University in Sarajevo

Faculty of Philosophy
Department of English

Sculpture
Students:
Larisa Lisica
Eldin Grabovica

Sarajevo
November, 2010
INTRODUCTION
 If we want to paraphrase the words of the famous classical scientist and a
poet A. E. Housman, when he reflected on the sculpture development in the 20 th
century, we would say that the sculpture and the overall art was created in the
days when the world was falling down, in the hour when the world’s grounds
were trembling. The German Jewish-Marxist Walter Benjamin in his famous
Theses on the Philosophy of History said: “A Klee painting named "Angelus
Novus" shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from
something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open,
his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is
turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one
single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in
front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make
whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got
caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.
The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned,
while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call
progress.”1
Progress is surely the word that marked the 20th century while, on the other
hand, ruins of the world wars and genocides were piling up to the utmost
extents. The Progress was also a religion of many artists who, obsessed with the
technological development and high velocity, jumped into writing noisy
manifests and exploration of new techniques of artistic expression whose impact
is very much palpable even at the present time. However, it remains to be seen
weather they will resist the time and preserve the real artistic values or be
remembered only as a curiosity of the long-suffering century. The paintings on
the ceilings of cathedrals, sculptures of saints are replaced with mobile futuristic
constructions, cubist paintings where the strokes and shapes are reduced to the
basic geometric structures. Metaphors on muses and the Holy Spirit are
replaced with metaphors on the subconscious and sublime I. To paraphrase the
famous abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky’s words: the touch of a sharp angle,
a triangle and a circle has equally powerful impact on us as the touch of the God
and Adam’s fingers at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

1
http://www.unirioja.es/listenerartcriticism/essays/essay-EW-The-modern-and-the-
maritime.htm, 15/11/2010
There Is Nothing New Under The Sun…the Prophet said in the Bible. One doesn’t
necessarily have to follow only one path - every revolution in itself contains a
seed of the contra-revolution.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE 20TH CENTURY SCULPTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART OF PAINTING
One of the main characteristics of the sculpture of the 20th century is
eclecticism. Eclecticism represented a free choice of styles and combinations
which were not the author’s. Such choices were not conditioned by historical
necessity but were free choices of every individual artist to combine whichever
style they preferred. In the last century seven different styles got instilled in the
main course of the modern art. According to Herbert Reed, these were as
follows:
1. Far East Asian Art
2. African Tribal Art
3. Primitive Art
4. Pre-historical Art
5. Overseas American Art
6. Ancient Greek and Etruscan Art
7. Ancient Christian Art.
It is well known that Van Gogh was strongly influenced by the Japanese art of
ornament and Paul Gauguin by primitive art of Polynesia. Through these artists,
primarily painters, this influence was transferred to the sculpture. One can just
take a look at monumental sculptures of Constantin Brancusi, bronze casts of
Jean Arp or curved forms of female bodies of Henry Moore which, as Etruscan
fertility goddesses lie freely in the open space, to see the influence of the
ancient past. These sculptures reflect the authors’ aspiration to get through to
the primal longing of men to make shapes, to the Schopenhauer’s will of stone
or wood and, by doing that, maybe to try to explain the essence of the
sculpture. Auguste Rodin was certainly one of the most significant sculptors of
the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. He wanted to
renew the classic art of the medieval cathedrals. He continued where
Michelangelo and other renaissance artists left off and he had a complete faith
in the nature and in uncompromising work. His words were probably the best
advice to the next generations: “The shape should be imagined in its depth.
Clearly emphasise dominant planes. Imagine shapes as if they are facing you;
all the life breaks out from the inside towards the surface. When sketching, have
relief in mind and not the contours. The relief determines the contours. The
most important is to be excited, to love, to hope, to shiver, to live. You should
first be a human and then an artist.”

Eclecticism of this art carried in itself the seed of contra-revolution planted upon
many futuristic, dadaistic and similar manifests which glorify velocity, steam
machine and call for a complete break from the past. Many artists went through
both phases in their development. Disappointed by the technology and its
formidable destructive power, they were coming back, following wars and
revolution, to the serene of the ancient art and the art of primitive peoples.
However, the seed of evil had already been planted and it was difficult to evict
it.
Cubism represents a determinate break from the history of the European art. Its
sources are tribal sculpture and Cezzane’s paintings. The Cub is a word
spontaneously used by the journalists and critics to describe a direct impression
made on them by Picasso and Braque and it suggested a three-dimensional
object rather than a painted canvas. There is not a sole artist who can be
considered exclusively as a futurist, Dadaist, cubist etc. Picasso went through all
the movements and phases of development of the modern art and, as every
genuine artist, he didn’t limit his works to manifests and proclamations which
was so characteristic of mediocre artists.
Not everyone was benevolent about the birth of this new art. While Mussolini
was an excited supporter of futurism, Hitler organized an exhibit of degenerate
art in Munich. For many German artists this meant the prohibition of their work
or escape to Diaspora. Stalin’s insisting upon socialist realism erased a very
vivid Russian art scene. The abstract paintings of Wassily Kandisky, Kazmir
Maljević and sculpture constructions of Alexander Rodchenko or Vladimir Tatlin
had no place of their own in this new art movement. To make the paradox even
greater, the majority of modern Russian artists were socialists. The artistic
relation between Moscow and Berlin, best visible in the relation between
Kandinsky and Klee and other artists gathered around the idea of Bauhaus and
the Blue Rider magazine, was abruptly interrupted and replaced with the other,
political relation between Hitler and Stalin and the Non-aggression Pact.
Post-World War II sculpture failed to keep pace with the painting, not to mention
that both of these visual arts were losing battle with the increasingly present art
of motion picture and sound. The overall mechanization and later digitalisation
of the world influenced art and, consequently, sculpture. The futuristic imitations
of velocity at the beginning of the 20th century look ridiculous when compared to
the real thing. The mass production and consumption are reflected in the Pop
Art. The classic modelled and carved sculptures are no longer in trend. The real
causes are hard to identify. One of the rare sculptors who found a new style is
Eduardo Paolozzi whose works were not created at the ruins of industrialization
but in the rational order of technology.

CONCLUSION
To conclude the essay on development of the modern sculpture, we
should paraphrase John Ruskin who in 1854 wrote:
“The worst characters of modern work result from its constant appeal to our
desire of change and pathetic excitement; while the best feature of the elder art
appeal to love of contemplation. The best talents of all our English painters have
been spent either in endeavours to find room for the expression of feelings
which no master guided to a worthy end, or to obtain the attention of a public
whose mind was dead to natural beauty, by sharpness of satire, or variety of
dramatic circumstance.”2
Which painters did Ruskin refer here to, I’m not sure, but I know that the
circumstance he describes is still the same all over the world.

2
http://books.google.com/books?
id=kP76sQmVadQC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=john+ruskin+dead+for+natural+beauty&s
ource=bl&ots=jisFFNfkrr&sig=fUFIgFSJeN5JMh0oAfF6ZbJWEqw&hl=en&ei=isLhTNr8D4j5sg
abk9yEDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage
&q=satire&f=false, 16/11/2010
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books:
1. Erik Hobsbaum, „Doba ekstrema“ (Dereta, Biblioteka Istorijska merenja,
Beograd, 2002)

2. Hajo Düchting, „Vasilij Kandinski – Revolucija slikarstva“ (Biblioteka

ALTAMIRA, Zagreb, 2003)

3. Herbert Read, „Istorija moderne skulpture“ (Izdavački zavod

„Jugoslavija“, Beograd, 1966)

Web sources:
1. http://www.unirioja.es/listenerartcriticism/essays
/essay-EW-The-modern-and-the-maritime.htm, 15/11/2010
2. http://books.google.com/books?
id=kP76sQmVadQC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=john+ruskin+dead+for+natu
ral+beauty&source=bl&ots=jisFFNfkrr&sig=fUFIgFSJeN5JMh0oAfF6ZbJWEqw
&hl=en&ei=isLhTNr8D4j5sgabk9yEDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&res
num=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=satire&f=false, 16/11/2010

GLOSARY
Word (part Meaning Prevod
of speech)
Etruscan Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given Etrurski
to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding
roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its
creators the Tusci or Etrusci. Their Roman name is the
origin of the terms Tuscany, which refers to their
heartland, and Etruria, which can refer to their wider
region.
Etruscan art was the form of figurative art produced by
the Etruscan civilization in northern Italy between the 9th
and 2nd centuries BC. Particularly strong in this tradition
were figurative sculpture in terracotta (particularly life-
size on sarcophagi or temples) and cast bronze, wall-
painting and metalworking.
Bauhaus Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known simply as Bauhaus
Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts
and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to
design that it publicized and taught. It operated from
1919 to 1933.
Cubism Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, Kubizam
pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that
revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and
 inspired related movements in music and literature. The
first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, was
both radical and influential as a short but highly
significant art movement between 1907 and 1911 in
France. In its second phase, Synthetic Cubism, the
movement spread and remained vital until around 1919,
when the Surrealist movement gained popularity.
Dadaism Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Dadaizam
Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from
1916 to 1922.[1] The movement primarily involved visual
arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—
theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war
politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in
art through anti-art cultural works. Its purpose was to
ridicule what its participants considered to be the
meaninglessness of the modern world. In addition to being
anti-war, dada was also anti-bourgeois and anarchistic in
nature. Dada activities included public gatherings,
demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals;
passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were
topics often discussed in a variety of media.
Degenerate Degenerate art is the English translation of the German Degenerativna
Art entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in umjetnost
Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was
banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish
Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate
artists were subjected to sanctions. These included being
dismissed from teaching positions, being forbidden to
exhibit or to sell their art, and in some cases being
forbidden to produce art entirely. Degenerate Art was also
the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich
in 1937, consisting of modernist artworks chaotically hung
and accompanied by text labels deriding the art. Designed
to inflame public opinion against modernism, the
exhibition subsequently traveled to several other cities in
Germany and Austria.
Eclecticism The term eclecticism is used to describe the combination Eklekticizam
in a single work of elements from different historical
styles, chiefly in architecture and, by implication, in the
fine and decorative arts. The term is sometimes also
loosely applied to the general stylistic variety of 19th
century architecture after Neo-classicism (c. 1820),
although the revivals of styles in that period have, since
the 1970s, generally been referred to as aspects of
historicism.
Futurism Futurism was an artistic and social movement that Futurizam
originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It was largely
an Italian phenomenon, though there were parallel
movements in Russia, England and elsewhere. The
Futurists practiced in every medium of art, including
painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial
design, interior design, theatre, film, fashion, textiles,
literature, music, architecture and even gastronomy.
Non- A non-aggression pact is an international treaty Sporazum o
Aggression between two or more states agreeing to avoid war or nenapadanju
Pact armed conflict between them and resolve their disputes
through peaceful negotiations. Sometimes such a pact
may include a pledge of avoiding armed conflict even if
participants find themselves fighting third countries,
 including allies of one of the participants. It was a popular
form of international agreement in the 1920s and 1930s,
but has largely fallen out of use after the Second World
War. The most famous non-aggression pact is the 1939
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany, which lasted until the 1941 German
invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
Pop Art Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid Skr. od
1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. engleski:
Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's popular art) -
use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular popularna,
culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop pučka
removes the material from its context and isolates the umjetnost
object, or combines it with other objects, for
contemplation. The concept of pop art refers not as much
to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it.
Socialist Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which Socijalistički
realism developed under Socialism in the Soviet Union and realizam
became a dominant style in other communist countries.
Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having
as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism
and communism.