Tag: sculpture

Emperor Caracalla

Bust of Emperor Caracalla

Artist Unknown, Bust of Emperor Caracalla, White Marble Head, Alabaster Torso

Formerly known as Antoninus, Caracalla was a member of the Severan dynasty, the elder son of Julia Domna and Septinius Severus. He ruled as the Roman Emperor from 198 to 217 AD, first as a co-ruler with his father Septnius from 198, then as a co-ruler with his brother Geta from 209 AD. After his father’s death in 211, Caracalla killed his brother and assumed the position of Emperor for himself.

Although Caracalla’s reign was troubled with domestic instability and invasions by the Germanic tribes, it was notable for the Antonine Constitution which granted Roman citizenship to all free men throughout the Roman Empire. Caracalla is known for the construction of the second-largest baths in Rome, the Baths of Caracalla, and for the the new Roman currency named the antoninianus.

Ancient sources portray Caracalla as a tyrant and a cruel leader, enacting massacres in his empire and against his own Roman people. He was assassinated by a disaffected soldier in 217 AD. Macrinus, a praetorian prefect of Rome and a conspirator in the assassination against Caracalla, became Emperor on April 11, 217, three days after Caracalla’s death.

Image reblogged with thanks to http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

 

Fabio Viale

Sculptures by Fabio Viale

Fabio Viale, born in Cuneo in northern Italy in 1975, is a sculptor who lives and works in Turin, Italy. He graduated in 2008 from the University of Turin in the field of contemporary sculpture. Viale’s artwork contrasts the artistic appearance of traditional white marble art pieces with contemporary illustrative tattoo work, inspired by the Japanese Yakuza, over the marble forms.

Fabio Viale has been exhibiting world-wide since 2009, showing in New York, Basel, Miami and London among other cities. In 2007 he won the Francesco Messina Young International Sculpture Award for his work in traditional materials. His works also won first prize in 2012 at the Henraux Foundation Awards in Querceta, Italy, and recognition at the Premio Cairo in Milan, Italy.

First three images reblogged with thanks to Jean Louis’s great art site: https://ganymedesrocks.tumblr.com

Remaining images reblogged with thanks to: https://www.tobeeko.com

 

Dragon Fish

japaneseaesthetics:

Dragon Fish

Japan. Edo period

5’3’’ x 34’’ x 17’’ – 160cm x 86cm x 43cm

A splendid model of a Shachihoko, an enormous roof decoration well cast in

bronze, with a dragon head with bushy eyebrows and whiskers, flared

nostrils, a spiny dorsal fin and 4 large pectoral fins. His body with the

scales of a carp and a large flared tail fin. Originally gilded overall, this

impressive beast would have adorned the gable end of a splendid castle, temple

or Samurai home. Now, with remnants of gilding to the scales and a

good green weathered patina.

Note: Shachihoko were thought to provide protection against fire, as they were

attributed with the power to control rain. Brandt Asian Art

Source: brandtasianart.com

Lucy Glendinning

Lucy Glendinning, “Feather Child 4″, Date Unknown, Feathers on Form

Lucy Glendinning is a sculptor and installation artist, who works in a contemporary British sculpture tradition. Her different aesthetic expressions are brought together under one central entry point: the human body as a semiotic medium. For Glendinning, art is the primary tool for investigating psychological and philosophical themes. Her work is thus permeated by a conceptual content, superior to the value of aesthetics.

Glendinning seduces the observing eye by emphasing subtle expressions and presenting stunning craftsmanship. Her way of cleverly combining paradoxical qualities are revealed in the twisted combinations of tenderness and brutality, empathety and ignorance, stillness and movement.

The suite “Feather Child” series originates from Glendinning’s fascination with visions of a future society. The feathered children are embodied questions, where the artist is asking us if we, in a world where our genetics could be freely manipulated, will be able to resist altering our physical abilities. Will necessity or vanity be the ruling power? The fragility of the feathers is simultaneously mirroring the perhaps most classic tale of human hubris: the fate of Icarus in Greek mythology.

Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova, “Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss”, Detail, 1787, Marble, Louvre Museum, Paris

“Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss” is a marble sculpture by Italian artist Antonio Canova, who was raised by his stonemason grandfather, Pasino Canova. Antonio Canova valued his independence as an artist, believing that art was above politics. However, through pressure by the French on the papacy, he was forced to accept titles and honors.

The marble sculpture is in a Neoclassical style but shows characteristics of the then emerging Romantic movement. There were two versions of this piece; the image shown being the prime version, which was acquired by Joachim Murat, Marshal of France and Admiral of France under the reign of Napoleon. After Murat’s death, the sculpture entered the Louvre Museum in 1824.

Image reblogged with thanks to http://abrighterhellas.tumblr.com

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, “He Xie (River Crab)”, 2010, Porcelain

The installation “He Xie” consists of 3,200 porcelain crab sculptures. They were created after Chinese authorities ransacked and destroyed Weiwei’s studio in 2010. Following that event, a feast of real river crabs was hosted by Weiwei, who was unable to attend, due to his house arrest. The term “He Xie” is a homophone for “harmonious” in Chinese and has also become a term for internet censorship.

Calendar

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of November,  Solar Year 2018

The End of the Yellow Brick Road

November 5, 1876 was the birthdate of sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon.

Raymond Duchamp-Villon was born on November 5, 1876, in Damville, near Rouen, France. From 1894 to 1898 he studied medicine at the University of Paris. When illness forced him to abandon his studies, Duchamp-Villon decided to make a career in sculpture. During the early years of the century he moved to Paris, where he exhibited for the first time at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1902.

Duchamp-Villon’s second show was held at the same Salon in 1903, the year he settled in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb west of Paris. In 1905 he had his first exhibition at the Salon d’Automne and a show at the Galerie Legrip in Rouen with his brother, the painter Jacques Villon; Duchamp-Villon moved with him to Puteaux two years later.

Duchamp Villon’s participation in the jury of the sculpture section of the Salon d’Automne began in 1907 and was instrumental in promoting the Cubists in the early 1910s. Around this time he  and Jacques Villon, along with their other brother, Marcel Duchamp, attended weekly meetings of the Puteaux group of artists and critics. The Puteaux Group, also known as the Golden Section, was a collective of painters, sculptors, poets and critics associated with Cubism and Orphism, an offshoot of Cubism that focused on pure color and abstraction.

In 1911 Raymond Duchamp-Villon exhibited at the Galerie de l’Art Contemporain in Paris; the following year his work was included in a show organized by the Duchamp brothers at the Salon de la Section d’Or at the Galerie de la Boétie. Duchamp-Villon’s work, along with the work of his two brothers, was exhibited at the Armory Show in New York in 1913 and the Galerie André Groult in Paris, the Galerie S. V. U. Mánes in Prague, and Der Sturm gallery in Berlin in 1914.

During World War One, Duchamp-Villon served in the army in a medical capacity, but was able to continue work on his major sculpture “The Horse”, a composite image of an animal and machine which he finished in 1914. Duchamp-Villon overturned conventional representation of form to suggest instead its inner forces, which he associated with the energy of the machine.

Raymond Duchamp-Villon contracted typhoid fever in late 1916 while stationed at Champagne; the disease ultimately resulted in his death on October 9, 1918, in the military hospital at Cannes.

Dragon Aquamanile

Dragon Aquamanile, 1200 AD, Copper Alloy, Northern Germany, 22 x18 cm., The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

An aquamanile is a vessel made specifically to hold water for hand-washing. Most of the Middle-Ages aquamaniles are fashioned from copper or bronze, an alloy of copper and tin with other metals. The artists used a lost was process, a time consuming and complicated process, to fashion these hollow figures. This process has been in use since the 4th century B.C.

Calendar

A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of October, Solar Year 2018

Working on the Railroad

October 30, 1861 was the birthdate of French sculptor and painter Antoine Bourdelle.

Emile-Antoine Bourdelle was born in Montauban, France, the birthplace of Ingres, on October 30, 1861. His early interest in sculpture was inspired by his carpenter-cabinetmaker father. In fact, many of Bourdelle’s earliest sculptural projects were in wood. A bust of the painter Ingres, completed when Bourdelle was just 15, won him a scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in the nearby city of Toulouse. While in Toulouse he studied under the sculptor Maurette and executed numerous portrait busts before leaving for Paris in 1884.

The first years in Paris brought Bourdelle some success. He won an honorable mention at the exhibition of the Salon des Artistes Francais of 1885 and a medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1889. Bourdelle enrolled in the studio of the established master Alexandre Falguière for a brief period before working first with Jules Dalou and, later, as a pupil and assistant to Auguste Rodin between the years 1893 and 1908.

Bourdelle’s study of the great ages of monumental sculpture led to his lifelong concern for the public function of sculpture and its relationship to an outdoor setting. In 1893 he began his studies for the “Monument to the Defenders of Montauban”, which commemorated the noble resistance of the people of Montauban in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Considered his first masterpiece, the monument took eight years to finish.

Elevated on a high pedestal in a public square, the figures possess a  severity and tautness combined with a powerful expressiveness that conveys the heroic struggle of a united people. Bourdelle’s first masterpiece was part of a general trend in the late 19th century that favored public monuments memorializing those who lost their lives for France and the newly established Third Republic.

The traditional bonds that linked sculpture with architecture also interested Bourdelle. In 1913 Bourdelle received another major commission to decorate the Champs Elysées theater with sculptural frieze panels depicting various aspects of the dramatic arts—Tragedy, Comedy, Dance, Music, and the Muses.

All the figures were couched in the style of Archaic Greek sculpture, but the static element of Greek sculpture was enlivened by Bourdelle’s fascination with the representation of movement and energy through the expressive use of line and straining bodies. In his panels entitled “The Muses”, Bourdelle’s striding figures seem to foreshadow some of the figures seen in the paintings from Picasso’s classical phase of the 1920s.

Walter Mason

Natural Photography by Walter Mason

German artist Walter Mason offers an interesting perspective on the natural world surrounding him. He examines relationships between natural elements, re-arranging and pulling them apart to put them back in new positions. The results are profound time-based-art sculptures that highlight the fragility and beauty of the environment. His careful geometric positioning of objects in space create surreal scenes that highlight the simultaneous complexity & simplicity that can often be found in nature.

Irina Nakhova

Irina Nakhova, “Pilot”, 2015, Installation at the 2015 Venice Biennale

“Pilot” is one part of a three-part installation “The Green Pavilion” presented by Russian artist Irina Nakhova at the Venice Biennale in 2015. It is a giant head of a helmeted pilot whose features subtly changed activated by sensors in the room to the movements of the viewers.

“When you walk into the first room, all the sizes are different, and who greets you there is the pilot. The pilot is your navigator through time. So when you are here, there is dark. The skies are closed, but you are in the cockpit of the flight. When you come closer to the pilot, his eyes open, he looks at you and he also looks at the sky, and you can see that the sky are opening [via a skylight]. Then you really see what’s going on, but it’s also like in a dream because there is no verbal communication.” -Irina Nakhova

An installation artist and academically trained painter, Nakhova combines painting, sculpture, and new media into interactive installations and environments that engage viewers as co-creators of conceptual mindscapes. A part of a new generation of Russian non-comformist artists now known as the Moscow Conceptual School, Nakhova received international recognition as a young artist for her first ‘total installation’ entitled “Rooms (1983-1987)”. She was chosen as the first female artist to represent Russia at its pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Thutmose III

Statue of Thutmose III (Birthname: Menkheperre), Karnak Cachette, Luxor Museum, Egypt

This statue of Thutmose III, carved from greywacke, a dark coarse-grained sandstone, was found in the Karnak cachette in 1904. His reign was from 1479 to 1425 BC in which he extended the reach of the Egyptian empire during his foreign military campaigns.

Reblogged with many thanks to http://bandit1a.tumblr.com

Source: grandegyptianmuseum

Trevor Leaf

Trevor Leat, “Calgary Stag”, Willow Wicker Sculpture

Trevor Leat  is one of the foremost creators of willow sculptures in the UK. Using traditional techniques combining beauty with functionality, Trevor Leat has been weaving willow to great effect for over 30 years. Although he creates baskets, garden furniture and even willow coffins, it is for his willow sculpture he is best known.

His work ranges from lifesize animals and figures, through to giant willow sculptures spectacularly burned at festivals and events such as The Wickerman Festival, The Edinburgh Hogmanay Celebrations and The Burns Light Festival in Dumfries. Based in coastal Galloway, Southern Scotland, Leat’s work is exhibited widely in galleries, and seen by tens of thousands at festivals and events around the UK and beyond.

Volodymyr Tsisaryk

Volodymyr Tsisaryk, “Jason and the Golden Fleece”, 2016, Bronze, 58 x 24 x 16 centimeters, Boccara Art Gallery, New York

Volodymyr Tsisaryk is a sculptor from Lviv, Ukraine,  who received his Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts at the Lviv State College of Decorative Art in 1999 and his Masters in Fine Art from the Lviv Academy of Arts in 2001.