and the character of a discipline tied to a specific material but wanting to participate in critical discussions that extend far beyond clay.

This is the first monograph on Arne Quinze (b.1971), an internationally known Belgian contemporary artist, painter and sculptor. He is best known for his monumental outdoor sculptures, which can be found all over the world. This book gathers his large-scale work, and includes other mediums he works in, including paintings, smaller sculptures, and light installations. With 500 images, an elaborate essay by Xavier Roland, the director of the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Mons (Belgium), and a revealing and exclusive interview by Herve Mikaeloff, this beautifully illustrated publication marks the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Mons (Belgium) in May 2021.

Influenced by Gaudi's Parc Guell in Barcelona, and the mannerist park of Bomarzo, Niki de Saint Phalle decided that she wanted to make something similar; a monumental sculpture park created by a woman. In 1974, she was donated some land in Garavicchio, Tuscany, about 100 km north-west of Rome along the coast. The garden, on which planning started in 1978, contains sculptures of the symbols found on Tarot cards. It opened in 1998, after more than 20 years of work. The garden was still incomplete when Niki de Saint Phalle died. With elaborate illustrations and sensitively written texts this book presents in detail the formation of the garden and the underlying ideas.

From architectural space to narrative dynamics: a brilliant new conception of sculpture’s unique modalities.

While discussions about installation art or other three-dimensional art forms are widespread, the discourse on sculpture seems to be stuck in historical or thematic frameworks. Drawing from literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis and architecture, Ernst van Alphen explores “seven logics” of sculpture: the Logic of Inner Necessity; the Logic of Narration; the Logic of Space; the Logic of Volume; the Logic of Assemblage; the Logic of Architectural Space; and the Non-Logic of Singleness. These themes articulate the modalities specific to sculpture in a fresh and brilliant conception.

Artists discussed include Carl Andre, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncusi, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Sol Lewitt, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Michelangelo, Bruce Nauman, Meret Oppenheim and Rachel Whiteread.

The first book to explore the fascinating career and fantasy-driven worlds created by the acclaimed Argentinean artist Adrian Villar Rojas's works concoct imaginary realms. Usually made from clay, his colossal installations are transitory and so cannot be collected, as they disappear or decay over time. His practice confronts the public with ideas of obsolescence and extinction, but also with the possibilities of humankind and its endless imagination. This is the first book to include all of Villar Rojas' most significant projects, featured in international biennials such as Venice, Documenta, Shanghai, and others.

From casting to sculpture Cast materials become solid, yet they originate as fluid materials that can take on any imaginable form. This simple yet radical paradigm allows for the exploration of volumetric formations through process-oriented casting and experimentation with alternative ways of manufacturing, presenting, and shaping casting molds. Working with hardening bodies fundamentally challenges the notion of formal rigidity; conventional formwork models are reconsidered, and a new aesthetic emerges. Fluid Bodies presents a variety of objects created using alternative casting methods. The book documents experimental artistic research and showcases innovative and surprising sculptures in concrete and plaster. Alternative ways of manufacturing, presenting, and shaping casting molds Concrete and plaster sculptures, parametric designs, and the further development of conventional formwork models and casting processes With numerous large-format photographs

If mediatization has surprisingly revealed the secret life of inert matter and the 'face of things', the flipside of this has been the petrification of living organisms, an invasion of stone bodies in a state of suspended animation. Within a contemporary imaginary pervaded by new forms of animism, the paradigm of death looms large in many areas of artistic experimentation, pushing the modern body towards mineral modes of being which revive ancient myths of flesh-made-stone and the issue of the monument. Scholars in media, visual culture and the arts propose studies of bodies of stone, from actors simulating statues to the transmutation of the filmic body into a fossil; from the real treatment of the cadaver as a mineral living object to the rediscovery of materials such as wax; from the quest for a 'thermal' equivalence between stone and flesh to the transformation of the biomedical body into a living monument.

Dialectical Materialism: Aspects of British Sculpture Since the 1960s charts a network of relations linking the work of six sculptors: Anthony Caro, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long, William Turnbull, Rachel Whiteread and Alison Wilding. Since the 1960s, successive artists and art-critical frameworks have sought to undermine or dispense with traditional media and the boundaries between painting and sculpture, the core disciplines of modern Western art. The artists studied here are united by their commitment to sculpture as a distinct practice, but also to broadening, challenging and redefining the basis of that practice. In his essay, art historian Jonathan Vernon argues that each of these sculptors has engaged in a realignment of sculptural and material space - in removing sculpture from the disembodied, 'disinterested' spaces of mid-century modernism and returning it to a shared world inhabited by other objects, ourselves and our material interests. From the conflicts that inhere in this space, we may discern the outlines of a new idea of British sculpture since the 1960s - an idea by turns narrative, dramatic and dysfunctional.

This volume tackles a pressing issue in Roman art history: that many sculptures conventionally used in our scholarship and teaching lack adequate information about their find locations. Questions of context are complex, and any theoretical and methodological reframing of Roman sculpture demands academic transparency. This volume is dedicated to privileging content and context over traditions of style and aesthetics. Through case studies, the chapters illustrate multivariate ways to contextualize ancient objects. The authors encourage Roman art historians to look beyond conventional interpretations; to reclaim from the study of Greek sculpture the Roman originals that are too often relegated to discussions of "copies" and "models"; to consider the multiple, dynamic, and shifting contexts that one sculpture could experience over the centuries of its display; and to recognize that post-antique receptions can also offer insight into interpretations of ancient viewers. The collected topics were originally presented in three conference sessions: "Grounding Roman Sculpture" (Archaeological Institute of America, 2019); "Ancient Sculpture in Context" (College Art Association, 2017); and "Ancient Sculpture in Context II: Reception" (College Art Association, 2019).

Don Gummer's career as a sculptor began in New York City in the late 1970s with his wall reliefs of painted wood, carefully layered geometric works exhibiting a strong architectural influence. Moving beyond wood to stone, bronze, stainless steel, aluminium, and glass as his primary materials, his artworks have evolved into subtly inventive, often monumental, freestanding sculptures that demonstrate his unfailing attention to craftsmanship and detail. This new monograph is the first survey on the artist and his highly acclaimed body of work. Gummer has described his interest in sculpture as "the recontextualization of natural phenomena, of unaltered things brought into aesthetic balance by choosing and placing." Using balance, proportion, and his unique sense of harmony, the artist makes durable materials seem almost buoyant. Negative space is an intrinsic element in his work, imparting a sense that his exquisite, seemingly permanent forms are ultimately as fleeting as any of nature's creations would be. The artist's works can be found in many public collections including the Butler Institute of American Art; the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Chase Manhattan. He has received awards from prestigious organisations such as the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he was Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

In conceiving his architectural masterpiece - the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland - Rudolf Steiner designed a large wooden model, featuring three main figures, to be placed in a central position inside the building. Known as 'the Representative of Humanity', this sculpture shows a central, free-standing Christ holding a balance between the beings of Lucifer and Ahriman, who represent polar tendencies of expansion and contraction. On New Year's Eve 1922 the Goetheanum was destroyed by fire, but the model - still in a process of creation and therefore housed in an external studio - miraculously escaped the flames. It remains intact to this day in the second Goetheanum, where it can be viewed by the public. With numerous full colour photos and illustrations, The Representative of Humanity offers a vivid introduction to this monumental, world-historic artwork. We follow the evolution of the statue through the photographic documentation of many models created in its development: from six smaller versions to a full-size plasticine construction. This latter model - also still on display - offers an impressive insight into the artists' detailed intentions, having been repeatedly revised by Rudolf Steiner. It demonstrates the continual spiritual movement evident in the whole series of small models, and the metamorphic processes which developed over an eight-year period. The authors offer indications regarding the realm and content out of which the work arose, the environment in which it is situated, and the artists who created it: Rudolf Steiner and the trained sculptress Edith Maryon. They also examine the intentions behind a work of art that addresses the destiny of the whole of mankind.

This impressive work of scholarship brings together anthropology, religion, popular culture, and history in its focus on Bakhtiari lion tombstones that have remained largely unknown and hence little studied. Although lions have long figured in Iranian history, art and myth as symbols of rulership, power, religious leadership or as steadfast guardians, art historians have tended to concentrate their attentions on court traditions and the role of lions in popular culture, especially in religion, has remained little considered until this book. Funerary stone lions are to be found throughout western Iran, but are concentrated in the summer and winter pasture areas of the Bakhtiari, today's provinces of Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari, west of Isfahan, and Khuzistan. This highly illustrated colour volume draws on meticulous fieldwork and includes over three hundred photographs, drawings, charts and maps. The recording of this rare sculptural heritage, dating from the 16th century to the early 20th century, has become ever more pressing as some tombstones have been taken from their original settings and re-erected in parks, others damaged by the elements and some recently broken up to be used in road repairs. 'Pedram Khosronejad's Lion Tombstones among Bakhtiari Pastoral Nomads in South West Iran is to be greatly welcomed... [It is ]based on extensive fieldwork and represents something of a rescue project....This volume, however, goes further in raising three inter-related issues: why have these important artifacts been neglected even by specialists; how do they relate to a richer understanding of Iranian art and culture; and how does vernacular art relate to the accepted traditions of Iranian art?.... This volume will prove to be important in bringing the lion tombstones to a larger public attention.' G. R. Garthwaite, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies, Emeritus & Professor of History, Emeritus