Quotes about sculpture
page 2

“Sculpture is the essence of things, the essence of nature, that which is perpetually human.”

Wilhelm Lehmbruck (1881–1919) German sculptor

As quoted in Expressionism (2004) by Norbert Wolf and Uta Grosenick, p. 64

“There was a third element in reality that concerned me: movement.
Despite all my efforts, it was impossible for me then to endure a sculpture that gave an illusion of movement, a leg advancing, a raised arm, a head looking sideways. I could only create such movement if it was real and actual. I also wanted to give the sensation of motion that could be induced.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

Alberto Giacometti in: Peter Selz, Alberto Giacometti. Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago [and others], distributed by Doubleday, 1965. p. 20

Reality, Effort

“I think that photography has a lot to do with sculpture – because it is three-dimensional and because it depicts reality. For example, I have always been able to relate to photography more than to painting. When I was photographing the hi-fi adverts ['Hi-Fi-Serie' (1979)] I thought to myself, everyone has one of these towers at home. It's the latest thing, the most modern equipment available. So a sculpture must be at least as modern and must stand up to it. Then I hung the pictures on the wall and put an ellipsoid on the floor and thought, the ellipsoid must be at least as good as this advert. At least as good. That's how good a modern sculpture has to be. Do you see what I mean? That was the dialogue…”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Home, Thinking, Reality, Painting

“Yes, Wordsworth often personified objects in nature and gave them the human aspect, and personally I have done rather the reverse process in sculpture. I’ve often found that by taking formal ideas from landscape, and putting them into my sculpture I have, as it were, related a human figure to a mountain, and so got the same effect as a metaphor in painting.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote in 'The Listener', 13 November 1941, pp. 657-9; as cited in Henry Moore writings and Conversations, ed. Alan Wilkinson, University of California Press, California 2002, pp. 126-27
1940 - 1955

Mountain, Idea, Nature, Painting

“Science Fiction Gods; Do they take much of an interest in us? I doubt it. How much entertainment does an ant's nest provide you with?
'Adepticus Sir, that bunch of Ornithoids on Artoc 4 that you asked me to observe, well they've just trashed their planet.'
'Oh that is a pity Initiatus Jones. What was it this time, ecological screw up or nuclear winter?'
'Worse than that sir, i looks lke they were mucking around with vacuum energy without having first invented the Mobius sphere.'
'Ah yes, the old classic mistake, we loose a few like that.'
'Could we not have tipped them off about it Sir?'
'I'm afraid not Jones, stupidity must remain its own reward, it's regrettable but there you are. Did you salvage anything?'
'They composed some fairly good poetry a couple of centuries ago, and some rather fine cloud sculptures fairly recently, I've logged some records in the archives.'
'Splendid Jones, I'll peruse them this evening. What about those Apes on Sol 3, how are they getting on?'
'Quit a bit of warfare as usual Sir, mostly based on chemical explosives these days, but with the occasional use of plutonium. Many of them have developed a belief in a big bang theory, and they reckon that they have the maths to prove it.'
'Really? Smith in anthropology will probably find that hilarious, I'm sure she would appreciate the data. It was one of her old Stomping grounds you know?'
'No I didnt know that Sir'
'It was a long time ago Jones, and a bit of a fiasco actually, she gave them a piece of her mind about some of their barbaric behavior which then abruptly became worse. Ever since then they have been obsessed with the number plate on her craft, it read 'JHVH'. The department gave her a desk job after that.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: The Apophenion (2008), p. 107-108

God, Stupidity, Behavior, Science

“Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Joseph Kosuth in: Arthur R. Rose, “Four Interviews,” Arts Magazine (February, 1969).

Art, Question, Nature, Painting

“Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials. But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper. Male conspiracy cannot explain all female failures. I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant. Genius is not checked by social obstacles: it will overcome. Men's egotism, so disgusting in the talentless, is the source of their greatness as a sex. […] Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 653

Women, Men, Sex, Mathematics

“Photography is not an art. Neither is painting, nor sculpture, literature or music. They are only different media for the individual to express his aesthetic feelings... You do not have to be a painter or a sculptor to be an artist. You may be a shoemaker. You may be creative as such. And, if so, you are a greater artist than the majority of the painters whose work is shown in the art galleries of today.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

'Is Photography a Failure?', Alfred Stieglitz, 'Sun: 5.', March 14, 1922; as quoted on Wikipedia

Art, Music, Feeling, Literature

“Until the end of the fascist era and of the war [World War 2. ], I continued to hark back to the sober realism [in his human figure sculptures, then] of the artists of the Etruscan funerary figures, or the sculptors of some Roman portraits, especially the earlier ones. My own way of reacting against the imperialist pathos of official Fascist art continued, until 1944, to consist in identifying my art very consciously with my private life, so that I never allowed myself any form of expression that might seem too blatantly public.”

Marino Marini (1901–1980) Italian sculptor

Source: Interview with Edouard Roditi' (1958), p. 87

Life, War, World, Art

“I liked drawing and I had a passion for sculpture, after all goldsmithing is nothing but a miniature sculpture.”

James Rivière (1949) Italian Jewellery and sculptor

Dalla bottega al Vaticano con i gioielli per il Papa http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/bottega-vaticano-i-gioielli-papa.html, ilgiornale.it, Marta Bravi, Thursday 12 February 2009.

Passion, Drawing

“Music combines the temporal aspects of film and dance with the spatial aspects of painting and sculpture, where pitch space (or frequency space) takes the place of three-dimensional physical space… frequency maps in the auditory cortex… function much the way that spatial maps do in the visual cortex.”

Daniel Levitin book The World in Six Songs

The World in Six Songs (2008)

Music, Way, Dance, Painting

“The future painter must feel what is useful for his development – drawing or even sculpture everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself with her, by entering into the things – which is what I call Nature – that arouse his feelings. I believe study by means of drawing is most essential. If drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses, you must draw first, to cultivate the spirit and to be able to lead color into spiritual paths.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 238-239
1940s

Color, Feeling, Nature, Sense

“Whenever I am embraced by land and seascape I draw ideas for new sculptures; new forms to touch and walk around, new people to embrace, with an exactitude of form that those without sight can hold and realize.... It is essentially practical and passionate.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Studio International 171 – June 1966, p. 280
1961 - 1975

People, Idea, Passion, Drawing

“Night in so sweet an attitude beheld Asleep, was by an angel sculptured In this stone; and sleeping, is alive; Waken her, doubter; she will speak to thee”

Giovan Battista Strozzi

Epigram for Michelangelo's ""la Notte""

Angels, Sleep, Night

“Baine, what do you think of this?” Tossie said, indicating the bishop’s bird stump. “Don’t you agree it’s the most beautiful piece of art you’ve ever seen?”
Baine straightened and looked at it, blinking water out of his eyes.
There was a considerable pause while Baine wrung out his sleeve. “No.”
“No?” Tossie said, making it into a screamlet.
“No.”…
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean the sculpture is a hideous atrocity, vulgarly conceived, badly designed, and shoddily executed,” he said, folding the shawl carefully and bending to lay it back in the bundle.
“How dare you say that,” Tossie said, her cheeks very pink.
Baine straightened. “I beg you pardon, miss. I thought you were asking my opinion.”
“I was, but I expected you to tell me you thought it was beautiful.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

He bowed slightly. “As you wish, miss.” He looked at it, his face impassive. “It is very beautiful.”
Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 19 (p. 333; the ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Beauty, Art, Bird, Thinking

“The tools of scholarly criticism-stylistics, iconographical analysis, historical context, and formal analysis in the last 50 years remain as trusted now as ever. Yet they explain with diminishing clarity what has happened after 1800, and almost nothing of what has happened in sculpture in the last 60 years.”

Jack Burnham (1931) American art historian

Preface.
Beyond Modern Sculpture, 1968

“The sculptural qualities of the image dim down the purely personal identity.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 369

Personality

“Take more room, examine my 'Gate' from a little farther off, and you will see once more the effect of the whole — the effect of unity which charms you when it is deprived of its ornamentation. You must understand that my sculpture is so calculated as to melt into the principal masses. For that matter, it completes them by modeling them into the light. The essential designs are there: it is possible that in the course of the final work I may find it necessary to diminish such or such a projection, to fill out such or such a pool of shadow; nevertheless, leave this difficulty to my fifty years of artisanship and experience, and you may be sure that quite by myself I shall find the best way of finishing my work.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 281; About the sculpture The Gates of Hell

Way, Understanding, Light

“Nothing is more perishable than worn-out apparel, yet, thanks to documentary evidence, to the custom of burying people of high rank in their robes, and to the practice of wrapping up relics of saints in pieces of precious stuffs, we are enabled to form a veiy good idea of what these stuffs were like and where they came from. In the first instance they appear to have come from Byzantium, and from the East generally; but the manufacture afterwards extended to Sicily, and received great impetus at the Norman conquest of that island; Roger I. even transplanting Greek workmen from the towns sacked by his army, and settling them in Sicily. Of course many of the workers would be Mohammedans, and the old patterns, perhaps with the addition of sundry animals, would still continue in use; hence the frequency of Arabic inscriptions in the borders, the Cufic character being one of the most ornamental ever used. In the Hotel de Clu^ny at Paris are preserved the remains of the vestments of a bishop of Bayonne, found when his sepulchre was opened in 1853, the date of the entombment being the twelfth century. Some of these remains are cloth of gold, but the most remarkable is a very deep border ornamented with blue Cufic letters on a gold ground; the letters are fimbriated with white, and from them issue delicate red scrolls, which end in Arabic sort of flowers: this tissue probably is pure Eastern work. On the contrary, the coronation robes of the German emperors, although of an Eastern pattern, bear inscriptions which tell us very clearly where they were manufactured: thus the Cufic characters on the cope inform us that it was made in the city of Palermo in the year 1133, while the tunic has the date of 1181, but then the inscription is in the Latin language. The practice of putting Cufic inscriptions on precious stuffs was not confined to the Eastern and Sicilian manufactures; in process of time other Italian cities took up the art, and, either because it was the fashion, or because they wished to pass off" their own work as Sicilian or Eastern manufacture, imitations of Arabic characters are continually met with, both on the few examples that have come down to us of the stuffs themselves, or on painted statues or sculptured effigies. These are the inscriptions which used to be the despair of antiquaries, who vainly searched out their meaning until it was discovered that they had no meaning at all, and that they were mere ornaments. Sometimes the inscriptions appear to be imitations of the Greek, and sometimes even of the Hebrew. The celebrated ciborium of Limoges work in the Louvre, known as the work of Magister G. Alpais, bears an ornament around its rim which a French antiquary has discovered to be nothing more than the upper part of a Cufic word repeated and made into a decoration.”

William Burges (1827–1881) English architect

Quote was introduced with the phrase: In the lecture on the weaver's art, we are reminded of the superiority of Indian muslins and Chinese and Persian carpets, and the gorgeous costumes of the middle ages are contrasted with our own dark ungraceful garments. The Cufic inscriptions that have so perplexed antiquaries, were introduced with the rich Eastern stuffs so much sought after by the wealthy class, and though, as Mr. Burges observes Source: Art applied to industry: a series of lectures, 1865, p. 85; Cited in: " Belles Lettres http://books.google.com/books?id=0EegAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA143" in: The Westminster Review, Vol. 84-85. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1865. p. 143

People, Art, Search, Flowers

“There are many ways to practice and make art. There are also various ways to express, such as comedy, sculpture, music, painting etc. Dimensions can be immense even in such small spaces as the head of a pin.”

Eugenio Cruz Vargas (1923–2014) Chilean poet and painter

Quote Source: Famous phrase of Eugenio Cruz Vargas http://www.angelred.com/urls/arte.htm| Source: Sky http://viaf.org/viaf/13641853/| Source: From Library of Congress Name Authority File of U.S.A. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n81126660.html|

Art, Music, Way, Painting

“All works of nature created by God in heaven and on earth are works of sculpture.”

Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571) Florentine sculptor and goldsmith

Tutte le opera, che si veggono fatte dallo Iddio della Natura in cielo ed in terra, sono tutte di Scultura.
Treatise on Sculpture (1564), opening words, cited from G. P. Carpani (ed.) Vita di Benvenuto Cellini (Milano: Nicolo Bettoni, 1821) vol. 3, p. 199; translation from Jean Paul Richter (ed.) The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci (London: Phaidon, 1970) vol. 1, p. 90.

God, Nature

“It is true that Donatello, who afterwards did the ornamentation of the other organ opposite this one, displayed much more judgment and skill than Luca, as will be said in the proper place, because he did almost the whole of the work in the rough as it were, not delicately finishing it, so that it should appear much better at a distance than Luca's; as it does, for with all his care and skill the eye cannot appreciate it well because of the very polish and finish, which are lost in the distance, as it can the almost purely rough hewn work of Donato. To this matter artists should devote much attention, because experience shows that all things seen at a distance, whether they be paintings or sculptures or any other like thing, are bolder and more vigorous in appearance if skilfully hewn in the rough than if they are carefully finished. Besides the effect obtained by distance, it often happens that these rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes sap the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Volume 2. p. 28
The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1900

Idea, Effort, Appearance, Painting

“Yes. There was a period when I tried to avoid looking at Greek – and Renaissance – sculpture of any kind; when I thought that the Greek and Renaissance were the enemy and that one had to throw all that over and start again from the beginning of primitive art. It's only in the last ten or fifteen years that I've begun to know how wonderful the elgin Marbles are.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote from 'Henry Moore', an interview by Donald, in 'Horizon', New York, Nov. 1960
1955 - 1970

Art

“If now you shall think that "How many are the countries which King Darius held?" look at the sculptures [of those] who bear the throne, then shall you know, then shall it become known to you: the spear of a Persian man has gone forth far; then shall it become known to you: a Persian man has delivered battle far indeed from Persia.”

Darius I of Persia (-550–-486 BC) 3rd king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (550–486 BC)

DNa inscription http://www.livius.org/aa-ac/achaemenians/DNa.html

Thinking, Country

“The philosophy which underlines my work is based on change, continuity and the search for measures in natural order. The value of a sculpture relies on its own existence through time, independent of its creator and should usually speak for itself. It should beckon you to walk into its space, to travel its surface and edge, to sense, to touch, to peer into and ponder. As you leave it should invite you to return another time so that it can communicate further.”

Fred Conlon (1943–2005) Irish sculptor

citation needed
Attributed

Travel, Search, Communication, Nature

“I believe that there are varying points of contact. You have to be able to see the whole thing first. All great paintings are sculptures – there's so much of the factualness about it that a great painting forces you into a visual, physical movement of yourself. That's what determines the way you experience a painting kinetically. You move closer, you sight down it, you till your head, you step back, you feel as though you are in it. That being in it is just as important as looking from a distance.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 10
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Way, Feeling, Painting

“I feel an inner relationship which leads from the antique tot the Gothic, especially from the early ancient art, and from the Gothic to my own feeling for form. A great simplicity of form is something marvelous. As far back as I can remember, I have tried to put the simplicity of nature into the heads that I was painting or drawing. Now I have a real sense of being able to learn from the heads of ancient sculpture..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, 1899; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 198
1899

Art, Feeling, Nature, Sense

“[carving a sculpture in wood] is such a sensual pleasure when blow by blow the figure grows more and more from the trunk.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

in a letter to de:Gustav Schiefler from Dresden, 27 June, 1911; as quoted in German Expressionist Sculpture, ed. Stephanie Barron, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983, p. 114
1905 - 1915

Pleasure

“You can see the roughness of structure and the spots like wounds from battles on the canvas. The tops of skyscrapers with windows like eyes constantly remind you that there are laws surrounding the wastelands, and so you hide in the deep grass when you make love to a girl in dirty clothes, and experience how your nerves of seeing become stronger and stronger and every little sound more and more intense. That's what Pasolini's poetry is partly about; he was a street guy and therefore I avoided beautiful new wood or metal for his sculpture... The wasteland was Pasolini's other side; the boys, the knives, the nights, the tensions.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel is referring to the Italian movie-maker Pasolini
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Love, Making love, Law, Beauty

“The essays in simulation of [Paul] Eluard and [Andre] Breton, Breton's recent poem-objects, the latest images of Rene Magritte, the "method" of the latest sculpture of Picasso and the theoretic and pictorial activity of Salvador Dali prove this need of concrete materialisation in current reality, of giving objective value on the real plane to the delirious unknown world of our irrational experiences. Against the remembrance of dreams and the virtual and impossible images of purely receptive states, "that can only be recounted", there are the physical facts of "objective" irrationality, with which one can already actually wound oneself.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', pp. 14-15

World, Dreams, Reality

“In 1964 I was at school, planning to study economics and sociology, when curiosity took me to the Tate Gallery to see an international survey exhibition of contemporary art. It brought together the painting and sculpture of the previous decade, beginning with the late works of the modern masters, Matisse and Picasso, and concluding with the twenty-seven year olds Allen Jones and David Hockney. I was bowled over. Suddenly, art was not just Turner and Constable, or Leonardo and Michelangelo, but objects of considerable size and brilliant colour, dealing with the sensations, subjects and issues of the Sixties.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

School, Art, Study, Painting

“Someone finally understood all the “hell” that I’d been through since a child when I’d first tried to understand language. And yet in other forms of communications, like painting, sculpture, music, math, problem-solving, and chess, I’d been very good. In fact, in high school, once I learned how to play chess, I’d play lightning-fast, intuitively seeing all these different possibilities at the same time, and I’d won well over a hundred chess games without losing a single game. And that included beating some of our faculty members who thought that they were very good at chess.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

School, Music, Game, Communication

“There is an intimate relationship between my pictorial [2-dimensional] and my sculptural work. I would never begin on a sculpture without first gaining an idea of the colour... My mind is captivated by this task until I start to put down the colour on paper and imagine that this colour will become a drawing. And then, suddenly, the drawing begins to acquire shape, the shape, and this shape becomes the real shape.”

Marino Marini (1901–1980) Italian sculptor

as quoted in the exhibition text of 'Marino Marini, Painter, Draughtsman, Sculptor', Museum de Fundatie, September 2013 to 16 March 2014

Imagination, Idea, Drawing

“The Oriental heritage, due to the long sojourn of the Moors in Spain, had a profound influence on the taste of the people. From these Oriental invaders the Spaniards derived the great surfaces of blank wall with occasional spots of luxuriant ornament that characterize nearly all their work. From them also comes the love of bright color shown in the use of polychrome tiles and rich fabrics and in the painting and gilding of sculpture and ornamental motives. While the large constructive forms, particularly vaults and domes, are frankly and simply expressed, the ornament as in the work of the Orient, is rather an incrustation, a mere surface decoration, than a pretense at logical construction.”

Clarence Stein (1882–1975) American architect

A Triumph of Spanish Colonial Style (1916)

Love, People, Color, Motivation

“I like the notion of working the program, like an artist works a lump of clay. An artist wants to make a sculpture, but before she makes the sculpture, she just massages the clay. She starts towards making the sculpture, and sees what the clay wants to do. And the more she handles the clay, the more the clay tends to do what she wants. It becomes compliant to her will.
A development team works on a piece of code over several months. Initially, they make a piece of code, and it's a little stiff. It's small, but it's still stiff. Then they move the code, and it gets a little easier to move.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

“To accuse me of making sensations is the easiest way of attacking me, and in reality leaves the question of sculpture untouched.”

Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) American-born British sculptor

Jacob Epstein, An Autobiography (London, 1955), p. 29

Way, Question, Reality

“In the 1960s the works of Takis and Tinguely were experiments with different forces, both magnetic and kinetic. My work differed from theirs, for although my kinetic art works used machines, the works themselves moved in random organic ways and avoided the monotonous repetitive movements of most machines. My land art projects and all the rest of my cosmic propulsions were born out of the organic and my relation with the dynamics of nature. When I first exhibited with Liliane Lijn at the Indica Gallery in London in 1967 I called my artworks bio-kinetic sculptures. Some of my artworks in that show are featured in the film I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname by the English director Michael Winner.”

David Medalla (1942) Filipino artist

Source: Adam Nankervis, " A Stitch in time http://moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=707," in: Mousse Magazine.it, Issue 29, 2015

Art, Way, Nature, Forgetting

“Actually Rogers Fry's Vision and Design [1920] was the most lucky discovery for me. I came on it by chance while looking for another book in the Leeds Reference Library. Fry in his essay on 'Negro Sculpture' stressed the 'three-dimensional realization' that characterized African art and its 'truth to material'. More, Fry opened the way to other books and to the realization of the British museum. That was really the beginning.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Moore in 'Partisan Review', New York, March-April 1947
1940 - 1955

Truth, Books, Art, Way

“To show that this end [of art by its dissolution into real life] is only a beginning, it is essential that.... the series of galleries [of the future museum of modern art] be followed by a room in which painting and sculpture will be realized by the interior itself.... demonstrating that what is lost for art is gained for life. This room could therefore be designed for use as a lecture room, a restaurant.... as a bar with an American jazz band.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Mondrian's reaction on a questionnaire (c. 1931?)
Quote of Mondrian, as cited in Mondrian, -The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 166
1930's

Life, Art, Future, Painting

“Everything sculpture has, my work doesn’t.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd (1967). quoted in: Joseph Kosuth, (1969), " Art after Philosophy http://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html" 1960s

“The shape and direction of video art's accelerated growth, since virtual nonexistence in the mid-'60s up to the present, has been influenced primarily by the priorities of major funders-the New York State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. It has matured without the bevy of individual collectors who support more established forms such as painting and sculpture. Within video's media arts centers and funding organizations, there are many advocates, administrators, and curators who provide an infrastructure which enables artists to produce and distribute work, often doing so with little publicity or recognition. In this realm, Howard Wise stands out as an individual benefactor who preceded and has supplemented private foundations and public monies. He has been a central figure in the visibility, production, and acceptance of video art. For almost 20 years, he has been one of the few patrons of video art.”

Marita Sturken (1957) American academic

Marita Sturken. " TV as a Creative Medium: Howard Wise and Video Art http://www.vasulka.org/archive/4-30c/AfterImageMay84(1004).pdf," in: Afterimage, May 1984

Art, Support, Painting

“A little after I started to do sculpture, I painted some of them, and then I destroyed them all. I've begun again several times. In 1951, I painted a whole series of sculptures. But in painting them, you see what the form lacks. And it's useless to paint over something that you don't believe in. I tried again a month ago. In painting them, the deficiencies of form came through.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

Alberto Giacometti in: Paul Auster (trans.) " My life is reduced to nothing: David Sylvester talks to Alberto Giacometti about his struggle with proportion and the difficulties of making an eye https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/jun/21/art.artsfeatures1," theguardian.com, 21 June 2003.

Time, Painting

“My father Giannino Castiglioni was a sculptor. His was a realistic sculpture, always linked to the human image, not fantastic and unreal, had an attitude of continuous analysis of the characteristics of people”

Achille Castiglioni (1918–2002) Italian designers and architect

Giannino Castiglioni. Milano, 1884 - Lierna (Lago di Como), 1971. Scultore. in: II personaggi pubblici., p. 42 ( online http://www.alessandraubertazzi.eu/wp-content/pdf/monumentale/personaggipubblici.pdf)

People

“A sculpture, a map, a photograph; all the forms of my work are equal and complementary. The knowledge of my actions, in whatever form, is the art. My art is the essence of my experience, not a representation of it.”

Richard Long (1945) artist

Richard Long: Books, Prints, Printed Matter. Exhib cat New York Public Library, New York 1994
1990s

Art, Knowledge

“But if politics is an art, it is not like sculpture or painting, where one side acts and the other is passive material. It is more like drama without a script, or dance without choreography - in other words, improvisation. Either player may surprise us again with a new move.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) (1944) author, academic, and political activist

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 3, Stalemate At Lubicon Lake, p. 54.

Art, Dance, Painting

“The theatre was full — crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos — hollow, half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing — half lava, half glow.I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness and grimness — something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.For awhile — a long while — I thought it was only a woman, though an unique woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the tragedy, kept up her feeble strength — for she was but a frail creature; and as the action rose and the stir deepened, how wildly they shook her with their passions of the pit! They wrote HELL on her straight, haughty brow. They tuned her voice to the note of torment. They writhed her regal face to a demoniac mask. Hate and Murder and Madness incarnate she stood.It was a marvellous sight: a mighty revelation.It was a spectacle low, horrible, immoral.Swordsmen thrust through, and dying in their blood on the arena sand; bulls goring horses disembowelled, made a meeker vision for the public — a milder condiment for a people's palate — than Vashti torn by seven devils: devils which cried sore and rent the tenement they haunted, but still refused to be exorcised.Suffering had struck that stage empress; and she stood before her audience neither yielding to, nor enduring, nor in finite measure, resenting it: she stood locked in struggle, rigid in resistance. She stood, not dressed, but draped in pale antique folds, long and regular like sculpture. A background and entourage and flooring of deepest crimson threw her out, white like alabaster — like silver: rather, be it said, like Death.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Ch. XXIII: Vashi

Death, Hate, People, Feeling

“I tell you, wind is the most difficult thing to put into an object.... here it's a bit more in this next sculpture”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

on Michael Jackson
2001 - 2010, Out to Lunch with Isa Genzken' (2009)

“At Chartres Christ is identified with his Mother, the spirit of love and grace, and his Church is the Church Triumphant.

Not only is Fear absent; there is not even a suggestion of pain; there is not a martyr with the symbol of his martyrdom; and what is still more striking, in the sculptured life of Christ, from the Nativity to the Ascension, which adorns the capitals of the columns, the single scene that has been omitted is the Crucifixion. There, as everywhere in this Portal, the artists seem actually to have gone out of their way to avoid a suggestion of suffering.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, Life, Pain, Fear

“So the temples were attacked “all along the way” as the armies of Islam advanced; they were “robbed of their sculptural wealth”, “pulled down”, “laid waste”, “burnt with naptha”, “trodden under horse’s hoofs”, and “destroyed from their very foundations”, till “not a trace of them remained”. Mahmûd of Ghazni robbed and burnt down 1,000 temples at Mathura, and 10,000 in and around Kanauj. One of his successors, Ibrãhîm, demolished 1,000 temples each in Hindustan (Ganga-Yamuna Doab) and Malwa. Muhammad Ghûrî destroyed another 1,000 at Varanasi. Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak employed elephants for pulling down 1,000 temples in Delhi. “Alî I ‘Ãdil Shãh of Bijapur destroyed 200 to 300 temples in Karnataka. A sufi, Qãyim Shãh, destroyed 12 temples at Tiruchirapalli. Such exact or approximate counts, however, are available only in a few cases. Most of the time we are informed that “many strong temples which would have remained unshaken even by the trumpets blown on the Day of Judgment, were levelled with the ground when swept by the wind of Islãm.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Way, Strong, Time, Horse

“I will try to explain what I mean by metamorphosis. For me no object can be tied down to any sort of reality. A stone may be part of a wall, a piece of sculpture, a lethal weapon, a pebble on a beach or anything else you like.... when you ask me whether a particular in one of my paintings depicts a woman's head, a fish, a vase, a bird, or all four at once, I can't give you a categorical answer, for this 'metamorphosic' confusion is fundamental to the poetry.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Bird, Reality, Fish, Parting

“The Negroes.... their unique claim for admiration is their power to produce form completely in the round... Negro sculpture is completely in the round, fully-conceived air-surrounded form.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Henri Moore in 'Unpublished notes', c. 1925-1926, HMF archive; as cited in Henry Moore writings and Conversations, ed. Alan Wilkinson, University of California Press, California 2002, p. 96
1925 - 1940

“I cannot write anything about landscape without writing about the human figure and the human spirit inhabiting the landscape, for me, the whole art sculpture is a fusion of these two element – the balance of sensation and the evocation of man in his universe. Every work in sculpture is either a figure I see, or a sensation I have, whether in Yorkshire, Cornwall or Greece, or the Mediterranean.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

'Studio International 171' – June 1966; as quoted in Voicing our visions, - Writings by women artists, ed. by Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York 1991, p. 280
1961 - 1975

Art, Universe

“Over the years the Flying Scotsman has travelled the world and been owned by pretty well everyone except my wife, and possibly Kate Moss. As I write he's for sale again, for a not inconsiderable 2.5 million Pounds. That may seem a lot for something that no longer has a purpose, even if he is Britain's engineering heritage. But he is not simply a machine. Like an Aston Martin DB7 or an F-16 fighter, he works as an art form too, a piece of sculpture. So what if you can't go anywhere in him anymore. Put him in your garden and spend your days just looking at him.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

World, Art, Travel, Flying

“Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, may truly be called the efflorescence of civilised life.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Education: What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?
Essays on Education (1861)

Life, Music, Painting

“Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion; a perfect relationship between the mind and the colour, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels. It must be so essentially sculpture that it can exist in no other way, something completely the right size but which has growth, something still and yet having movement, so very quiet and yet with a real vitality.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Extract from Hepworth's statement in Unit One, as cited in The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture, ed. Herbert Read, London, 1934, p. 19
1932 - 1946

Way, Feeling, Light, Perfection

“One starts by seeing the person who poses, but little by little all the possible sculptures of him intervene… The more real a real vision of him disappears, the stranger his head becomes.”

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) Swiss sculptor and painter (1901-1966)

As cited in: Kay Larson, " The thin man https://books.google.nl/books?id=ZckBAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70," New York Magazine, 7 October 1985, p. 70 Giacometti, 1985

Personality

“Art will not only continue but will realise itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

quote, 1937; last lines of Mondrian's publication in 'Circle'; as cited in Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska; Thames and Hudson, London 1990, p. 117
1930's

Art, Reality, Painting

“Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet

Beauty, Soul, Knowledge, Learning

“For my taste, sculpture should have as little movement as possible. It should not fall, and gesture, and grimace, and if one depicts movement, grimaces come too easily. Rodin himself remains quiet; he puts movement into his rendering of muscles, but the whole remains quiet and calm.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), p. 407

“The congregational mosque at Delhi named, purposefully, as the Masjid Quwwatul Islam (Might of Islam), was commenced by Aibak in 592/1195 within two years of its conquest. It was built with materials and gold obtained by destroying 27 Hindu and Jain temples in Delhi and its neighbourhood. A Persian inscription in the mosque testifies to this. The mosque at Ajmer erected by Qutbuddin Aibak soon after its occupation and known as the Arhai din ka Jhonpra, was also built from materials obtained from demolished temples. The Qutb Minar, planned and commenced by Aibak sometime in or before 1199 and completed by Iltutmish, was also constructed with similar materials, “the sculptured figures on the stones being either defaced or concealed by turning them upside down.””

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

“In this improvisation,” rightly observes Habibullah, “was symbolised the whole Mamluk history”.
Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 8 (quoting A.B.M. Habibullah, The Foundation of Muslim Rule in India)

History

“Before, the wire studies were subjective, portraits, caricatures, stylized representations of beasts and humans. But these recent things have been viewed from a more objective angle and although their present size is diminutive, I feel that there is no limitation to the scale to which they can be enlarged... One of the canons of the futuristic painters, as propounded by Modigliani, was that objects behind other objects should not be lost to view, but should be shown through the others by making the latter transparent. The wire sculpture accomplishes this in a most decided manner.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1920s, Statement on Wire Sculpture' (1929)

Feeling, Study

“I don't make boy sculptures. They become kind of personages, and sometimes they cry out to me that I should have been better or bigger, and mostly they tell me that I should have done that twelve years before -- or twenty years before”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1960s, The Fields of David Smith,' (1999)

Boy, Cry

“Even the last scintillating assembly of the leaders of the Reich could scarcely distract me from my cares. That was the gala celebration of Goering's birthday on January 12, 1944, which he held at Karinhall. We all came with expensive presents, such as Goering expected: cigars from Holland, gold bars from the Balkans, valuable paintings and sculptures. Goering had let me know that he would like to have a marble bust of Hitler, more than life size, by Breker. The overladen gift table had been set up in the big library. Goering displayed it to his guests and spread out on it the building plans his architect had prepared for his birthday. Goering's palace-like residence was to be more than doubled in size. At the magnificently set table in the luxurious dining room flunkies in white livery served a somewhat austere meal, in keeping with the conditions of the time. Funk, as he did every year, delivered the birthday speech at the banquet. He lauded Goering's abilities, qualities, and dignities and offered the toast to him as "one of the greatest Germans."”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Funk's extravagant words contrasted grotesquely with the actual situation. The whole thing was a ghostly celebration taking place against a background of collapse and ruin.
Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 322

Life, Birthday, Time, Painting

“All my early memories are of forms and shapes and textures. Moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the forms. Above all, there was the sensation of moving physically over the contours of foulnesses and concavities, through hollows and over peaks – feeling, touching, seeing, through mind and hand and eye. This sensation has never left me. I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial autobiography', 1970, p. 280

Cars, Feeling, Memory

“Iron Pillar: “…In our opinion this pillar was made in the ninth century before (the birth of) Lord Jesus… When Rai Pithora built a fort and an idol-house near this pillar, it stood in the courtyard of the idol-house. And when Qutbu’d-Din Aibak constructed a mosque after demolishing the idol-house, this pillar stood in the courtyard of the mosque…
”Idol-house of Rai Pithora: “There was an idol-house near the fort of Rai Pithora. It was very famous… It was built along with the fort in 1200 Bikarmi [Vikrama SaMvat] corresponding to AD 1143 and AH 538. The building of this temple was very unusual, and the work done on it by stone-cutters is such that nothing better can be conceived. The beautiful carvings on every stone in it defy description… The eastern and northern portions of this idol-house have survived intact. The fact that the Iron Pillar, which belongs to the Vaishnava faith, was kept inside it, as also the fact that sculptures of Kirshan avatar and Mahadev and Ganesh and Hanuman were carved on its walls, leads us to believe that this temple belonged to the Vaishnava faith. Although all sculptures were mutilated in the times of Muslims, even so a close scrutiny can identify as to which sculpture was what. In our opinion there was a red-stone building in this idol-house, and it was demolished. For, this sort of old stones with sculptures carved on them are still found.
”Quwwat al-Islam Masjid: “When Qutbu’d-Din, the commander-in-chief of Muizzu’d-Din Sam alias Shihabu’d-Din Ghuri, conquered Delhi in AH 587 corresponding to AD 1191 corresponding to 1248 Bikarmi, this idol-house (of Rai Pithora) was converted into a mosque. The idol was taken out of the temple. Some of the images sculptured on walls or doors or pillars were effaced completely, some were defaced. But the structure of the idol-house kept standing as before. Materials from twenty-seven temples, which were worth five crores and forty lakhs of Dilwals, were used in the mosque, and an inscription giving the date of conquest and his own name was installed on the eastern gate…“When Malwah and Ujjain were conquered by Sultan Shamsu’d-Din in AH 631 corresponding to AD 1233, then the idol-house of Mahakal was demolished and its idols as well as the statue of Raja Bikramajit were brought to Delhi, they were strewn in front of the door of the mosque…”“In books of history, this mosque has been described as Masjid-i-Adinah and Jama‘ Masjid Delhi, but Masjid Quwwat al-Islam is mentioned nowhere. It is not known as to when this name was adopted. Obviously, it seems that when this idol-house was captured, and the mosque constructed, it was named Quwwat al-Islam…””

Syed Ahmed Khan (1820–1898) Indian educator and politician

About antiquities of Delhi. Translated from the Urdu of Asaru’s-Sanadid, edited by Khaleeq Anjum, New Delhi, 1990. Vol. I, p. 305-16
Asaru’s-Sanadid

Books, Faith, Beauty, History

“I dream of a sculpture in which landscape, architecture and city are one. It might be a city like Marseille, a city steaming with heat which suddenly transmogrifies. I becomes an immense piece of sculpture, a gigantic figure, made up of white blocks and segmented by flat, horizontal terraces, arranged in a bare and motionless landscape.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

circa 1969
Quote of Wotruba in: 'Sculpture of Rotterdam', ed. Jan van Adrichem / Jelle Bouwhuis / Mariëtte Dulle, Center for the Art, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002, p. 198.

Dreams

“.. these reproductions were in Zwemmer's bookshop [in the 1920's]. I can see them now. They were black. There was one on Negro sculpture, one on Mexican sculpture, one on an Egyptian sculpture, and so on. And all these I knew. And in one of them was this small reproduction of the Chac Mool [famous Toltec-Maya sculpture]. It was the pose that struck me – this idea of a figure being on its back and turned upwards to the sky instead of lying on its side, which is a different sort of idea from the Renaissance, or Greek reclining figure, which is usually on its side. And this gave me all sorts of chances of making variations on it.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote from The Donald Caroll interviews, Talmy Franklin, London 1973, p. 377
1970 and later

Lying, Idea, Chance

“All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Elizabeth Day, "The Moore Legacy," http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/jul/27/1 The Observer (2008-07-27), Henry Moore is quoted here by Mary Moore, the artist's niece 1970 and later

Art, Thinking, Effort, Parting

“.. because his applying paint to it [the sculpture 'Painted Bronze, two painted ale cans', created by the American pré-Pop Art artist Jasper Johns ] was absolutely mechanical or, at least, as close to the printed thing as possible. It was not an act of painting; actually, the printing [or painting? ] was just like printing except it was made by hand by him. That doesn’t add a thing to it.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

it's just the idea of imitating the beer can that is important.
Quote from 'Some late thoughts of Marcel Duchamp', an interview with Jeanne Siegel, p. 21; as quoted in 'The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties' Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 194
posthumous

Art, Idea, Beer, Painting

“The arts which achieve their effect through purity have never been arts that were good for everything. Greek sculpture (among others) with its decadence, teaches us this.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 422 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917

Art

“It is an intense blue, born after a certain period and has in turn a key to reading. When we spread it on the sculpture, the story is burned, because the color is so vivid that what is written in the sculpture goes into the background. So, there is a process of liberation and even if the work and the blue seem very different, they have a common denominator between them, the motive of poetics. We often allow ourselves to be conditioned by the scenic apparatus.”

Umberto Pettinicchio (1943) Italian painter

"Le colline della Brianza e i suoi stupendi campanili sono la mia ispirazione" Umberto Pettinicchio https://www.ilgiorno.it/lecco/cronaca/locale/2010/01/31/287262-colline_della_brianza_suoi_stupendi_campanili_sono_ispirazione.shtml, Castenuovo, Lecco, January 31, 2010; Elvira Carella, ilgiorno.it.

Color, Motivation, Reading

“Actually my ideal piece of sculpture is a road.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology', 1995, p. 108

“Sculpture is based on the abstract of the planes and volumes that determine the forms, not their figurative value.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

1912, Boccioni's 'Sculptural Manifesto', 1912,

“I don't want to make plop art — sculpture that just gets plopped down in places. I wouldn't want to litter every corner of the world with my sculpture.”

Rachel Whiteread (1963) British sculptor

As quoted in "Boxing clever" by Lynn Barber inThe Guardian (16 October 2005) http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1593050,00.html

World, Art

“Fat' traverses the path from a chaotically dispersed, undirected energy form to a form. Then it appears in the famous fat corner.... now [a wedge of fat in the angle between seat and back of the wooden old Chair, Beuys used in the fat-sculpture, like 'Stuhl mit Fett' (Fet Chair), 1964] intersects the human body in the region that houses certain emotional forces”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Beuys laughed, and so did everyone else of the public
In a public debate at the Kunstring (Artcircle) Folkwang in Essen, 1972; (Stachelhaus 1991, p. 71); as quoted in Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d: A Language of Healing, Victoria Walters, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 29
1970's

Appearance, Housing

“What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the human soul.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 215 (6 November 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Education, Soul, Graduation, Teachers' Day

“The point is that any piece of Impressionism, whether it be prose, verse or painting, or sculpture, is the record of the impression.”

F. S. Flint (1885–1960) English Imagist poet

German Chronicle, Poetry & Drama, vol. II, 1914

Painting

“We visited Meudon [c.1938] to see Hans Arp and though, to our disappointment, he was not there and his wife, Sofie Täuber showed us his studio. It was very quiet in the room so that one was aware of the movement in the forms... I thought of the poetic idea in [Hans] Arp's sculptures. I had never had any first-hand knowledge of the Dadaist movement, so that seeing his work for the first time freed me of many inhibitions and this helped me to see the figure in landscape with new eyes... Perhaps in freeing himself from material demands his idea transcended all possible limitations. I began to imagine the earth rising and becoming human.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1961 - 1975, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial autobiography', 1970, p. 283

Disappointment, Imagination, Idea, Knowledge

“I was invited to come here to speak about my idea of art, which is to enlarge the effectivity of art beyond the idea of art as coming out of art history — an art idea which contains the well-known disciplines like sculpture, architecture, painting, music, dancing, poetry and so on. I would like to declare why I feel that it's now necessary to establish a new kind of art, able to show the problems of the whole society, of every living being — and how this new discipline — which I call social sculpture — can realize the future of humankind. It could be a guarantee for the evolution of the earth as a planet, establish conditions for other planetarians too, and you can control it with your own thinking.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Source: 1970's, Joseph Beuys... Public Dialogue' 1974, p. 5; Lead paragraph of article

Art, Music, Feeling, History

“Creativity is not limited to people practising one of the traditional forms of art, and even in the case of artists, creativity is not confined to the exercise of their art. Each one of us has a creative potential, which is hidden by competitiveness and success-aggression. To recognize, explore and develop this potential is the task of the School. Creation – whether it be a painting, sculpture, symphony or novel – involves not merely talent, intuition, powers of imagination and application, but also the ability to shape material that could be expanded to other socially relevant spheres.”

Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) German author, novelist, and short story writer

Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll (1972), cited in: Caroline Tisdall, Joseph Beuys, exh.cat., Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979. p. 278.

People, School, Art, Exercises

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Joseph Beuys and Heinrich Böll (1972), as cited in Joseph Beuys, exh. cat., Caroline Tisdall, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1979. p. 278
1970's

People, School, Art, Exercises

“In 1907 I was most strongly influenced by Giotto during my first Italian trip, as well as by Etruscan sculpture and the early Etruscan landscape painting in the Vatican library in Rome.”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

In his letter in 1920, to de:Georg Biermann; as quoted in Georg Biermann - Max Pechstein, Leipzig 1920, p. 14
Pechstein answers Biermann's question: 'which 'primitives' had influenced him in his early painting style'

Painting

“I do not often follow its path from a previously conceived drawing. If I have a strong feeling about its start, I do not need to know its end; the battle for solution is the most important. If the end of the work seems too complete and final, posing no question, I am apt to work back from the end, that in its finality it poses a question and not a solution.
Sometimes when I start a sculpture I begin with only a realized part; the rest is travel to be unfolded, much in the order of a dream.”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

1950s, Tradition and Identity' (1959)

Dreams, Travel, Feeling, Question

“I am biased towards the belief that every painter must be grounded in strong and faultless drawing skills, and until one has not experimented with all styles of painting and has not comprehended their potentialities one's work is not complete. Even an abstract painter must know how to draw as well as a figurative artist. As for me, drawing has never created any problem, since I know how to draw anatomy correctly if I had to, I understand the function of muscle groups and sculpture.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Source: Ayandegan (1973), p. 4

Understanding, Problem, Strong, Drawing

“One of my first sculptures was made of bicycle parts. I was living at that time in a attic in the red light section of Amsterdam. I started to work without any specific materials. I was looking in the street like when I was a young boy, in the garbage cans, for ropes, wires, and paint. I left my parents in 1940. Years later I saw an exhibition of Kurt Schwitters at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam curated by Willem Sandberg and there I saw the real 'objet trouvé'; until then I had never heard about it. Schwitters was a shattering experience.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 79 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Boy, Parent, Light, Time

“Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Source: 1960s, "Specific Objects," 1965, p. 74; Lead paragraph; partly cited in: Diane Waldman. Carl Andre https://archive.org/stream/carlandre00wald#page/6/mode/1up. Published 1970 by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. p. 6 Context: Half or more of the best new work in the last few years has been neither painting nor sculpture. Usually it has been related, closely or distantly, to one or the other. The work is diverse, and much in it that is not in painting and sculpture is also diverse. But there are some things that occur nearly in common.

Painting

“Those who do Negro-sculpture in this country are wrong. We are in France; in the country of Ronsard, La Fontaine, and Racine. What connection is there between this country and these men, and Negro sculpture? An artist can only create in accordance with the character of his people and his time.”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), p. 407

Men, People, Time, Country

“Miss Rasmussen made a welded sculpture. Her statues were—as she would say, smiling—untouched by human hands; and they looked it. You could tell one from another, if you wanted to, but it was hard to want to. You felt, yawning: It’s ugly, but is it Art?
Miss Rasmussen also designed furniture, but people persisted in sitting down in her sculpture, and in asking “What is that named?” of her chairs. This showed how advanced her work was, and pleased her; yet when she laughed to show her pleasure, her laugh sounded thin and strained.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 6: “Art Night”, p. 228

People, Pleasure, Smile, Art

“For me sculpture is divinity. This is the only answer that I could find for myself. Art is man's distinctly human way of fighting death. Through art, man achieves immortality and in this immortality we find God.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work, 1966, p. 189

Death, God, Art, Way

“The particular does not interest me; I find meaning only in a general idea. In Michelangelo one is carried away by the idea of power, the whole single-minded concept he imposed on himself. The 'Slaves' and the 'Medici tombs' are sculpture made to be seen only from one side. For me, sculpture means the block; my figure of 'France' has more than twenty different sides. When I enlarged it only four were left, and I had to rework it..”

Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) sculptor from France

Source: Conversations with Judith Cladel (1939–1944), p. 406

Idea

“My objects are to be seen as stimulants for the transformation of the idea of sculpture.... or of art in general. They should provoke thoughts about what sculpture can be and how the concept of sculpting can be extended to the invisible materials used by everyone.
THINKING FORMS – how we mold our thoughts or
SPOKEN FORMS – how we shape our thoughts into words or
SOCIAL SCULPTURE – how we mold and shape the world in which we live:
Sculpture as an evolutionary process; everyone an artist.
That is why nature of my sculpture is not fixes and finished. Processes continue in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentations, color changes, delays, drying up. Everything is in a STATE of CHANGE.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Beuys' quote from Theory of Social Sculpture, 1979, as cited in: Chris Thompson. Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys, and the Dalai Lama. 2011. p. 88-89
1970's

World, Art, Color, Idea

“Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Source: Discourse in Commemoration of Adams and Jefferson (1826), p. 146

Memory

“.. one must agree with Rilke when he says that with 'nothing can one touch a work of art so little as with critical words..'. It was Marcel Duchamps who was critical, when he drew a moustache on the 'Mona Lisa'. And so was Mondrian when he dreamed of the dissolution of painting, sculpture, and architecture into a transcendent ensemble.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), pp. 39-40

Dreams, Art, Painting

“But by way of consolation: it is valueless to paint premature things, what counts is to be a personality, or at least to become one. The domination of life is one of the basic conditions of productive expression. For me this is surely the case; when I am depressed I am unable even to think about it – and this holds true for painting, sculpture, tragedy, or music. But I believe that pictures alone will abundantly fill out this one life.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (Bern, April 1902), as cited in Artists on Art, from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 442
1895 - 1902

Life, Music, Way, Thinking

“What is video art? How does it differ from commercial television? Is video art linked to such traditional art forms as painting and sculpture? Is it a totally new phenomenon?”

Gregory Battcock (1937–1980)

Gregory Battcock. New Artists’ Video, an anthology, (1978) p. xiii. Introduction:
Listing of the several general questions to which video art gave rise to in those days.

Art, Painting

“The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. Sculpture in air is possible, where the stone contains only the hole, which is the intended and considered form. The mystery of the hole – the mysterious fascination of caves in hill sides and cliffs.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, The sculptor speaks' (1937), p. 251

“To appreciate sculpture is to look, to touch, to sense, to learn and communicate.”

Fred Conlon (1943–2005) Irish sculptor

citation needed
Attributed

Communication, Sense, Learning