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

Western sculpture was first perfected in Greece

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

A sculpture: "Mother with child"

• 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

Contemporary materials

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

Other materials used in modern and contemporary sculpture include:

A tree sculpture at Bristol Zoo, Bristol, England. This was sculpted with a chain saw from a standing tree, which was diseased and due to be felled

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

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

Forms

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)
• Sculpture "in the round," that is, designed by the sculptor to be viewed from any angle.
• Free-standing sculpture
• Mobile (See also Calder's Stabiles.)
• Statue
• Bust (sculpture)
• Site-Specific
• Equestrian
• Jewellery

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

Sculptors

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

See also: List of sculptors

Greenfield Products Pty Ltd v. Rover-Scott Bonnar Ltd

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.

Nudity

Traditional sculpting materials are:

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

Mexico City statue commemorating the foundation of Tenochtitlán

Related topics

• Figure drawing
• Hologram
• Ice sculpture
• Kouros
• List of artworks
• Sculpture basic topics
• Sound sculpture

External links

• artka.com - sculpture on wood, sculpture on stone (http://artka.com)
• www.sculptor.org
• www.sculpture.org
• Traces international stone sculpture journal (http://www.traces.ws/sculpture)
• Unique medium: Sand (http://www.teamsandtastic.com)
• Sand Sculptor (http://www.sculpturesinsand.com)
• The online museum of environmental art (http://www.greenmuseum.org)
• SculpturesEnLigne.com