The Erotic Object: Sexuality in Sculpture From Prehistory to the Present

The power and eroticism of sculpture, form, volume and space are sensitively explored in this wide-ranging study, which takes in the history of sculpture from prehistoric times to contemporary art.

Featuring discussions of many famous sculptors, including: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Antonio Canova, Auguste Rodin, Eric Gill, Andy Goldsworthy, Jasper Johns, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Barbara Hepworth and Gianlorenzo Bernini.

Many contemporary artists are studied too, including installation and performance artists (Catherine Elwes, Karen Finley, Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann), and women sculptors such as Alice Aycock, Mary Miss, Rebecca Horn, Nancy Graves, Eva Hesse, Kathe Kollwitz and Judy Chicago.

Regardless of what sculpture depicts, it can be seen as erotic. The surfaces, materials and forms are sensuous: wood, stone, marble, granite, clay, bronze. Touching is pleasure. It is a pleasure that is, perhaps, pre-institutional, pre-industrial and pre-political.

Touching cuts through socialand cultural constructs, such asart, ideology, education and war, and goes back to aprimeval form of being. At same time, touching is a sense of the both personal and societal. John Keats said, 'touch hasa memory'. Sculpture activates this fundamental relation with things. Sculpture renews contact with the simple but utterly crucial experiences such as touch, sight, and smell.

Fully illustrated, with many rare and fascinating illustrations, including prints, paintings and buildings as well as sculptures and statues.

This book has been revised and updated. ISBN 9781861714092. 296 pages. www.crmoon.com

The Erotic Object: Sexuality in Sculpture From Prehistory to the Present

The power and eroticism of sculpture, form, volume and space are sensitively explored in this wide-ranging study, which takes in the history of sculpture from prehistoric times to contemporary art.

Featuring discussions of many famous sculptors, including: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Antonio Canova, Auguste Rodin, Eric Gill, Andy Goldsworthy, Jasper Johns, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Barbara Hepworth and Gianlorenzo Bernini.

Many contemporary artists are studied too, including installation and performance artists (Catherine Elwes, Karen Finley, Ana Mendieta, Carolee Schneemann), and women sculptors such as Alice Aycock, Mary Miss, Rebecca Horn, Nancy Graves, Eva Hesse, Kathe Kollwitz and Judy Chicago.

Regardless of what sculpture depicts, it can be seen as erotic. The surfaces, materials and forms are sensuous: wood, stone, marble, granite, clay, bronze. Touching is pleasure. It is a pleasure that is, perhaps, pre-institutional, pre-industrial and pre-political.

Touching cuts through socialand cultural constructs, such asart, ideology, education and war, and goes back to aprimeval form of being. At same time, touching is a sense of the both personal and societal. John Keats said, 'touch hasa memory'. Sculpture activates this fundamental relation with things. Sculpture renews contact with the simple but utterly crucial experiences such as touch, sight, and smell.

Fully illustrated, with many rare and fascinating illustrations, including prints, paintings and buildings as well as sculptures and statues.

This book has been revised and updated. ISBN 9781861714084. 296 pages. www.crmoon.com

ALISON WILDING

Alison Wilding is one of the best sculptors around. She deserves a much wider recognition that she receives at present. Wilding was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1948. She went through the typical British art school education Ravensbourne College of Art (1967-70) and the Royal College of Art (1970-73). Her one-woman shows have included Kelttles Yard Gallery, Cambridge (1982), the Serpentine Gallery, London (1985), Hirschl & Adler, New York (1989), Bare at Newlyn Art Gallery (1993), and a major show (Immersion and Exposure) at both the Tate Gallery, Liverpool and the Henry Moore Trust studio in Halifax (1991). She has shown new work most years since the early 1980s at her galleries.

Theres something in Alison Wildings sculpture which fascinates art lovers. Its difficult to say exactly what this quality of Wildings sculpture is. Something magical, perhaps, or mysterious, or erotic. These are the sorts of terms art critics employ when they are at a loss for words. Artists such as Mark Rothko famously get this treatment (Rothkos canvases are called transcendent, sublime, spiritual). John McEwen writes of Alison Wilding:

She is pleased when her work conveys a sense of the magical, and certainly it has a powerful sense of mystery. Mysteriousness does not lend itself to description, analysis or explanation; as she herself put it to me in conversation, her pieces do not demand to be talked about. That suggests that they do not demand to be written about either, I said. They dont mind, she said.

Penelope Curtis writes of Wilding: Even the smallest of her often small sculptures has tremendous and commanding presence; there is a sense of levitation in her works.

Fully illustrated with many examples of Wildings work, and that of her contemporaries.