Lesson 4 - Visual Arts - Sculpture

CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE ARTS FROM THE REGION
LESSON 4 - VISUAL ARTS - SCULPTURE
What is sculpture?
The sculpture comes from the Latin word “Sculpure” which means “To carve”. The
Oxford English Dictionary defines sculpture as “originally, the process or art of carving or
engraving a hard material so as to produce designs, or figures in relief, intaglio, or in the
round.”
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is
one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving and
modeling, in stone, metal, ceramics, wood, and other materials but, since Modernism,
there has been almost complete freedom of materials and processes.
The Function of Sculpture
The sculpture is produced for numerous reasons and functions in a range of

different ways. Many people produce sculptures that depict divinities or cultural heroes
in human or animal form which would have been used in a religious or ritual context
another type of sculpture celebrate kingship and power, commemorate ancestors, or
relate to beliefs about death and the afterlife
One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in some form of association with
religion. Cult images are common in many cultures, though they are often not the
colossal statues of deities that characterized ancient Greek art, like the Statue of Zeus at
Olympia. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of
which none have survived, were evidently rather small, even in the largest temples. The
same is often true in Hinduism, where the very simple and ancient form of the lingam is
the most common. Buddhism brought the sculpture of religious figures to East Asia,
where there seems to have been no earlier equivalent tradition, though again simple
shapes like the bi and Cong probably had religious significance.
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The Different Types of Sculpture
● Relief sculpture
○ is a complex art form that combines many features of the two-dimensional
pictorial arts and the three-dimensional sculptural arts. On the one hand, a
relief, like a picture, is dependent on a supporting surface, and its
composition must be extended in a plane in order to be visible.
● Freestanding sculptures
○ as the name suggests, are stand-alone objects that can be seen from all
angles and can be walked around or turned in the hand, depending on their
size.
○ The basic traditional forms of this 3-D art are: free-standing sculpture, which
is surrounded on all sides by space; and relief sculpture (encompassing
bas-relief, alto-relievo or haut relief, and sunken-relief), where the design
remains attached to a background, typically stone or wood.
● Kinetic sculpture
○ Sculpture in which movement (as of a motor-driven part or a changing
electronic image) is a basic element. In the 20th century the use of actual
movement, kineticism, became an important aspect of sculpture.
● Assemblage
○ is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that
consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the
substrate. It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium.
○ Non-traditional sculpture pieced together from found or scavenged items.
Re combining found objects.
ELEMENTS DESIGN IN SCULPTURE
Many design elements combine to create a work of art. Design elements are
things that make possible to create art. Without them, things would have no color,
shape, outline, or space.
1. Scale refers to its size relative to the size of its surrounding environment
2. Color is the way light waves are absorbed or reflected by everything around us
3. The line is the path of a moving point. In sculpture, the most important kind of line
is contour line or the outline that form edges of the sculpture to create its
silhouette.
4. Shape has no depth as it is two-dimensional. Lines cross or intersect creating a
shape which has a certain width and height.
5. Space refers to the area between, around, above, below, or within elements in a
work of art.
6. Texture is the way something feels when you touch it.
7. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color
8. Form a form is three-dimensional it has height, width, and thickness. Because
sculptures are by nature space occupying and three-dimensional, they are forms.
The four basic sculpture techniques
❖ Carving
➢ Is the act of using tools to shape something from a material by scraping
away portions of that material. The technique can be applied to any material
that is solid enough to hold a form even when pieces have been removed
from it, and yet soft enough for portions to be scraped away with available
tools.
❖ Modeling
➢ also spelled modeling, in sculpture, working of plastic materials by hand to
build up form Modeling is an additive process, as opposed to carving, the
other main sculptural technique, in which portions of a hard substance are
cut away to reveal form.
❖ Casting
➢ making a mould and then pouring a liquid material, such as molten metal,
plastic, rubber or fibreglass into the mould. A cast is a form made by this
process. Many sculptures are produced by the artist modelling a form
(normally in clay, wax or plaster). This is then used to create a mould to cast
from.
❖ Assemblage
➢ Is an artistic form or medium usually created on a defined substrate that
consists of three-dimensional elements projecting out of or from the
substrate.It is similar to collage, a two-dimensional medium.

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CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE ARTS FROM THE REGION

LESSON 4 - VISUAL ARTS - SCULPTURE

The Function of Sculpture

The sculpture is produced for numerous reasons and functions in a range of

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