delanceyplace.com 2/8/08 - figurative sculpture

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In today's excerpt - contemporary figurative sculpture. Art has the task of expressing things in new ways and, for contemporary sculpture, this task is particularly daunting because of its five thousand year heritage of heroic sculpture—of kings and emperors and generals and gods:

"For most of its long history, sculpture's primary concern has been the realistic representation of the human body, both naked and clothed, and at least nine-tenths of all sculptures ever made have been devoted to the subject. ... A huge range of approaches to figuration [has] been practised throughout the history of sculpture, and the sculptors who turned to the figure in the late [twentieth century] were only too aware of what had been tried in the past. To most of them, it did not seem relevant to follow that tradition. ...

"[Here is work from four of them]: Duane Hanson's work creates hyperrealist figures. ... Looking for a material that enabled him to make his figures as real as possible, he found this in polyester resin and fiberglass. ... His first life casts in 1967 depicted figures that had undergone violence or suffering ... but by 1970 he had found his main theme: the typical American involved in ordinary tasks.

Works of Duane Hanson.

"Invited to make an outdoor sculpture for a large plinth in Trafalgar Square, London ... [Mark Wallinger produced] Ecce Homo, a life-cast of a male figure made of white marbleized resin. ... The Latin title—'Behold the Man'—comes from the bible and reveals the figure to be a representation of Christ, depicted at the moment when Pontius Pilate asked the crowd whether He should undergo crucifixion. Wallinger had the vulnerable figure set on the very edge of the plinth, so that the contemporary crowd looking up at it was implicated as in the biblical story. He commented: 'It operated as a kind of inversion of all the other statues in the square [which are] like trophies and triumphant scenes of empire.

'Ecce Homo' by Mark Wallinger.

"Mathilde ter Heije ...makes self portraits, which she uses in installations and videos; these are life-size replicas, incorporating casts made from her own hands and face, as well as false hair and clothes that are similar in style to the artist's own. In the installations, the figures are usually accompanied by sound systems ... and appear lost in their own world.

'Menschen Opfern (Human Sacrifice)' by Mathilde ter Heijne.

"A down-to-earth realism is found in the work of James Croak. ... In 1984, he moved to New York,  where he discovered his trademark material, cast dirt. ... In the mid-1980s he began a series of dirt babies, pitiful life-sized creatures that he often displayed hung on nails on gallery walls as though awaiting inspection or collection."

Works of James Croak.