153 comments

1. In criticism as in life, Robin, accuracy is important. I have not sunk so low as David Bowie; therefore your reference to Bob Dylan with respect to me is a misrepresentation and I don’t like it.

   Regarding doors, Deep Body Blue is three-dimensional, obviously, and not flat. Doors are relevant to sculpture exactly to the extent they are made relevant to sculpture in particular successful sculptures, like Deep Body Blue for example. Nothing is relevant to sculpture unless and until it becomes relevant to a specific work that is accepted (by a particular person) as sculpture.

   You wrote: “Let’s suppose, Carl, that we can think more about “going-through-ness” rather than about “doorness”. I can see that being an abstract thing to go for – but I can think of a million better and more abstract ways of doing it than setting up a pair of gateposts (Deep Body Blue) and wafting a couple of elements up behind them. This sculpture has nothing to offer that I can see. I don’t even think it’s a good Caro.”

   “Doorness”, simply means the criteria of what makes something a door. One of the things that makes something a door is the fact that we go through it. “Going-through-ness” is a meaningless nonsense phrase. Caro’s sculpture suggests that those criteria have to do less with ideas (e.g., Platonic forms) than with specific human bodily experiences like going through, entering and leaving. It also by suggests – by embodying the idea – that what makes something a sculpture are less ideal forms than specific human bodily experiences of space. This is exactly how the work achieves abstraction (when compared to, for instance, Gili’s sculptures, based on the photos reproduced in Alan’s article).

   You also wrote: “David’s idea (which is very similar to Carl’s) about how you relate to the space in a Caro confirms in my mind that his spaces in this kind of early work are almost always architectural, not sculptural. Pick that one apart.”

   Your assertion that Caro’s early work is “architectural” is inconsistent with your assertion that Caro’s early work is “flat”. Pick one and stick with it. Your compulsion to deride the achievements of others is distorting your judgment, perhaps even your perception.

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   1. Carl, you are correct when you say that Deep Body Blue is three dimensional but its sculptural function (and I have seen the piece)) is in my view extremely limited. The argument put forward by its champions seems to be that its achievement lies in its ability to instill in the viewer a sense of passing through an opening. However that sense or evocation can only be fully experienced by standing in front of the piece. In other words the viewer completes or experiences the concept only or predominantly from one position. What happens when the viewer moves away from that frontal position and proceeds to walk around the work is that that central idea melts away in a visual sense and very little else if anything comes into play. I’m not by the way seeking to persuade you from your (or anybody else’s) conviction about the piece rather to suggest that that conviction springs from something other than its sculptural achievement.

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      1. I am not aware of any rule that requires limits sculptural achievement to works that require equal access from all positions and angles. Were there such a rule, most of Caro’s early table sculptures (i.e., those that include elements dropping below the level of the table, which require a frontal view) would not be the sculptural achievements they evidently are. What this tells me is that the rules for sculptural achievement are not set in advance but always remain to be discovered in works that somehow manage to convey sculptural meaning despite what we all thought we knew but didn’t.

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      2. “The argument put forward by its champions seems to be that its achievement lies in its ability to instill in the viewer a sense of passing through an opening.”

         I’d just like to expand on that a little, Terry. I’d say Deep Body Blue is not just about a sense of passing through an opening: it’s also about NOT passing through an opening: it’s about hesitating there: it’s about going through this opening and not that opening. And it’s able to be “about” all these things because it’s NOT flat. It’s not flat NOT because there’s a rule that says good sculpture is not flat—but because it has to be not flat/“deep” in order to accommodate all it has to “say.”

         I think Carl’s right about the “equal access” rule too. Not only would Caro’s table sculptures get into trouble if such a rule existed—so would most sculpture that’s ever been made. I think I’m beginning to understand your aspiration (and Robin’s) for “equal access”/“three dimensionality”/”spatiality”/not flatness/etc. I have trouble with it because I see it as an aspiration for an ideal world, maybe a dream world. But now when I hear/read Robin say “more abstract,” I think he’s just asking for more room for more content. I’m OK—very OK—with that. I can’t say I understand “abstract content” yet, but Deep Body Blue is a sculpture that’s full of terrifically complex “content”—though “full” is not the right word: I bet it was one little miracle that delivered Deep Body Blue’s form and content at exactly the same time.

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2. Richard Ward wrote:

   “This would seem to deny any basis for human conviction in a non-objective, non-scientific reality.
   Subjective experience may be hard to talk or write about – it’s not what language is really made for – but that doesn’t make it arbitrary or exclude it from being interpersonal in a non-objective way.
   That is what art does. That is what art proves. That is why art is necessary.”

   My comment was that all judgments of artistic merit are judgments based on experience, and all experience is experience of a particular person.

   Your criticism of my comment (that it denies any basis for human conviction in a non-scientific reality) is wrong because to say that a judgment is personal is not to deny the basis for the judgment. It is to say that what we are judging is not a empirical fact. Scientific judgments concern empirical facts (which remain the same facts regardless of who is interpreting them) whereas artistic judgments concern works of art. To say that we judge a work or art differently than we judge an empirical fact is just to notice that a work of art is not an object like the objects studied in science.

   Noticing that a work of art is not an object is not to find it inadequate or lacking some attribute that it really ought to possess; it is just to notice what sort of thing it is.

   People make judgments all the time that lack the kind of certainty that is associated with scientific investigation, and that fact doesn’t imply that our judgments are inadequate or incomplete or otherwise faulty. Moral judgments are like this for example: We may hope to reach consensus on moral questions but our failure to do so does not vitiate the judgment and the same is true of aesthetic judgment.

   This is roughly what Kant meant when he described beauty as “purposefulness without purpose” (Zweckgemassigkeit ohne Zweck). Aesthetic judgments have this peculiar quality that we WANT to communicate our judgments (e.g., our preferences or dislikes) to others and to persuade others to agree, and we may even be disappointed when they don’t. This distinguishes aesthetic judgments from purely sensual judgments. If I like the taste of a particular wine, I don’t really care if you do. But I do care if you don’t like Morris Louis’s paintings, and I am moved to convince you that I am right, even if I know that at the end of the day you won’t agree. None of this diminishes my conviction that I am right.

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   1. Yes, but I think that we are concerned that others should agree with our aesthetic judgment because of our conviction that there is something IN THE ARTWORK rather than solely in our experience of it that justifies that judgment. Agreement is then an indicator for our common humanity, our common experience of being.
      In that way, when people say that only experience can form the basis for judging an artwork, they do not necessarily mean just “one’s own experience” but also the reported experience of others.
      And then it would make sense to say: “This is a work of art but I don’t like it, although other people may love it” particularly if I have reason to believe that those other people like other stuff that I also like.
      For instance I would be quite prepared to acknowledge that Louis’ paintings are art and that I should maybe look more closely at them on the basis of your own reported experience.

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      1. Yes, I think great works of art, which are recognised as great by most people, have been judged by people with knowledge and experience as well as ‘the test of time’ and so there has been a build up of currency attached to the appreciation of such art. There could also be a certain intellectual conceit attached to wanting to have an unchallenged and revered opinion. Carl makes a good point demonstrating the difference between sensory and aesthetic distinctions, but sometimes appreciating a piece of art could be more of a sensory activity?

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3. Carl says: “I am not aware of any rule that limits sculptural achievement to works that require equal access from all positions and angles. Were there such a rule, most of Caro’s early table sculptures (i.e., those that include elements dropping below the level of the table, which require a frontal view) would not be the sculptural achievements they evidently are. What this tells me is that the rules for sculptural achievement are not set in advance but always remain to be discovered in works that somehow manage to convey sculptural meaning despite what we all thought we knew but didn’t.”

   Jock says: “I think Carl’s right about the “equal access” rule too. Not only would Caro’s table sculptures get into trouble if such a rule existed—so would most sculpture that’s ever been made. I think I’m beginning to understand your aspiration (and Robin’s) for “equal access”/“three dimensionality”/”spatiality”/not flatness/etc. I have trouble with it because I see it as an aspiration for an ideal world, maybe a dream world. But now when I hear/read Robin say “more abstract,” I think he’s just asking for more room for more content.”

   In a way, Jock, that’s as close as you have ever been to “getting” the more abstract/more three-dimensional thing, yes. More room, more abstract content. More, more, more (better than me, me, me!). I was looking at some Samuel Palmer etchings yesterday, and the best of them were “more, more, more” – endlessly interwoven complexity; you could just carry on looking and get more, more, more. Bloody brilliant. They pulled you in and moved you about, and kept you going, and didn’t trip you up.

   But to say “Deep Body Blue is a sculpture that’s full of terrifically complex “content” is just not true – FACT! Point to it! It is not IN THE WORK, it’s in your head!!! Any complexity is in the metaphor of the “essence” of “doorness” and all its concomitant associations. Bollocks. We are back to “me, me, me” again. My point, over and over, is, if it’s not in the work, it’s NOT IN THE BLOODY WORK! “Deep Body Blue” is simple and simplistic, borderline minimal. Like a lot of this kind of stuff, it allows you to read into it all sorts of crap, anything you like really, because it does so little in itself to be specific. Complexity? In your dreams!

   And there is nothing dreamy or idealistic about my aspiration – it’s real practical. Put more in. Do it in the work, so we can see it. If we can’t see it, the complexity must be metaphorical. If we can see it – I mean really see it – and it works, it’s probably abstract.

   In my book, most of Caro’s table sculptures are absolutely “in trouble”. Yes, most sculpture that’s ever been made is in trouble – from the point of view of making sculpture that is properly three-dimensional. That’s why I want to move on. But Caro’s table stuff is in really deep shit.

   Carl’s adamant claims for the modernist art that he personally likes is almost charming in its devotion, but his philosophy really doesn’t hold water as a way of making even the most personal judgements about sculpture, never mind a more objective attempt at assessing quality. And three-dimensionality is a most reasonable condition – not a “rule”, but a reasonable expectation – for abstract sculpture to aspire to. Just what is the evidence that Caro’s table pieces are sculptural achievements? I can think of quite a few I have seen that are complete non-starters, even judged by modernist “rules”. Are ALL Caro’s table pieces Art with a capital “A”, Carl? Do none of them fail in your eyes, and thus stop being art?

   Carl seems to make a deficiency into a benefit by suggesting its some kind of new discovery on Caro’s part to make sculpture you only view from one side. In fact, it is the case with most of sculpture throughout history. Most figurative sculpture is to be viewed from the front, and of course was often on a building or in a niche. It seems very reasonable to me – not an extreme position at all – to expect abstract sculpture not to have a front and a back, but to exist fully in the round. Is that not reasonable? Caro is on record as admitting he makes sculpture with a front and back. Why is that good? It’s a figurative trait. Abstract sculpture need not stick there, it can improve on that, and should. Would it be equally innovative, Carl, if someone made sculpture that was in a box and you could only see it through a peephole?

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   1. “Carl seems to make a deficiency into a benefit by suggesting its some kind of new discovery on Caro’s part to make sculpture you only view from one side. In fact, it is the case with most of sculpture throughout history. Most figurative sculpture is to be viewed from the front, and of course was often on a building or in a niche. It seems very reasonable to me – not an extreme position at all – to expect abstract sculpture not to have a front and a back, but to exist fully in the round. Is that not reasonable? Caro is on record as admitting he makes sculpture with a front and back. Why is that good? It’s a figurative trait. Abstract sculpture need not stick there, it can improve on that, and should. Would it be equally innovative, Carl, if someone made sculpture that was in a box and you could only see it through a peephole?”

      I apologize in advance for pursuing this tangent not related to Gili’s work.

      Speaking of the early table sculptures, the discovery was not in making works that must be viewed from a particular angle. The discovery occurred in making works that sit on table edges with elements that drop down below the table’s surface level. The table pieces are related to Caro’s interest in grounding in larger sculptures during the same period, which imply that what we think of as the ground need not be taken for granted as the foundation from which everything rises but as a level that itself lacks foundation. This way of conceiving of the ground alters the way in which scale and size are experienced – normally in relation to the erect human body, which is to say, literally rather than abstractly. The early table sculptures explore our ideas of size and scale – like Deep Body Blue, they allow what we think of as literal facts to be experienced abstractly, as ways of human being in the world. I think that this is a quintessentially sculptural ambition.

      Anyway, the fact that the early table sculptures are accessed from a frontal position is not the point of the project but a fact that facilitates communication of the point as described above. The overhanging elements can only be properly seen from a frontal position. “Properly seen” means seen in their full significance. Perhaps this fact may be viewed as a limitation of the work but only if we explicitly or implicitly impose rules on what a sculpture must be in lieu of allowing the work itself to teach us how a sculpture can be.

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4. [ed’s note: Tim is still on a time-lag due to technical difficulties]

   I did NOT say that one can see “just about anything in anything”. What I did try to say was that the mind is formed by all the experiences of the real world and what is in it, and since the mind is what initiates anything that goes on eventually to make a sculpture, therefore its ‘content’ is bound to affect and be transferred to the work (consciously or unconsciously); i.e. you will be ‘representing’ something; not anything, something.
   Philosophically, I fear we may be going up a blind alley, a sort of ‘John Cage syndrome’, music (sculpture) as silence (nothingness) – and we don’t want to go down that road do we !! Eliminate every conceivable known factor in the creating of sculpture, and we will be left with a clean slate and can start all over again from scratch on virgin territory. But it doesn’t necessarily work like that; the next great sculpture might well be ‘traditional’ or, dare I say it, ‘figurative’.
   I share all the aspirations for abstract sculpture that are voiced on Abcrit, and I hope to make a contribution because I too think that the future lies in finding ‘abstract’ means to the creating of a new sculpture. But we cannot evade or bypass individual experience as the generator of art.

   No, I don’t know all the answers, I am sorry if my comments gave that impression, (unintentioned). However,I DO know what I have experienced, and the only way I can think of sculpture is from my experience of what it does. If it is going to do something radically different in some unknown future, so be it, it will probably be outside any possibility of my input. What I can do for the moment is attempt tp push on from where we are at and struggle to make a few changes from that. Whatever, unforeseen at present, meanings there may be for the word structure in sculpture, we can only deal with what IS.
   What is, is as I have said, an amalgam between the physical reality of making; (physics as has been pointed out); and the (hopefully) demands of inspiration. I cannot see how the denial of any existing interpretation as being ‘known’ disqualifies it from any further use. Sometimes, ‘known’ factors produce surprising results which stand existing conceptions on their head. So by all means let us search for new and unforeseen ‘structures’ in relation to sculpture, but I would bank on their not being, in the end, out of this world.

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5. Anything with the word “Essence” in puts my back up at the moment. “Essence of sculpture”, “Essence of doorness”, and now “Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement” is a show at the Courtauld Institute which finishes next Sunday 22nd.

   

   In the show are a large group of the small fugure sculptures that Rodin made towards the end of his life, together with drawings/watercolours of dancers/models.

   Of course I’ve seen lots of these over the years, but I’ve never been quite so impressed with how bad they are. I found the whole show borderline objectionable, not because of the semi-pornographic nature of some of the drawings, but because of the casualness with which Rodin treated his subject, and the crudeness with which he assembled his bodies. These little dancers throw poses right, left and centre, make shapes, demonstrate contortions, without in the least convincing of their structure or their three-dimensionality.

   If you go downstairs a floor you get to see Degas’ sculpture:

   

   And what a cracker it is. And what an excellent point of comparison to the Rodins. Here we have specificness, coherence, articulation, spatiality and physicality, and as full-on a three-dimensional ambition as figuration will allow. Here is real movement; not the image-based essence of it, but the sculptural specifics of it; doing this, this and this.

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   1. “Anything with the word “Essence” in puts my back up at the moment.”

      The word and concept of “essence” is not needed for understanding the abstractness of Deep Body Blue or any other sculpture (or painting). So if it bothers you, ignore it.

      I cited this particular work as an example of what I understand to be “abstract sculpture”. The example shows:

      It is as an “abstract door” that the sculpture achieves abstractness as sculpture. The point is that abstractness has nothing to do with pure form or formality or disconnection from the world we actually live in. Quite the opposite: the sculpture overcomes literalness by evoking various familiar ways of being in the physical world, such as entering, exiting, being shut out or invited in, and so on. It evokes these ways of being in the world without “representing” any of them and without requiring that the viewer ACTUALLY engage in any of them.

      (It is very interesting philosophically that our shared criteria for something being a “door” – and therefore “doorness” – consists in our ability to enter, pass through, exit, be closed off by or invited in by, etc. In other words, the essence has to do with the way in which we engage with the thing in the actual world. But this is a side remark about the sculpture and not essential to understanding it.)

      A sculpture that had no relationship to anything in the physical world would not be of any interest to normal human beings; therefore it could not be an abstract sculpture. (Abstraction is an artistic value, a mode in which works of art can attract and engage our interest. Otherwise, it’s just academic.) It would be entirely literal and thus the opposite of abstract. (Geometrical paintings and minimalist sculptures prove this point.)

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      1. “A sculpture that had no relationship to anything in the physical world would not be of any interest to normal human beings; therefore it could not be an abstract sculpture.”
         I think this is completely wrong, at least in the sense that I understand it. The physical world is the world interpreted through the methods, values and objectives of science. It is interesting to normal human beings because it is the domain in which we can actively pursue physical goals ensuring our comfort and survival. Science caters for this interest supremely well – it doesn´t need sculpture to help it.
         The experience of being in the world doesn´t necessitate a scientific approach to that world. Art (as I see it) communicates subjective experience in manifold ways independent of science. It doesn´t start with tables and doors and then abstract them. It deals directly with experience. And the part of any artwork that is of aesthetic interest to normal human beings will be precisely the part that communicates experience in a way that is unrelated to science (including linguistic science) and the physical world. The normal human interest catered to by art is not survival or effectiveness or theoretical understanding of the world, but something more existential, like our interest in being at home in the world (embedded in it, not an outside observer and manipulator of it), or in being reminded of the utter mysteriousness of existence, or simply in not being alone.
         The ideal promise of completely abstract art (whether or not it can be fulfilled) is a promise of the extra depth and clarity that direct communication might bring without the mediation of concepts from the physical world (doors, tables or whatever).

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6. Here we have another of Robin’s hobby horses pulled in without regard to the subject of all this commenting, ie the nature and quality of Katherine Gili’s sculptures. How about comparing Gili’s Leonide with that Degas. That would take us back to the origins of the whole three-Dimensionality/ from the body enterprise in the first place, which Robin has already declared to have led nowhere, except more questions. I haven’t seen the Courtauld show, as I’m laid up, but it seems on the face of it that Rodin’s purposes in these dancer studies is very different from Degas’ purposes, ie that Degas’ is a kind of realism, which Rodin has rejected. Are we trying to say that within the limits of “figurative” sculpture, Rodin has never achieved three-Dimensionality? (or realism?). The John the Baptist, the Walking Man etc etc.? Or has Rodin “moved on” to consider different ways in which the “figure” can be represented in sculpture, and different aspects of the body than sheer realism? Are they really “figurative” in the same sense as the Degas? It is absurd to be berating Rodin for not foregrounding aspirations for sculpture which are the result of late,late modernism, aspirations which would never have even been thought of were it not for the wide ranging invention of Rodin’s art.
   And as to “pornographic” — define pornography!

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7. Oh I see! It’s because they are assembled out of disjunct body parts without regard for anatomical veracity, and made to take up rhythms that express the voluptuousness and eroticism of the body in movement. He hadn’t thought of pulling them out into a three-D spatial armature, which might have been more “sculptural”, but would certainly have been more ” pornographic” (as in the marvellous Iris, Messenger of the Gods). Of course she isn’t three -D enough for you either. I suppose this is where the idea of “configuration” being inevitably figurative comes from. And from there that “structure” is inevitably figurative too. The Degas is just as much a configuration as the Rodin , only different.
   But what has any of it got to do with Gili’s sculpture? In her most achieved works the parts have taken on a sculptural life, an identity and reciprocal influence which has to do with the organisation of the “structure” of the work, independently of figurative representation, (though not of any form of representation) (see all of the above discussion). That is as abstract as they need to be, short of a ” wholly abstract” fantasy land where sculptures have no relationship to anything in the visible world .

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8. I can sort of visualise such a thing. It would be like ” frozen music”, hanging in the air, but without rhythmic movement, since that would suggest an imitation of something real.

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   1. You don’t know what you are talking about. Get out of bed and get over to the Courtauld. See if you can tell me when you come back that any of the Rodin’s on show here are anywhere near as good as the Degas. Whilst you’re at it, read my comment again.

      As to keeping to topic, I suppose you think Miles Davis is more relevant?

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      1. When you come back, we can compare the Gili with the Degas (and the Rodins, if you like).

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      2. Actually, I think of Degas sculpture as having very little to do with realism (as to what he or Rodin intended, we are not party to that). In this photo of work at the RA (I think this show was “Degas and the Danse”, but no essences were involved) you can see examples of realism in the top left of picture. They bear no relation to Degas achievement.

         

         You seem inordinately keen to stamp on my views at every opportunity, Alan, without careful reading or consideration of my comments. That’s your prerogative, I guess, but maybe you should chill out a bit. I shall be visiting the Rodin Museum in a week or so, and with an open mind (though admittedly, as an abstract sculptor and not a connoisseur). When did you last visit? Perhaps you don’t need to, having made up your mind some while back. But do try to make the Courtauld. I’d be genuinely interested to know your views on that show, and if it might alter your view of Rodin.

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9. I’m sorry if you feel that I’m stamping on your views. All that is bothering me is the extent to which the whole chain of comments has strayed from any practical bearing on the starting point, which is Gili’s sculpture, it’s merits, qualities or otherwise. Whether Degas’ dancers are better than Rodin’s , and why, if they are, tells us little or nothing about the issues raised by the non- figurative aims of Gili. Or does it? You’re the sculptor, I’m the “connoisseur” apparently, after forty odd years of trying to understand what you’re all doing.

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10. Actually, you’re probably right, that as far as spatiality is concerned, the Degas’ have more to say to us now than the Rodin dancers, but there are other respects in which Rodin scores heavily in other areas of his work. OK. Goodnight.

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11. Actually that’s a bit rich. You certainly jumped on that harmless little word “essence” , by which I simply meant boiled down to its essentials, and then went on to list some of them. I did not mean that they were the only way to make sculpture. One slip and you came down on it like a ton of bricks.
    By the way, the last time I saw Rodin in depth was at the Hayward, Catherine Lampert’s retrospective. I wrote ” Una Donna M’Apparve”. – Rodin at the Hayward, in 1987? Sometime after. But I did see St. John the Baptist at the Musee D’ Orsay three years ago, and felt it to be perhaps the most three dimensional figurative sculpture I have ever seen.

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12. Actually, I was thinking Gili’s sculptures reminded me of music but didn’t really know how to express it in words, and Alan Gouk saying he could imagine abstract sculpture as ‘frozen music’ was perfect.

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    1. I think Alan meant it in a derogatory way, Noela, about my idea of “abstract”. And maybe we should just drop all the musical analogies? Come to think of it, we could drop analogies…

       Alan, I know I pick on you too, but I was just a bit narked that you shouted “define pornography!” at me, as if I had prudishly condemned the little figures as pornographic. I was saying the opposite: “I found the whole show borderline objectionable, NOT because of the semi-pornographic nature of some of the drawings…” I don’t care about the pornographic aspect one way or the other, only in so far as it might demonstrate Rodin’s distracted lack of care and real sculptural engagement in both drawings and sculptures.

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       1. Ah sorry about that, I should have guessed it was derogatory! I shall have to pay more attention!

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13. “I think this is completely wrong, at least in the sense that I understand it. The physical world is the world interpreted through the methods, values and objectives of science. It is interesting to normal human beings because it is the domain in which we can actively pursue physical goals ensuring our comfort and survival. Science caters for this interest supremely well – it doesn´t need sculpture to help it.”

    The physical world is interpreted by the way we live in it as embodied beings, occupying space, constructing and living in homes, placing things, moving from one place to another, walking, sitting, lying, grasping things, letting them go, approaching, retreating, getting next to things and other people, and so on. Humans have been doing that long, long before science was invented.

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    1. It may not have been called “science”, but a broadly scientific / objective approach to the world is implied in deliberately doing all the things you mention. “If I do this then that will happen”.

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    2. I think science has a distinctly different way of interacting with objects in the world. It has certain methods as well as goals. Your last paragraph (Carl) is in keeping with a phenomenological/existential way of ‘describing’ the everyday meaningful world we find ourselves embodied and embedded in. We can think about how a painting or sculpture shows itself to us. If we want to we can start interpreting it with various theories or analogies, or what else it may look like, but we can try and resist this and bring ourselves back to the art work in front of us. While it is not the only way to try and look at art it is an interesting way and makes sense when looking at abstract work.
       We can check out all our baggage which I realise we cannot simply throw away (we cannot choose out of nothing), but we can question our influences and perhaps mitigate about making inauthentic decisions in terms value and meaning. I like the phenomenological aim to go ‘back to the things themselves’ which helps us to focus on what the work of art brings to us (‘unconcealment’). I don’t think we can get over the difficulties inherent in judging the vale of an art work but we can question all sorts of meanings we ‘give’ to the work. Sometimes it seems we forget we are talking about ‘visual’ art.
       I would go along with most of Richard’s last paragraph:
       “The ideal promise of completely abstract art (whether or not it can be fulfilled) is a promise of the extra depth and clarity that direct communication might bring without the mediation of concepts from the physical world (doors, tables or whatever).”

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14. “It may not have been called “science”, but a broadly scientific / objective approach to the world is implied in deliberately doing all the things you mention. “If I do this then that will happen”.”

    Actually, most of those things are not done “deliberately”. Unless there’s some reason why it would be strange to walk, we don’t walk deliberately. We walk. The point is that the modern scientific worldview is recent and in many ways impoverishing, and certainly contributed heavily to the crisis that produced modernism in the arts. Science views the world as a collection of objects; our access to the world is therefore one of knowing objects. “Objecthood” (and literalism) did not become a threat to art-making until recently. But art permits a mode of access to the world that is not one of knowing, which is why art has had to find ways to affirm its continued existence.

    “The ideal promise of completely abstract art (whether or not it can be fulfilled) is a promise of the extra depth and clarity that direct communication might bring without the mediation of concepts from the physical world (doors, tables or whatever).”

    When we have mathematics and geometry, who needs art? I completely disagree with your concept of “abstract”.

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15. Well, I can agree more or less with what you say from “The point is…” up to “…continued existence.” I don’t think we’re so far apart.
    But if (as I would also agree) “art permits a mode of access to the world that is not one of knowing”, then why does it have to relate to the physical world – the world of objects and knowledge? Or if you mean by “physical world” just “world” then how could an artwork (or anything else) NOT relate to it?

    I’m not sure I understand yout comment about geometry and mathematics.

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16. In response to Jock and Carl (bear with me Alan, I will come to Katherine Gili) and the question of ‘rules’ I don’t think, having re-read them, that my comments on Deep Body Blue
    were driven by checking its qualities against a set of sculptural rules so to speak. When considering other peoples’ work with a viewer’s mind-set as opposed to that of a maker (and I realise Carl that I should have made this distinction when responding to your question about my expectations of sculpture) I try to see what something is in terms of what it presents visually and how it functions in space. This process might well reveal aspects that, with my maker’s hat on, I would regard as weaknesses to be avoided when making sculpture in the here and now, or conversely see strengths and positives that I might wish to emulate. This doesn’t mean that (with my viewers hat on) I won’t be able to see the positives even in work that I believe not to be seeking to exploit the full possibilities that sculpture is capable of.. For example I do think that David Smith’s ‘Australia’ is a great piece of work, it’s visually and physically exciting,albeit mostly so looking from one side or the other straight at its longest dimension, but yes it is, in my view, also what sculpture can be.Its achievement is neither rule-bound or theoretical but lies solely in its visual and physical identity being both compelling and independent.
    I haven’t seen the Katherine Gili exhibition but given the way that she and others make sculpture, building with small elements to form a whole there is bound to be a focus on the structural nature of the work. Other contributors have focused on the question of the relationship between the practicality of the engineering and the way in which such works grapple with spatiality throughout the making process before arriving at a free-standing conclusion. More important I think than the question of physics is the question of identity-that which is beyond the common grounds of material and the desire to make spatial sculpture and which differentiates a Gili from the steel sculptures that we see in the Brancaster Chronicles and elsewhere and those, different from each other. Possibly Katherine Gili’s history of figuration is underpinning her non-figurative work but works like’ Naiant’ seem to me to have reached a point whereby they are perceivable on their own terms. Re-presenting rather than representing, maybe?

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17. I think that Robin and Terry’s expectation for abstract sculpture to exist in the round, operating in a distinct, crucial and stimulating way from any vantage point is pretty reasonable. I have been reading Patrick Heron, and it would seem that this is an expectation for modern sculpture that has been about in some form amongst the critically engaged well before Deep Body Blue was made. Heron writes the following in regard to Henry Moore. Whatever other’s thoughts about Moore’s sculpture may be, the following still seems relevant to a wider discussion about abstract sculpture and “greater three-dimensionality”.

    “What the French sculptors (Laurens, Lipchitz, Zadkine) I have mentioned lack can be reduced to two qualities – or groups of qualities. They all lack, by comparison with Moore, the sense of sculptural absoluteness: and secondly, they lack profundity of invention, or discovery. The first is more difficult than the second to describe: in a word, it is the quality which distinguishes sculpture from painting. Nothing in Moore’s figures is exempt from the necessity to exist in the round: no graphic image is here superimposed upon, or there extracted from, the mass. The mass itself is the image you register from any of the infinite number of viewpoints. As you move in relation to the work, the work itself moves in your eye, expanding, contracting into a different shape, into a new variation of itself. Thus a truly sculptural image is not static, or restricted to a given viewpoint. It is perpetual; it is permanently mobile, so to speak. You only get it by circling about the sculpture many times: and even so, somewhere in between the ‘front’ and a ‘side’ view are numerous others which will at first have escaped you. Months of familiarity may still leave many significant aspects of a figure by Moore undiscovered: and this is where the French sculptors just named are so much less subtle – because completely less sculptural… ”

    Commentators here may care to expand upon this, or challenge it. There’s certainly been a lot of water under the bridge since the late 50s for sculpture. I don’t think it sets down any sorts of rules, but does propose that some sculpture is not fully sculptural, and maybe this should be a serious concern. Why would a sculptor want to make a work that was not “fully sculptural”? I have not seen Deep Body Blue so I do not direct my comment at that work (though I can very much imagine the shortcomings that Terry identified being present in the work).

    I don’t know how much this has to do with Gili’s sculpture, but I don’t think that matters too much to be honest. The tangents are one of Abcrit’s strengths, and I’m sure there is enough there for someone who has seen her work to bring the discussion back there, if necessary.

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    1. Quickly:

       I guess Heron does propose that Lipchitz, Laurens, and Zadkine make sculpture that is not “fully sculptural.” I might object: I think Laurens has made sculpture that is every bit as “fully sculptural” as Moore’s—but I think maybe there’s some Anglo-American vs. Continental thing going on in Heron’s piece. Anyway I’m happy to read about Heron’s enthusiasm for “voluminosity”/mass.

       And I don’t want to suggest that Terry and Robin are unreasonable/crazy/“formalist”/whatever. The fascination with what’s “sculptural” and what’s not “sculptural” is natural/healthy/“good”/whatever. Even my friend Bruce Gagnier cares about it—though it’s interesting that every now and then he’ll say he doesn’t care at all about “sculpture:” he only cares about “the figure.”

       I just want to fuss over these words of yours, Harry, for a moment: “[the] expectation for abstract sculpture to exist in the round, operating in a distinct, crucial and stimulating way from any vantage point is pretty reasonable.” Is the expectation “reasonable”/“pretty reasonable”—or is it somehow confused? Have the times we live in—more specifically: all the technology associated with cameras—messed up our priorities when looking at sculpture. Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes exists in the round. Donatello’s Pumpkin Head (Zuccone) kind of has just one preferred view. Do we see the Judith and Holofernes as more “advanced”—more “cinemagraphic” maybe—than the Pumpkin Head? The Pumpkin Head is just “a photograph” after all. Seems to me we just don’t look at Donatello this way. Why should we look at “abstract” sculpture this way?

       My two cents for this morning. Now I’m going back to thinking about Gili’s great sculpture!

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18. I have now been to see the Rodin show at the Courtauld, finishing on Sunday. The first thing to say is that for the first time in a long time, there is a scholarly, well researched catalogue with lots of new information about how and with what intent these little terra cottas were made, and essential reading, I’d think for anyone who wants to pronounce on them.
    But even before reading it the following paradoxes arose. Degas the painter, his graphic skills honed in representing the figure three-dimensionally in painting and drawing, none -the-less when it comes to sculpture is about the articulation of the body, its stance in gravity, and the tensions involved in maintaining a difficult posture, the compensatory movements to sustain balance etc.
    Whereas Rodin the sculptor, although well aware of these factors ( in The Cathedrals of France he says — “Everyone knows that the human body, in movement, is cantilevered and that equilibrium is re-established through compensations. The bearing leg, directly under the body, is the only pivot for the whole body, and during that instant, it alone makes all the effort… etc) none-the -less is concerned with something much more elusive in these works, a rhythmic movement of the body at its most extreme. He is after a continuous, stable and at times simplified object character, not a highly differentiated spatial articulation, not in extension, but in continuity of form and even of silhouette at times.
    Paradox 2 . Although Western Ballet is concerned as nearly as possible to escape from gravity, although finally confirming it, Degas plants his figures firmly on the ground and chooses poses which require stability. Although Cambodian, Indian and modern dance techniques emphasise the grounded nature of bodily movement, Rodin is after the extreme limits of movement, and turns his figures from prone to upright, to upside down inverted, the internal coherence of the sculpture mattering more than its stance.
    We have been told that Rodin is a modeller par excellence, and he certainly has been. John the Baptist and The Walking Man, are not only superb acts of modelling, but also absolute declarations of the act of standing, broken down and reasserted. In the latter “Rodin brought together two halves of the same sculpture but positioned them slightly off axis to each other, creating a work that expresses the essence (sorry), rather than the physiology of walking”. It is from works like these that we have acquired our sense of what a modern sculptor/maker/creator is.
    But the more we know about Rodin’s actual working methods in these late, very late works, the more we see that there is less modelling and more what can only be described as a kind of constructing/assembling than we could have imagined. He is using a kit of some nine parts to conjoin a series of propositions about bodily movement. “Construction” as such, as a working method, had not been thought of, and one would have thought that the concern for a continuous flow of one element into another was antithetical to it, but here Rodin is experimenting way beyond anything Degas was capable of, disjoint parts reworked to create clearly differentiated yet continuous groupings, “highly experimental and open-ended”, “to breach the given limits of sculpture” as then known.
    The constructional mode as we now know it makes it possible to unite both articulation(Degas) and movement (Rodin) not seamlessly, perhaps, but convincingly. Rodin is interested in a simplification at this juncture in his life, as well as an opening out. He is influenced by Indian sculpture, the Chola Natarajas, and especially the not fully three-dimensional wall reliefs with their somewhat tubular limbs, but with their voluptuous plasticity. Maybe one cannot have everything at once.He wants to take that further into rhythmic movement off the wall surface or niche. Movement I and Mouvement I +, 1911 are examples of that. But without that openness, none of us would be where we are now.
    Degas’ Grande Arabesque 1882- 95 is a very fine example of the qualities mentioned at the top of this comment and of the best of figurative sculpture. Great oaks from little acorns…… How does it compare with Gili’s Leonide? And the Walking Man? Can non – figurative sculpture learn anything from them? That’s where we all came in.

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19. “I just want to fuss over these words of yours, Harry, for a moment: “[the] expectation for abstract sculpture to exist in the round, operating in a distinct, crucial and stimulating way from any vantage point is pretty reasonable.””

    It may be reasonable, but to the extent it limits an artist’s options in advance, by critical decree, or causes people to reject highly accomplished works that violate its requirements, it’s also stupid and short-sighted in ways that the history of painting and sculpture show to be familiar and reactionary. As far as I know, art doesn’t have much to do with being reasonable.

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    1. In fact Carl, it does the exact opposite – of freeing the sculptor from unnecessary constraints and presenting a world of new possibilities. It is the narrow-minded modernist trope that sculpture can be frontal or flat that limits the sculptors options in advance.

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       1. So requiring that a sculpture be equally accessible from all perspectives – a critical fiat which rules out in advance Caro’s early table pieces and Deep Body Blue among many others – “frees the sculptor from unnecessary constraints and presents a world of new possibilities”, whereas allowing one’s experience of particular works to determine what is sculptural (which doesn’t rule anything out in advance) amounts to a “narrow-minded modernist trope”?

          While there may not be rules for what counts as a sculpture, there are rules for what counts as a sensible thought.

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20. What I’d like to know from Alan, in the light of the statement: “…here Rodin is experimenting way beyond anything Degas was capable of…”, exactly which of the small Rodin sculptures (all of them?) he thinks surpasses in achievement the Courtauld’s “Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot” by Degas?

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21. Regarding Harry’s Heron quote on Henry Moore:

    The biggest problem I had at both the 2010 Tate retrospective of Moore’s work, and the 2012 Gagosian show of monstrously large late works was – pace Heron – how difficult it was to believe in any sense of a sculptural three-dimensionality, or get beyond a very obvious and inflated literal space-filling. With Moore, as you move round the work, “view” (or image, as Heron uncritically says) follows “view”, indeed, but unrelatedly. “The mass itself is the image you register from any of the infinite number of viewpoints. As you move in relation to the work, the work itself moves in your eye, expanding, contracting into a different shape, into a new variation of itself” writes Heron. But what does he mean by mass? One had better substitute the word “bulk”; the bulk changes its outline as one moves around it, but there is seldom an intimation of coherent, dense, structured mass running through the work, or mass under pressure or movement, that might perhaps provide a sense of how one image/view connects to another. And despite the mannerism of the holes, there is little or nothing which is spatial about them.

    I’m not sure I can think of anything from Moore’s oeuvre, even including early work, that is as strong and concise as Gili’s “Leonine”, and I prefer her work to Moore’s in every way, not least the much greater measure of three-dimensionality and open transparency that steel can allow for, and the consequent avoidance of an outline imagery to the work. I would also say I prefer all of Caro’s sixties work to any of Moore’s.

    But I agree with this as an aim for sculpture: “As you move in relation to the work, the work itself moves in your eye, expanding, contracting … into a new variation of itself”. The thing is, it has to somehow remain “itself” from all views by virtue of more than its recognisable figurative or semi-figurative image. Moore has no chance of getting beyond this image-thing, being stuck as he is with an un-anatomical, fantasised, abstracted and vague shapelessness. Even when he carves into solid wood, where you think the material itself might exert some rigour, there is a copious amount of redundancy, where the material is really doing next to nothing, other than acting as an infill, the inside of the shaped surface.

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22. Sometimes Caro seems just as image-based as Moore, albeit with a very different kind of image (“Sunfeast” springs to mind, a very poor structure in real life). As recently tweeted by Sam Cornish:

    

    

    The Gilis are above and beyond that, and ”Llobregat” is indeed a pared-back work, but for me there remains some figurative analogy involved in how it reads, and in how the material behaves – how it is purposefully shaped. As we can see, even in Caro, figuration creeps in perniciously.

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    1. Robin’s a prior prescriptions for what counts as sculptural – prescriptions that amount to rules because they follow from theory rather than experience – cause him to dismiss Caro’s table pieces as well as Sun Feast, an acknowledged masterpiece of modernist art. By the way, concerning Sun Feast, who cares if “figuration creeps in”? What does that have to do with artistic quality?

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       1. I think there are quite a few “acknowledged masterpiece[s] of modernist art” that will prove to be otherwise, and that even you would balk at. Or do you like and endorse everything that has been so designated? I’ve asked you before, are all Caro’s table pieces good/great Art?

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       2. Though you may not believe it, Carl, all my theories, such as they are, are based upon experience – 50 years of it. I have myself made work in the past that is flat and frontal. I have rejected those ways of working as inadequate, because of my own experience of looking. So my experience of looking at ‘Sunfeast’ is compromised by its sculptural limitations; when I walk round the end of it, the view I get denies what I have seen from the front. (Have you seen the end view?) There is a reason why Caro’s works are only every photographed from a few select views – because other views are destructive of the very thing Heron is attempting to descibe in his notes about sculptural continuity in Henry Moore.

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23. Some of the positions taken up by Rodin’s models can only be maintained long enough to be drawn by having the model lying on the ground. He then reorients the drawing so that she seems to be upright, or even turns it upside down so that she seems to be standing on her hands. This relative spatial shallowness has influenced some of the terra cottas, such as Mouvement I and I +, which is why they recall the Indian reliefs, but Rodin has tried to get around this by disposing his body parts in anatomically impossible ways. He is not concerned with gravitational probity. Almost all the figures require a metal support to give them an upright orientation.
    Rodin is not stupid. Many of his statements about movement and other aspects of sculpture are very acute, and still have relevance today. I think I have already described the experimental constructional working methods, which he had already used in the Crouching Woman (V and A Museum), the freedom from anatomical veracity and the kinds of continuously supple movement that he is after, and which make a comparison with the very different character of the Degas unnecessary.
    One of the most stimulating passages in the catalogue concerns the suppleness of one particular young acrobat. —- “Rodin told us he saw them as something like the early stages of an evolution, transitions leading from the animal world to woman, — insects, varieties of frog, a creature resembling a sphinx — from which the woman crawls out as though from a cocoon. ‘Some people find all this obscene, but it’s almost pure mathematics. It’s not driven by passion, or rather it looks like the movements of unknown passions, which we can’t imagine but might be possible — passions that are not human'”. One cannot imagine Degas thinking or feeling along these lines. And it sounds a little like Robin’s rhetoric for an unknown future. Got a problem with that?

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    1. Yep

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24. Degas is concerned with what is, Rodin with what could be.

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    1. The stuff about the model is “too much information”. As to what was in Degas’ mind, who’s to even guess?

       Don’t those rather rubbery little upside-down can’t-stand-up Rodins go against all your structural theories? They certainly don’t chime with me. Whereas the Degas “project” of hoiking up that leg seems very adventurous and very original, and that particular iteration of the “pose” very successful. As to the relevance of either sculptors’ work now, for abstract sculpture, I am doubtful.

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25. There is more than one way to skin a cat. Since you don’t agree with the need for gravitational probity, I’d have thought you would be more open to see the potential of these little terra cottas. I have just been hunting for my 1987 Rodin article, but it seems the only copy is in the Tate archive. I seem to remember saying something to the effect that Rodin is at his best , and his modelling at its most sensuous and physical, when the sculpture he is making is small enough to be held in his two hands, and it seems that Leo Steinberg agrees on that. But these terra cottas are just too small to allow his modelling strengths to emerge. Hence the rather tubular feel of the limbs.
    But what I did find was the dialogue Pastic and Spatial 1983 constructed out of an exchange between Tony Smart and myself. What leaps out of it is that Tony’s advocacy of an interactive open-ended collaboration between sculptor and model with no pre-set ideas or precedents, parallels Rodin’s own practices almost to the letter, and suggests that Rodin has still much to say to today about freedom from constraint in all aspects of sculptural pursuits.

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26. And I did say I’d love to be proved wrong. I am not an absolutist in any department. I’d have thought that was obvious by now.

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27. I sent a couple of Alan’s comments about Rodin to friends this morning. One response: “It is amazing how Alan Gouk can look and(obviously) understand and verbalize with such erudition a perfectly reasoned and insightful essay. What he starts to think about at the end is what takes Rodin beyond Gilli . It is the secret force that drives the forms. The fact that he can form, take apart, move around and reform in the direction of these inner voices is skill and technique in the service of. Thanks, it was something good to start the day off with.”

    Sorry about this kind of tiresome, certainly “off topic,” adulation—but Alan’s 1987 Rodin essay and the 1983 dialogue with Tony Smart are among what seems to be a growing number of UNPUBLISHED writings by Alan. Publishers, please wake up!

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28. “I think there are quite a few “acknowledged masterpiece[s] of modernist art” that will prove to be otherwise, and that even you would balk at. Or do you like and endorse everything that has been so designated? I’ve asked you before, are all Caro’s table pieces good/great Art?”

    The answer to the first question is obviously no. However, seeing Sun Feast in person (along with a number of other Caro works from the 60s) was among the most exhilarating experiences of my life insofar as art is concerned and I believe that my opinion is shared by a large number of people who care deeply about modernist art. I think that characterizing Sun Feast as an “acknowledged masterpiece of modernist art” is more or less accurate.

    My answer to the second question is: No not all Caro’s table pieces are great art. I think the early ones are for the most part really strong and enlightening and clearly stated. Just about all of them are consistent with the extraordinarily high standards maintained by Caro throughout an incredibly prolific career. My understanding of abstraction (as a mode of artistic beauty) in art is most clearly and forcefully demonstrated in Caro’s work from start to finish (which doesn’t imply that it’s above criticism).

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    1. Can’t argue with that.

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29. The article “Plastic and Spatial is a quite extraordinary paean to the power of the body as source for sculpture, with strong implications for an improvisatory approach to making in any genre. If Robin now thinks the “from the body” episode led nowhere, and that abstract sculpture has nothing to learn from figurative sculpture, then why bring the Rodin and Degas comparison into a conversation about Gili’s work?

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30. By the way, I did offer the Rodin article to Peter Fuller, editor of “Modern Painters”. I still have the rejection slip. He disagreed with it, obviously, since it lobbed a grenade through the sort of sculpture he was promoting at the time.
    Accompanying the article, I gave a talk in the Hayward in front of the sculptures, and we took a model along to demonstrate the impossibility of the female body to carry out the pose of the Crouching Woman, that it was a composite of conjoined parts and a truncation of them. It is that aspect of Rodin’s inventiveness that leads me to say that he goes way beyond anything that Degas could imagine, great though the Grande Arabesque is in its own way. “Construction” hadn’t been thought of, and neither had “spatiality”, but these sculptures augur them in.

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    1. I have not said “Sculpture from the Body” led nowhere – it obviously led somewhere very positive for me and other people. What I have said is that it didn’t answer any questions, but only asked more by dismantling some previous assumptions about abstract sculpture.

       In the context of Gili’s figurative sculpture it is perfectly relevant to discuss Rodin and Degas.

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       1. …and of course, SFTB turned up a few questionable ideas of its own, which I think perhaps are at the root of our disagreements here. Like, for example, what constitutes a relevant physical structure as the work becomes more abstract…

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31. as you have brought the subject SFTB up Alan ………for me ,in retrospect as in intention at the time the two figure sculptures shown at the Sainsbury Centre were both disappointing because they both looked like figures.In terms of what certainly I was trying to “do” they fell short. All through that period it was a question of how things “felt” not how things “looked” .
    The biggest influence upon this change was the dialogue with the model. the previous idea of stepping back to see what things looked like was not the way in.
    The “feet” were better perhaps benefitting from being just “of a foot” and more could be “felt” of what was happening without the image of the foot getting in the way. This was a fundamental change as compared to Caro’s approach as I understood it.
    Is that relevant today?
    I would say yes, even if it was for only the idea that the “look” of something is pictorial. How
    something “feels “as a basis for sculpture is I think central to three dimensional thinking.In the Chronicles it has been noted that it can be necessary to look at a sculpture from close up and walking around the piece dealing with different changing “feelings” more than just looking is needed to get with the meaning that is the physicality/space etc. etc. of today”s sculpture.

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    1. I don’t know which two figure sculptures of yours were shown at Sainsbury Center, Tony—but I have seen photographs of what seem to me to be figure sculptures of yours in the Have you seen sculpture from the body? catalog. There’s a bunch of steel figure sculptures in that catalog, including Gili’s Leonide and her Dendres-Figure II. I think I understand what you’re talking about when you say you were disappointed in your figures because they looked like figures. In figure sculpture classes at the Studio School I’m often disappointed by clay figures that look like figures. Looking like a figure is just not the point. Gili’s Leonide stands out though. Why? I don’t think the answer is just that it FEELS more like a figure. (Of course, I have no business talking about this: I’ve never seen Leonide, etc.) I think there is a connection between Leonide and Degas’s figure sculptures—but I don’t think the connection has to do with spatiality and that kind of thing. I think the connection is that both Leonide and Degas’s figure sculptures are sketches. Bruce Gagnier has a great definition of a sketch. Really it’s the basis for all his work—and, as he sees things, for most good painting and sculpture of the last 100 odd years. Unfortunately, I don’t remember Bruce’s definition. But when Alan talks about “Plastic and Spatial” having “strong implications for an improvisatory approach to making in any genre,” I recognize Bruce’s “thinking.” The sketch “idea”/an improvisatory approach—this is important “thinking.” There’s some sense in which it seems Gili really didn’t know what she was doing when she made Leonide. She “sketched”/“improvised” until she just began to understand something. Then she stopped. When she made Dendres-Figure II, she kind of knew—or thought she knew—what she was doing, and that kind of screwed things up. I guess all I’m saying is “Plastic and Spatial” sounds like a very, very important text.

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32. Re: Degas. This is how it all ends. 100 years later, after half a lifetime of effort to add something real and outstandingly intelligent to the discipline of sculpture, some idiot with their pathetic little neuroses – who bizarrely has recently been appointed the RA Schools Head of Sculpture – appropriates your work for their no-account sleazeball project:
    https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/project-cathie-pilkington-anatomy-of-a-doll

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    1. Careful there Robin. The fact that she’s “appropriating” stuff indicates here seriousness. Furthermore: “Her figures are often doll-like, approaching the immediacy of ordinary figurative playthings, and thereby challenging the art-world’s customary and mediated relationship between the viewer and the artwork.”

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       1. I thought you Americans didn’t do irony.

          Lots of commentators – I won’t call them critics – like to celebrate the ambiguity and subtlety of artworks made ‘in the gap between art and life’. If that is where the best art of today operates, it leaves us second-raters to make the art which maintains the gap. And as more life is appropriated to the cause of art, this gets more difficult as the gap disappears up its own Miroslaw Balka.

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    2. i saw that ‘Anatomy of a Doll’ image on the RA website the other day and couldn’t go any further. How is this ‘sculpture’? There is no semblance of drawing skill in these 3D ‘illustrations’ of…. (I know not what).

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33. The “gap between art and life” is closed when art ceases to exist.

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    1. “Mind the gap” (wise words).

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34. I wonder sometimes when artists create work as a conscious ‘challenge’ to the art world, rather than from a personal need or expression, whether this is perhaps sometimes more to do with gimmicky attention seeking?

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35. As a result of technical diffculties I have only just been able to read the comments and responses to Alan’s review of Katharine’s show. It was hard going, but since I feel that there are several important issues raised (on sculpture in general), I would like to persue one or two of them, albeit belatedly.

    Firstly, the issue of ‘figuration’ or the use of the human (or other) body as subject in sculpture.
    Since 99% of sculptural history centres around describing it in one way or another, it should not be a contentious issue despite the advent of abstraction’s rejection of it. Though it maybe (and has been) abandoned in its descriptive illustrative role; (it was interesting to note that Tony Smart worried about his sculpture ‘looking’ like a figure); nevertheless, in my view, it remains in our consciousness as a result of our fundamental mental psychology concerning our ‘physical’ being, dictated by the fact of recognition of ‘physicality’ being something that the brain recognises through the body, our bodies – us.
    It is not surprising therefore, that abstract sculpture battles to eliminate ‘references’ that are recognisably to do with bodily feeling and (ultimately) form. It battles on behalf of what?
    In Abcrit we have had many responses to this question: truly plastic three dimensionality, a truly spatial (anti configuration-banned word-) arrangement of parts, an achieved disregard for gravitational limitation, a non subservience to the dictat of a material or technique and so on.
    All of these aspects and others are germaine to the quest for making a new sort of sculpture, a truly abstract sculpture which, hopefully, will escape the limitations of past efforts, improve on them by recognising their limitations.
    Our history is very short; but that is what I and other sculptors are seeking through abstraction. What I think, has not, and will not, change, is our will to place our emotional responses, conditioned by our personal experiences, into made plastic responses (sculpture) that depend initially on our body’s (transmitted through our brains) physical reactions, its ‘interpretation’ of physicality.
    Since sculpture is THE art of physical sensation and reaction, its form in terms of quality and achievement is unpredictable. It may, or may not, be ‘abstract’, ‘figurative’, or any other epithet; we can only fight on the familiar ground that we know; the unknown remains the unknown at any particular moment.

    Secondly, the comments, largely between Alan and Robin concerning the relative merits of the Rodin small sculptures and those of Degas.
    I have not, unfortunately seen the show at the Courtauld , however I am familiar with the Degas and share all the admiration expressed for their spatial and three dimensional qualities, (quite apart from their intense understanding of our familiarity with our bodies). Rodin ar his best, as Alan mentions, in my view, operates on a completely different level, that of the reinvention of the body through ‘construction’. If you go to Meudon and see the huge collection of ‘parts’ that Rodin used in his extraordinary will to remake the body into something far more powerfully expressive, movemented and, to our eyes, ‘abstract’, than in its natural formation, his enterprise in this direction gave to some of his sculptures an inventiveness and power beyond that of the Degas. I am sure Rodin himself would not understand the term ‘abstraction’ as applied to his work; he would have seen his reinvention of the body as more ‘realistic’, just as his idea of sculptural ‘movement’ was perceived as more ‘real’ than a recorded one (photography). Unfortunately Rilke does not seem to record anything of that order in his quotations from the master.
    Though I am the first to admire the ‘spatial structure’ of the Degas pieces, I feel that they are in fact very much articulated from the surface (as in a painting or drawing), rather than from internally as is super apparent in the best Rodins (look at the melding of the arm gripping the leg in utter stress in the ‘Iris’ for example; Degas often skimps detailed articulation of this sort and fudges it a bit. There is however, an example of Degas genius which matches Rodin’s ‘invention’ of form for expressive purposes, and that is in some of his monotypes. Here Degas sheer mastery of graphic art, as with Rodin’s handling of clay, rises above the level of ‘recording’ to a height of supreme originality. I would say that some of these monotypes have the plastic power and three dimensionality of the sculptures themselves.

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