By taking simple ways of looking at sculpture, this book uncovers unexpected affinities between works of very different periods and types. From sundials to mirrors, from graves to way-markers, from fountains to contemporary art, a wide range of illustrated examples expands the definitions of sculpture and proposes that we understand this art as something more fundamental to the way we experience and construct our rites of passage. Penelope Curtis argues that there are some basic functions shared by many kinds of three-dimensional objects, be they more or less obviously sculptural. Even contemporary sculpture, with no apparent purpose, makes use of this deeply embedded vocabulary. Together, the qualities of vertical, horizontal, closed and open are consolidated in the ensemble, which places the viewer at its heart, on the threshold of sculpture and on the threshold of change. This book elides the usual notions of figurative and abstract to think instead about how sculpture works. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

This volume examines the relationship between modern sculpture and architecture in the mid-twentieth century, an interplay that has laid the ground for the semisculptural or semiarchitectural works by architects such as Frank Gehry and artists such as Dan Graham. The first half of the book explores how the addition of sculpture enhanced several architectural projects, including Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion (1929) and Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook Campus (1934). The second half of the book uses several additional case studies, including Philip Johnson's sculpture court for New York's Museum of Modern Art (1953), to explore what architectural spaces can add to the sculpture they are designed to contain. The author argues that it was in the middle of the twentieth century - before sculptural and architectural forms began to converge - that the complementary nature of the two practices began clearly to emerge: figurative sculpture highlighting the modernist architectural experience, and the abstract qualities of that architecture imparting to sculpture a heightened role.

Eliseo Mattiacci: Sculpture in Action in Rome is a fresh examination of the developments in Mattiacci's sculpture from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, dates that embrace the two decades he spent living and working in Italy's vibrant capital. New research by the contributors to this book reveal how the exceptional constellation of studios, galleries and institutional spaces as well as the architectural and landscape settings Rome offered were the crucial factor in Mattiacci's rapid sophistication as an artist. In the mid-1960s the city was already a major centre for art, literature, theatre and cinema, and the setting for numerous avant-garde performative 'actions' and 'happenings'. The Piazza del Popolo district was crowded with bars and galleries, and Mattiacci soon became warmly acquainted with various gallerists and artists, including the Arte Povera practitioners Jannis Kounellis and Pino Pascali. In this challenging and competitive environment Mattiacci sought to establish his own distinctive exploratory style, investigating materials, forms, sounds, presentations and actions in endlessly novel and inventive ways. The extraordinary Tubo, the long flexible yellow coil of metallic tubing that could be endlessly rearranged and even carried out of a gallery into the streets by files of admirers, was first exhibited in 1967, and made his name. The following year he staged Lavori in corso, a trio of very popular performances, in the Circo Massimo, which involved spinning huge umbrellas in imitation of the Earth's rotations and revolutions. Percorso, in 1969, was Mattiacci again in action, this time driving a noisy roadroller into and around a gallery. In the 1970s - a difficult decade of political violence in Italy - Mattiacci continued to explore both outwardly and inwardly. He was increasingly fascinated by archaeology, antique alphabets and non-literate cultures, notably the USA's First Peoples, and he created actions and presentations that ranged from exhibitions of x-rays of his own inner organs to appearances encased in 'bandaging' and plaster. In 1981 he first showed the admired Roma, a collection of 50 large sinuous metal shapes inspired by the volutes of classical and Baroque architecture, once again an artwork that is endlessly rearrangeable, indoors or out. Sculpture in Action is the beautifully illustrated account of Mattiacci's artistic creativity in those decades.

Deacon's sculptures employ curvilinear forms made from a wide range of materials that are more traditionally associated with the manufacturing of industrial and domestic products. The works display both the method of construction and the craftsmanship involved in their making, through the surface details of screws and rivets, stitching or gluing used for material such as galvanised steel, corrugated iron, cloth, leather, linoleum and laminated wood. Published to coincide with a major exhibition at Tate Britain, this next volume in the Modern Artists series addresses key aspects of Deacon's career, beginning with his early performance-based work such as Stuff Box Object - an experimental piece involving him climbing into a box, bolting himself inside, experiencing the interior space, climbing out and then working with plaster on the exterior of the box. Since then he has produced a highly coherent and yet diverse body of work in sculpture, combining natural forms with an industrial sensibility, ranging from the domestic scale of his ongoing Art for Other People series to monumental work for public commissions. As with other volumes in the Modern Artists series, a key feature of the book is the interviews, here undertaken by Penelope Curtis, Director at Tate Britain. Six themes are explored, bring the sculptor's thoughts and processes vividly to life.

Exploring over 25 works by Alison Wilding - one of Britain's most noted sculptors - this publication draws on the artist's ambitious display at the Duveen Galleries, Tate Britain. Wilding is known for her inventive approach to both form and materials. Each of the five major works on display at the Tate brings together contrasting materials - from copper and alabaster to rubber and PVC - while testing the relationship between scale and weight. The exhibition also served to celebrate the Tate's acquisition of her 2004 work 'Vanish & Detail'. This volume contextualises those works within Wilding's oeuvre. Alongside 70 illustrations and an interview between the artist and curator Carmen Julia, a survey text by Anna Moszynska groups the works in relation to the sculptures made by Wilding throughout the nearly four decades of her career.

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a radical sculptor whose unorthodox approach to sculpture-making provided a definitive break in the history of Western sculpture. Although much of his commercial success was based on the bronze and marble versions of his work, Rodin's greatest talent was as a modeller who captured movement, emotion, light and volume in clay and plaster, to challenge traditional conceptions of beauty and perfection. In line with new thinking on Rodin, this book explores the artist's use of plaster, a material which demonstrates his interest in creating sculptures that are never completed, always becoming. United by their materiality, fragile and experimental pieces are explored alongside new readings of some of Rodin's iconic works, and a selection of his watercolour drawings. Including an exclusive contribution from sculptor Phyllida Barlow, The Making of Rodin sheds light on the artist's use of materials, his unique way of working, and his imaginative use of photography, revealing how Rodin reinvented sculpture for the modern age - and why his work continues to enthral and provoke to this day.

In 'The Pliable Plane', curator and historian Penelope Curtis traces the ways sculpture infiltrated architectural thought over the post-war period. Her study identifies the wall as a particular locus of creative thinking - a surface which produces both continuity and separation, and which similarly unites and distinguishes the two disciplines. Surveying a series of walls - carved, cast, applied, imagined, and even conceptual - in such places as bomb shelters, caves, war memorials, and public buildings, Curtis introduces a cast of renowned and lesser-known practitioners who defined the three-dimensional conception of the years 1945 to 1970. With close readings of the work and lives of Henry Moore, Anni Albers, Frederick Kiesler, Jorge Oteiza, and Mary Martin, among others, Curtis's fluid and perspicacious history encompasses the developments of wartime production, the discovery of the Lascaux Caves, and the rise of relief art. Turning away from familiar pairings and dichotomies, it considers spaces and surfaces of coalescence and influence. Curtis compels us to understand the wall as support as much as partition, arguing for the centrality of this very pliability to the entwined development of both sculpture and architecture.