Picasso… The ground breaking sculptor?! A revolutionary in several media, Picasso fundamentally changed sculpture in the early 1900s. At a time when more traditional artists were absorbed in accurately portraying the natural world, Picasso was thinking outside the box, making sculptures from bent and assembled pieces of metal – the equivalent of a collage. Instead of carving wood, stone or clay, he built a sculpture from dissimilar objects and materials. This was the beginning of the modern sculptural technique called assemblage or “constructions.”

Head of a Woman (Fernande) 1909 Exaggerating the features and planes to heighten the effects of light and shadow wanted see how natural light interacts with his cubist surface. Traditional bronze. Lost wax method Fernande – model/mistress 1905-1912 Converting his studies to three dimensions, Picasso simultaneously built up and cut away the clay as he worked, giving the surface a unifying rhythm of light and shadow. The resulting bronze retains the basic shape of Fernande’s head, though the surface and structure are broken up into faceted, fragmented forms. an influence from Cezanne and primitive sculpture and an exploration of natural light on an actual Cubist surface, and Picasso made two plaster casts of the head, from which at least sixteen bronze examples were cast.

Woman with Pears (Fernande) 1909

Chiaroscuro: /kiˌɑːrəˈskjʊəroʊ/; from Italian: chiaro, “light”; scuro, “dark” Technique employed in the visual arts to represent light and shadow as they define three-dimensional objects.

Late bronze age sculpture of a bull. Lost wax casting method video – 6 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPgEIM-NbhQ Late bronze age sculpture of a bull. (c. 3300–1200 BC)

The Kiss 1889 August Rodin Robby Burns Bronze Dunedin

Brancusi “Father of modern sculpture’ The Kiss 1909 Portrait of Mlle Pogany, 1912, White marble

Picasso, portrait of his mother and father, about age 16.

Guitar – 1912 Cardboard and string. Same year as the first Papier Colle works. ‘Most radical change in sculpture since bronze casting’ Shifting from mass to plane, from closed volume to open construction. Building up the form from component parts – constructing Can quickly and independently develop his ideas. – not need the time and expense involved with bronze casting. http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/picasso-guitars-1912-1914 Picasso's Guitar constructions are three-dimensional, volumetric sculptural works fashioned by cutting, folding, bending, and, most often, stitching together flat pieces of crude mass-produced materials. They were not carved in wood or stone, modelled in clay or wax, or cast in precious metal, as sculpture had been for centuries, but were made instead by manipulating planar elements. The sound hole which normally would recede is instead projecting out into space. Video about the restoration of the Cardboard version of Guitar – good info on media and process, 2.28 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0yQu2eDJQw Picasso sought to show not only what the eye can see when looking at a guitar but what the mind knows about the object – that it is hollow for example. Similarly to the painting he is breaking it up into planes and then synthesizing the component parts back together in an arrangement which he perceives to be a more objective truth. Cardboard, as a general category, refers to a coarse laminated or composite wood-pulp board to which finishing steps have not been applied. It is typically used for common utilitarian functions, such as box making. The cardboard Picasso used as a tabletop in his still life with Guitar (assembled in 1913) retains indicators of its origins as a standard packing box, including its folds and metal staples. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/picassoguitars/ More info on the guitars – especially the significance of guitars as subject matter http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2011/03/picasso-guitars-3/

Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass 1912 Paper Collie Why Guitars?! A few theories about why he became so obsessed with guitars as subject matter - the one I like is that he needed a way to differentiate himself from Braque, it was around this point that the partnership turned into more of a competition. Guitars are a more Spanish instrument and worked well for him in terms of the puns and double entendres he was constantly making in his work - the fact that it so clearly illustrates the idea of the art work being an object in it's own right completely distinct form the object he is representing. And they illustrate so well this great irony at the centre of the cubist period, what is real, even though this is three dimensional - you STILL can't actually play the thing - even though this is a real object it is effectively a work of art NOT a real guitar. The strings don't even cover the sound hole, in fact in most of the guitar works this is the case... http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2011/03/picasso-guitars-3/

Sheet Metal, pipe and wire. Guitar 1914 Sheet Metal, pipe and wire. Sheet metal a readily available roofing material. Used rough shears to cut – not very round, he wasn’t concerned with good craftsmanship. All of the ‘workings’, the elements that hold the piece together are visible to the viewer. Video about the restoration of the metal version of Guitar – good info on media and process, 2.43 min https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD9pIzV751c Thin, flat, industrially produced sheets of metal were available as a building or roofing material in early-twentieth-century Paris. This is made out of the ferrous (iron-containing) metal without special equipment, just shears to cut, an awl to punch holes, and wire to sew. This sheet metal may have been gray or black before progressively developing a reddish-brown oxidation layer. http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/picassoguitars/

Braque Paper sculptures Circa 1911 Not named and exhibited and not preserved except for in some rare photographs and word of mouth. But it seems clear that Braque was also exploring cubist principles in three dimensions as was Picasso. Georges Braque’s Paper Sculpture Construction is known only from a photograph taken in Braque’s studio at the Hôtel Roma, 101, rue Calincourt in Montmartre in 1914. Braque had already been making paper sculptures for two years, and in 1914 Kahnweiler reported seeing a number of “reliefs in wood, in paper or in cardboard” in Braque’s studio (quoted in W. Rubin, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1989, p. 34). Unlike Picasso, who boxed up and stored away his well-known paper guitars and other sculptures, Braque did not preserve his fragile paper sculptures

The cardboard guitar is even more well known than the sheet metal version because Picasso photographed it in the studio many times even though it was initially considered to be a maquette for the metal one.

Guitar 1914

Glass of Absinthe 1914 Picasso cast six bronze copies of Glass of Absinthe from a wax original and decorated each of them uniquely. He broke new ground by incorporating an existing object into his sculpture: a real absinthe spoon Painted bronze with absinthe spoon ‘Open Sculpture’ – form is implied by gaps and voids First instance of a found object being used unaltered directly in a sculpture – direct ancestor of the Dada ‘readymades’. Only free standing work he made in this period. http://www.radford.edu/rbarris/art428/Cubism%20overview%20long.html Picasso spoke of his desire to explore different modes of representation: "I was interested in the relation between the real spoon and the modelled glass. In the way they clashed with each other.“ http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=81307

BTW this is a thing – absinthe is served this way traditionally, it’s not a unique configuration. The absinthe is poured through sugar cube and slotted spoon into the glass. Incredibly alcoholic it was banned the year after Picasso made that work.

Relief Constructions Still Life with a Snack 1914 Painted wood and upholstery fringe http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/technical-study-picassos-construction-still-life-1914 Pushing the concepts developed in synthetic cubism one step further.

Detail of the top of the wine glass in Still Life showing the recycled turned disc Detail of the knife handle in Still Life illustrating the black painted outline around the three nail heads that simulate rivets His appreciation of simple, skilful manipulation of materials is evident in his description of some found wooden boxes: ‘I saved them from a dustbin tonight on the way home. That boxes could be so ingeniously and yet so simply made is quite marvellous! Look how clever they are! The lids open and close with just two little nails in the place of hinges. Real works of art’.

Pablo Picasso Mandolin and Clarinet 1913 Painted wood and pencil

Pablo Picasso Violin and Bottle on a Table 1915 Wood, string, nails, painted wood and charcoal Note the wooden wheel on the base of the sculpture? Nails incorporated into the sculpture forming part of the instrument – some tribal artifacts also incorporate nails in their design Violin and Bottle on a Table 1915–16 (Spies 57, fig.6) in which the three nails that hold the violin strings become part of the instrument. How he arrived at this method is not known but it is possible that he was influenced by tribal artefacts which incorporated nails into their design.

These constructions and were not publicly exhibited due to the start of the war – they were in the hands of Picassos dealer who had German citizenship – the work was all sequestered by the French authorities and was locked up until the 20’s when it was sold piecemeal so was never given a proper retrospective until much later they were seen by friends and colleagues and became an inspiration to contemporary artists. The use of ‘low’ found material and ‘ready made’ items is fundamental to sculpture practice today. These ideas were particularly and directly explored by the dada artists, in particular Duchamp… World War 1 dates: 28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918

Guggenheim in Bilbao – design by Frank Gehry 1997

Marcel Duchamp Fountain 1917 / 1964 What is the role of the artist? Artist as Alchemist… Background https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/wwI-dada/dada1/v/duchamp-s-shovel-art-as-concept https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/wwI-dada/dada1/v/marcel-duchamp-fountain-1917 http://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/feb/09/art

Bicycle Wheel. New York, 1913/1951 In anticipation of a broken arm “In 1913,” recalled Marcel Duchamp, “I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.”1 The result, Bicycle Wheel, is the first of Duchamp’s readymades—objects (sometimes manufactured or mass-produced) selected by the artist from and designated as art. Most of Duchamp’s readymades were individual objects that he repositioned or signed and called art, but Bicycle Wheel is what he called an “assisted readymade,” made by combining more than one utilitarian item to form a work of art. Duchamp Bicycle Wheel. New York, 1913/1951 In anticipation of a broken arm 1915 FROM Marcel Duchamp.

Daylight Flotsam Venice Bill Culbert Daylight Flotsam Venice 2015 Florescent lights Plastic bottles http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/visual-arts/10419368/Light-and-junk-sculptures-litter-Te-Papa The flotsam work comprises a field of dozens of ordinary fluorescent light tubes connected by their snaking cords and interspersed with multi-coloured old plastic bottles salvaged by Culbert and his children in France. New Zealand-born Culbert and his family live in Croagnes in the south. "I have always scavenged," he says, "what I do is always about what's left over, that people didn't much enjoy. I'm cleaning things up again, putting things back in order." http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/10414712/Te-Papa-splashing-cash-for-art-trash At heart, Culbert is a conceptualist, and his conceptual rigour manifests itself in his ongoing economy of means with its paradoxical richness of reference — hence his admirable adaptability and exemplary energy. Raiding rubbish dumps for discarded plastic containers, bottles, and other faded, semi-invisible objects, he injects them with light, and thus illuminated they become beautiful objects for contemplation. Yet if Culbert appears dedicated to resurrecting the simple, the humble, and commemorating the once-functional, he’s also playful with it, a subscriber to the ‘industrial optimism’ of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, along with the subversiveness of other early Modernist artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Francis Picabia, and, latterly, Jean Tinguely. http://www.landfallreview.com/arts-and-culture/the-lightness-of-being-bill-culbert/

Raiding rubbish dumps for discarded plastic containers, bottles, and other faded, semi-invisible objects, he injects them with light, and thus illuminated they become beautiful objects for contemplation.

http://eyecontactsite.com/2015/04/bill-culbert-in-auckland http://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/bill-culbert-throwaway-conservationist

Richard Long A Line Made by Walking, 1967

Carl Andre Equivalent VIII , 1978 Artist as selector , displayer of materials... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXQvx5sfCSg http://www.martinries.com/article1991CA.htm

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991 Damien Hirst The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991 Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution 2170 x 5420 x 1800 mm | 85.5 x 213.4 x 70.9 in http://www.damienhirst.com/the-physical-impossibility-of http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/nov/24/damien-hirst-modern-art-tate

Platinum, diamonds and human teeth Damian Hirst For the Love of God 2007 Platinum, diamonds and human teeth Platinum, diamonds and human teeth He explains of death: “You don’t like it, so you disguise it or you decorate it to make it look like something bearable – to such an extent that it becomes something else.” Name comes from his mother saying ‘For the love of god what are you going to do next!?’ Contains about 10m worth of diamonds, was for sale for 50m but he was part of the consortium that bought it – he proably covered his costs… But it’s a case of ‘emperors new cloths’ – this whole idea of http://www.damienhirst.com/for-the-love-of-god https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HZiDVbxwVQ http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/nov/24/damien-hirst-modern-art-tate

Janine Antoni,  Lick and Lather, 1993