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History...
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Sculpture in the present and the future
With the benefit of hindsight it's plain to see who were the most significant sculptors in the Classical period, the Renaissance, and the early 20th century. But with the recent past and the present it's not so easy to see who will be remembered in the history books of the future.
When Marcel Duchamp entered his "Fountain" into a Paris exhibition in 1917 his intention was to pick a fight with the art establishment. In the short term, he lost - his dubious argument about why a urinal should be considered "art" didnt convince the exhibition curators and the toilet was removed from the gallery. But...., his idea opened the flood gates for countless low skilled fame-hunters to also claim that some everyday object was "actually a piece of sculpture". We've had piles of bricks, tyres, dirty nappies, rumpled beds, pickled fish, piles of sticks and balloons, all claiming to "challange the boundaries" of what should be considered to be Art.
Fyfe Robertson called it "PhArt" - Phoney Art.
What did Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Canova, Rodin, and Henry Moore have in common?
They all developed considerable skills which enabled them to turn their visions into objects of stunning beauty.
Are piles of bricks beautiful?
Not really. Ker-ching.
Are we entering a new Dark Age where skill and beauty been abandoned in favour of 15mins of fame ?
Yes and no.
The PhArt wannabies will get their 15 mins and make obscene amounts of money, but, who will remember their balloons in the morning?
But.., if you flick across the web you'll find plenty of contemporary sculptors producing beautiful, actual sculpture.
They may not all be household names yet.
That will be for History to decide.
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Some current sculptors worth seeing....
To keep it brief this section only gives a small selection of the contemporary sculptors that I have noticed, but there are many many more producing works of beauty.
So, maybe we haven't entered a new Dark Age after all.
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Vivienne Lowe
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Zhang Yaxi
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Baltasar Lobo
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Giancarlo Franco Tramontin
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Simon Kogan
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Tom Corbin
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James Rosati
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Leila Woiski
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Marie-Madeleine Gautier
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Stephanie Davies-Arai
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Cicero D'Avila
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Dhruva Mistry
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Shona Nunan
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Philip Cuttell
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Elizabeth Waugh
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Maria Gamundi
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Paige Bradley
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Marie Ackers
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Robert Milhollin
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