Sculpture

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Dada and surrealist sculpture

During the World War I years, the French Dada artist Marcel Duchamp expressed his aesthetic nihilism by selecting mass-produced objects, designating them as sculpture, and calling them “ready-mades.” Objects such as a bottle rack, a snow shovel, and a urinal were pronounced by Duchamp to be subjects of art. The Dadaist emphasis on the role of accident, chance, and the unconscious in the creation of art—as in Duchamp's Three Standard Stoppages (1913-1914, Museum of Modern Art)—was to influence the later surrealist movement.

The French artist Jean Arp employed chance in several relief sculptures made of painted wood, with clever, connotative titles. Arp is best known, however, for his later abstract sculpture in the round—biomorphic forms to which he gave the name concretions, for example Human Concretion (1935; cast stone version, 1949, Museum of Modern Art). The German-born Max Ernst, like Arp, pioneered both Dada and surrealism; his Lunar Asparagus (1935, Museum of Modern Art), a delightful work in plaster, depicts two elongated, attenuated plantlike figures. The Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti gave form to his fantasies in such haunting works as the construction The Palace at 4 A.M. (1932-1933) and the bronze Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932), both in the Museum of Modern Art. Also involved with Dada and surrealism, and a frequent collaborator with Duchamp, was the American-born Man Ray, whose work is well illustrated by the fascinating Object to Be Destroyed (1923, destroyed in 1957), a metronome with an oscillating stem displaying a photograph of an eye.

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Futurist sculpture

Another direction taken by early 20th-century avant-garde sculptors was futurism, an Italian style concerned with expressing motion in art. One of its chief exponents, Umberto Boccioni, made strikingly original bronzes such as Development of a Bottle in Space (1912) and Unique Forms of Continuity in Space (1913), both in the Museum of Modern Art.

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Figural sculpture

Despite the new style trends, numerous early 20th-century European sculptors continued to work in a representational manner. Each produced distinctive forms, for the most part based on the human figure. In France, Aristide Maillol evoked classical repose in impressive bronzes of the female figure. One such work is a female torso, Action in Chains (1906, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris), which demonstrates Maillol's characteristic perfect balance between states of tension and relaxation. Like Maillol, the French-born Gaston Lachaise—who later immigrated to America—made the female figure his vehicle of expression, endowing his sculptures with grace and delicacy despite the enormous proportions of their torsos. The French painter Henri Matisse also made several series of bronze figural works displaying varying degrees of distortion that express inner muscular tensions.

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In Germany, Wilhelm Lehmbruck produced quiet, elongated figures expressing withdrawal and a sense of resignation. Ernst Barlach's sculpture, on the other hand, was expressionistic; he chose humble subjects and illustrated a wide degree of emotions, ranging from joy, as in Singing Man (1928, private collection, Germany), to revenge, as in The Avenger (1914, Hirshhorn Museum). Scandinavia's foremost sculptors were the Swede Carl Milles and the Norwegian Gustav Vigeland; both created allegorical figures for fountains and other public monuments in their native countries. Milles also lived in the U.S. and created fountains for New York, St. Louis, Missouri, and other American cities. The Paris-trained Elie Nadelman immigrated to the U.S. where he produced figural bronzes with smooth contours and simplified volumes, such as Man in the Open Air (1915?, Museum of Modern Art). The American-born Sir Jacob Epstein, who settled in London, was widely known for his representational bronze portraits, with their characteristic rough, pitted surfaces that lend great expressiveness.

The greatest of modern English artists, however, and perhaps the most eminent of all 20th-century sculptors, was Henry Moore. His early work was influenced by pre-Columbian sculpture; it is evident when the Toltec-influenced Maya stone sculpture called a Chacmool (1000?, National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City), of the rain god Chac, is compared to his sculpture Reclining Figure (1929, City Art Gallery, Leeds, England). Moore's lifelong concern was the reclining female figure, which he always presented with great freshness and originality. Many of his elegant, monumental works are found outdoors, enhancing their modern urban architectural settings; Toronto, New York, Chicago, and Dallas, Texas, are among the numerous cities displaying Moore's masterpieces. Although Barbara Hepworth, another English sculptor of international stature, generally worked in a somewhat abstract, organic style, some of her sculptures refer to the human figure, such as Group II (Evocation) (1952, Collection Margaret Gardner, England).

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American 20th-Century Sculpture

In general, American sculpture, unlike European, cannot be classified by movement during the first half of the 20th century; many new movements, involving new media, arose, however, during the latter part of the century.

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Figural sculpture

A great number of American sculptors of the earlier part of the 20th century worked in a fairly academic style; although their works are competent and are interesting for their expression of the spirit of the period in which they were made, the majority of these artists failed to advance the art of sculpture either formally or technically. Those who worked along traditional lines include Malvina Hoffman, George Grey Barnard, William Zorach, Paul Manship, John B. Flannagan, Mahonri M. Young, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and Jo Davidson.

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