Sculpture: Method, Practice, Theory - Art History - Oxford Bibliographies 2025/4/9 23:31

Sculpture: Method, Practice, Theory

Martina Droth

LAST REVIEWED: 06 OCTOBER 2021

LAST MODIFIED: 26 APRIL 2018
DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199920105-0125

Introduction

What is sculpture? There is little consensus on how to answer this question. On the one hand, sculpture takes its place alongside
painting as a fine art, at the top of the hierarchy that has traditionally undervalued other forms of art. Unlike painting, sculpture has
had to work hard to maintain this exalted place because of its close affiliation to craft and decorative art. Holding onto its distinctions
has been a major preoccupation in the scholarship; consequently, the historiography is strongly inclined toward sculptures that
appear to manifest creative autonomy and individuality of expression—that is, sculpture ostensibly made as art. This formulation of
sculpture is European in origin and grounded in the assumed superiority of the classical tradition. On the other hand, a second,
much broader definition holds that sculpture potentially refers to any fabricated object which projects into physical space, regardless
of its original function, place of production, and whether or not it was referred to as sculpture by the culture that produced it. This
has made it possible to extend the category of sculpture into all global cultures from prehistory to the present. If appearing to
contradict the Eurocentric fine art narrative, this definition is nevertheless based on a similar principle: the prioritizing of formal,
aesthetic qualities over cultural meanings and functions. Sculpture may now appear to comprise a global and inclusive field, but the
European and, later, North American master narrative remains largely in place as an organizing principle for any cultural
manifestations of sculpture: that is, when artists, art historians, curators, or critics bring objects from other cultures into the
narrative, they frequently do so under the conditions of European sculptural standards, and within disciplinary, institutional, and
ideological frameworks that remain Eurocentric. This has been a way for art history to marshal an unruly, unquantifiable, and global
array of objects into a set of familiar taxonomies, often entailing the occlusion of the cultural specificity of objects made outside its
terms. In recent decades, this persistent, inbuilt pattern of assimilation has come under increasing pressure, in particular by the
adoption of new perspectives into art history—interdisciplinary methodologies drawn from fields such as anthropology, sociology,
material culture, or material religion. While this bibliography acknowledges these directions, its emphasis is on European and North
American historiography, reflecting sculpture’s development as an academic subject since the 19th century. The bibliography
thereby focuses on key concepts, theories, forms, and methods of sculpture as they developed within the predominant European
perspective. It highlights the conceptual frameworks that have shaped sculpture into recognizable art historical subjects, and
concludes with recent interdisciplinary approaches that take the study of sculpture into new directions. It considers historiographical
trends and represents key concepts that span across time, showing their inherent connections, and bringing to light the
predominant ideas that give sculpture structure and definition as a discrete field. Some citations were chosen because they played
an important role in shaping the field, while others engage analytically with the historiography, or conceptual and theoretical issues.
Collectively, this resource offers a critical tool for approaching sculpture—from Antiquity to today—as an art historical subject, and
for understanding how the priorities of art history have both constrained and enlarged its scope.

Overviews, Surveys, General Reference

Systematic chronological and geographic surveys of sculpture as a unified field have a limited historiography. They flourished in the

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19th century, with the development of art history as an academic field, but dropped off after the mid-20th century. The early surveys
are important historiographical documents in their own right, aligning sculpture to the emerging proclivities of art history. Commonly,
the survey traces a narrative of sculpture’s rise and fall and identifies its most evolved form with the art of ancient Greece (Lübke
1872, Marquand and Frothingham 1896). Broadly following the theories of Winckelmann (see Foundational Texts) and drawing
upon a limited corpus of objects, makers, and places, surveys naturalized the European authority of sculpture, resulting in a narrow
synthesis of its history. Even books that incorporated sculpture made by indigenous cultures in Oceania, Africa, the Americas, and
elsewhere, tended to remain indebted to this structure (Bazin 1981, Butler 1975). The survey went into decline with increasing
specialization which in effect splintered single chapters into monographs, thereby establishing newly independent sub-fields of
sculpture. The survey was further undermined by the globalization of art history, which rendered the subject too broad to be
effectively condensed into a linear format. The critical and historiographical legacy of the survey is examined by Harrison 2009.

Bazin, Germain. A Concise History of World Sculpture. New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1981.
By longtime chief curator of the Louvre. First published in French in 1968, and translated into several European languages. Later
editions expand the 20th-century material, but without alteration to the main text. Thus, the 1981 edition contains views about
primitivism and “Negro art” that recall an earlier era of scholarship.

Boström, Antonia, ed. Encyclopedia of Sculpture. 3 vols. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004.
Three-volume encyclopedia which offers key names, concepts, techniques, materials, and all major periods and cultures. Low-
quality black-and-white illustrations. Especially useful for subject headings, but less useful as a guide to artists since it adds little to
standardized information available online.

Butler, Ruth. Western Sculpture: Definitions of Man. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975.
Opens with a photograph of the Venus of Willendorf held in the hand of sculptor William Tucker—this speaks to Butler’s idea that
sculpture across the ages is connected by its roots in primal human impulses. Thematic and chronological.

Curtis, Penelope. Sculpture: Vertical, Horizontal, Closed, Open. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017.
Unusual survey structured according to sculpture’s common forms, orientations, and functions, suggesting surprising connections
between works of different times and cultures.

Duby, Georges, and Jean Luc Daval. Sculpture: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Cologne: Taschen, 2002.
Condenses an earlier French edition into one volume. Over 1,000 pages and hundreds of illustrations. The most comprehensive
chronological survey available today, covering all expected European and North American traditions. Lacks table of contents, index,
and bibliography, but offers good scholarship by respected art historians.

Dürre, Stefan. Seemanns Lexikon der Skulptur: Bildhauer, Epochen, Themen, Techniken. Leipzig: Seemann, 2007.
Single-volume encyclopedia of around 1,300 short entries addressing terms, concepts, artists, and writers. Interspersed with thirty-
one longer entries on key issues. Especially useful as a guide to obscure specialist terminology in the German language.

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Harrison, Charles. “Seeing Sculpture.” In An Introduction to Art. By Charles Harrison, 173–291. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2009.
A conception of sculpture based on the human figure. Considers the traditional European historiography while offering an
alternative global history. Addresses concepts and theories that complicate sculpture’s status in distinction to painting. Also see
Harrison’s “Objects in Transition” in the same volume (pp. 292–319).

Lübke, Wilhelm. History of Sculpture: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. Translated by F. E. Bunnètt. 2 vols.
London: Smith, Elder, 1872.
First published in German, 1863. Among the earliest books to offer a comprehensive history of sculpture separated from the larger
history of visual arts. Lübke believed an overemphasis on Greek art had resulted in scholarly neglect of important areas of Christian
sculpture.

Marquand, Allan, and Arthur L. Frothingham. A Textbook History of Sculpture. New York: Longmans, Green, 1896.
Early example of a textbook by two professors of art history at Princeton. Shows how sculpture was taught as an academic subject.
Includes a bibliography and list of addresses from which teachers could order photographs and casts of sculptures for the
classroom, showing that reproductions of sculpture went hand in hand with teaching in a growing educational market.

Read, Herbert. The Art of Sculpture. A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, vol. 3. New York: Pantheon, 1956.
Influential study that presents an evolutionary theory of sculpture, culminating with the artists Read most admired (Naum Gabo,
Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore, to whom the book is dedicated). Considers sculpture as a “primitive impulse” that connects
objects from different times and cultures. Shows Read’s interest in Jungian psychology.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Sculpture: Processes and Principles. London: Allen Lane, 1977.
A European history of sculpture from Antiquity to the 20th century focused on sculptors’ processes. Holds that great periods of
sculpture (esp. Renaissance) were the result of traditional practices; conversely, 19th-century methods are linked to sculpture’s
decline.

Journals, Series, and Electronic Resources

Sculpture has its own scholarly journal (Sculpture Journal) and a number of thematic essay and book series which foreground
conceptual and theoretical approaches to sculpture (Subject/Object and Essays on Sculpture). There are in addition a number of
resources oriented to practice and methods. The development of dedicated resources has been especially strong in Britain, where
the study of sculpture has benefited from the support of private funding bodies, such as the Henry Moore Foundation and the Public
Monuments and Sculpture Association.

Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660–1851. Edited by Ingrid Roscoe, Emma Hardy, and M. G. Sullivan.
Henry Moore Foundation.
Comprehensive open-access database of sculptors and their works, concentrating on Britain in the period between the late 17th

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and mid-19th centuries.

British Sculptors and Sculpture series. London: Lund Humphries, 1992–2015.

Long-running series of monographs supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, on the oeuvres of both familiar and lesser-known
sculptors active in Britain in the 20th century. Twenty-four volumes were published in the series, many providing the sole
monograph on an individual sculptor.

The Burlington Magazine. 1903–.

This well-established London-based monthly journal of fine and decorative arts annually publishes an issue dedicated to sculpture,
usually in November.

Conway Library.
Part of the Courtauld Image Libraries, the Conway Library, London, is a photographic teaching and research collection focusing on
architecture and sculpture. Over one million printed photographs are held as physical copies on-site, some of which have been
digitized. Approximately ten thousand sculptors are represented.

Essays on Sculpture. Leeds, UK: Henry Moore Institute, 1994–.

Essay series covering a wide range of topics, published by the Henry Moore Institute since 1994, often to accompany exhibitions or
research projects. Not available electronically.

Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951.
Open-access database of sculptors and related businesses and trades in Britain, from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th.
Includes listings of individual objects and exhibitions. Intended to complement and extend the Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors
in Britain, 1660–1851.

Pevsner, Nikolaus, ed. Pelican History of Art. 48 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953–.
Ambitious and long-running series of survey books in the history of art, launched by Penguin in 1953, with Pevsner serving as
general editor. The series includes several now-classic titles on sculpture, notably Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy,
1600–1750 (1958); Margaret Whinney, Sculpture in Britain, 1530–1830 (1964); Theodor Müller, Sculpture in the Netherlands,
Germany, France, and Spain 1400–1500 (1966); and Charles Seymour Jr., Sculpture in Italy, 1400–1500 (1966). Yale University
Press took the series over in 1992 and has continued commissioning titles.

Public Sculpture of Britain. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1997–.

Ongoing series of volumes developed by the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association as part of its National Recording
Project, which aims to document all public sculpture in Britain. Thirty volumes published to date, organized by region.
Complemented by an online database.

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Sculpture Journal. 1997–.

Important scholarly journal published by Liverpool University Press for the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. Dedicated
primarily to European and American sculpture. Publishes articles and reviews on a wide range of historical and contemporary
topics. Three issues per year.

Sculpture Magazine. 1992–.

Published by the International Sculpture Center (Washington, DC), a membership organization aimed at practicing artists and
especially active in North America. Offers interviews, articles, and reviews pertaining to international contemporary sculpture.
Published monthly.

Subject/Object: New Studies in Sculpture. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2003–.

Innovative series of essay volumes examining sculpture in a range of interdisciplinary contexts. Each collection focuses on a
distinct topic, such as archaeology, iconoclasm, psychoanalysis. Originated by the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK. Twelve
volumes published to date.

Foundational Texts

Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums of 1764 (Winckelmann 2006) is broadly acknowledged as foundational not only
to the history and theory of sculpture but to the discipline of art history as a whole. Even the most general overviews and surveys
(Overviews, Surveys, General Reference) of sculpture are colored by its basic tenets: that Greek sculpture represents the apex of
artistic achievement and provides a valid measure for all sculpture. To this day, it is hard to get away from Winckelmann—engaging
with sculpture critically still requires engaging with Winckelmann, whether one is in agreement with his ideas or not. It may be a
one-sided history of sculpture, but it is the one side that has dominated most others. The works by Winckelmann, Lessing and
Herder form a trio of texts concerned with the distinct qualities and limits of sculpture among other arts. Like Winckelmann 2006,
Lessing 1984 and Herder 2002 have been studied in relation not only to sculpture but also (and more so) to aesthetic theories. A
helpful synthesis of these texts, considered within the intellectual history of early writings on sculpture, is in Potts 2000 (see
Classical Bodies).

Baudelaire, Charles. “The Salon of 1846.” In Art in Paris 1845–1862: Salons and Other Exhibitions Reviewed by Charles
Baudelaire. Translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne, 111–113. London: Phaidon, 1965.
Review of the 1846 Salon which includes a famous and much-cited discussion of sculpture provocatively titled “Pourquoi la
sculpture est ennuyeuse” (why sculpture is boring or tiresome). Describes sculpture as a limited, exhausted art, which suffers from
its literalness and physicality, in comparison to painting. Also relevant to paragone debate (see Sculpture and Painting)

Herder, Johann Gottfried. Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from Pygmalion’s Creative Dream.
Translated and edited by Jason Gaiger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
First English translation of this landmark text, originally published in 1778 in German. While Lessing focuses on sight, Herder is
interested in touch and the sensorial, bodily experience of sculpture. Gaiger’s introduction situates the text in Herder’s philosophical
training and thought. Black-and-white plates illustrate fifteen of the classical sculptures referenced in Herder’s text.

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Hildebrand, Adolf von. “The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts.” In Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German
Aesthetics, 1873–1893. Edited by Harry Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou. Translated by Harry Francis
Mallgrave, 227–271. Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994.
First published in Germany in 1893. Influential theory about the perception of form and pictorial space. Centers on the concept of a
singular viewpoint that resolves a sculpture into an ideal pictorial unity. Especially important for conceptualizing relief sculpture (see
also Relief).

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Translated by Edward Allan
McCormick. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.
Originally published in German, 1766; this translation first published 1962; this edition reprinted with foreword by Michael Fried.
Lessing’s influential essay considers the distinctive domains and limits of different arts in a counterargument to Winckelmann’s
conception of classical art, taking the Laocoön as a point of departure.

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim. History of the Art of Antiquity. Translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave. Introduction by
Alex Potts. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2006.
This authoritative and accessible edition is, astonishingly, the first English edition of Winckelmann’s original text, written in German
in 1764. Alex Potts, author of a key study of Winckelmann’s work (see Potts 1994 under Sexuality), offers a helpful synthetic
introduction to Winckelmann’s text and its historiography.

Forms of Sculpture

Most writing on sculpture concerns itself with particular places, periods, cultures, or artists. Within each of these strands, sculpture
is often further divided into particular forms or genres—the figure, the portrait, the relief, etc. The literature has both been shaped by
these tropes and given them shape as distinctive categories, lending the field a sense of coherence and perpetuating the notion
that all sculpture essentially shares an underlying universal language. While analytical approaches to sculpture have shifted, the
utility of these categories has remained largely unquestioned. While earlier studies foregrounded the formal appearance of
sculpture, more recent studies have increasingly considered its contexts—for example, compare Erwin Panofsky’s broad pan-
historical narrative about tomb iconology from Egypt to Bernini (Panofsky 1964) to Nigel Llewellyn’s particularized history of tombs
made in England between 1530 and 1660 (Llewellyn 2000; both works are cited under Tombs). Sculpture’s forms can be cues for
generalization, or they can be teased apart into increasingly refined subjects. Either way, the scholarship can be seen to rely heavily
on a handful of broadly conceived categories of forms, with the double-effect of turning varied artifacts into objects recognizable as
sculpture while also conveniently dividing a vast history of artistic production into familiar categories of art. The literature on
sculpture is deeply inflected by the degree to which objects either correspond to, or depart from, these few recognized forms, and
most especially the European form of the figure. In early scholarship, this limited vocabulary was compressed into a homogenizing
narrative, which characterized sculpting as a primal, timeless impulse—the relative sophistication with which this impulse was
expressed in objects was related to the progress of civilization, as measured against the classical canon (e.g., Clark 1956).
Remarkably, this dependence on a small repertoire of genres holds true for considerations of non-European artifacts (which are
frequently grouped into recognizable categories of form) as well as for the study of modern artworks; thus, even when sculpture
goes beyond figuration, the human body often remains an essential point of comparison (see Modern Objects). The following
sections are concerned with sculpture’s most persistent and well-defined forms, and some of the themes they have prompted in
recent scholarship. It includes texts that use these tropes tacitly, as well as those that engage with them critically and
historiographically.

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Classical Bodies

Most conceptions of figurative sculpture take the classical body as the point of departure, either implicitly or explicitly. The accepted
authority of the classical tradition has enabled mainstream art history to extract a fairly coherent and streamlined narrative of
figurative sculpture out of a potentially limitless array of objects. The literature selected here sometimes simply reflects this
underlying order (Clark 1956), interprets it (Curtis 1999, Potts 2000, Prettejohn 2012), or argues against it (Ambrose 2013, Harrison
2009).

Ambrose, Kirk. The Marvellous and the Monstrous in the Sculpture of Twelfth-Century Europe. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell,
2013.
In distinction to the characterizations of Clark 1956 of the medieval nude as manifesting shame and sin, Ambrose puts forward
alternative interpretations of 12th-century stone carvings of monstrous bodies, showing the important inheritance of antique
prototypes.

Clark, Kenneth. The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form. A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts 2. New York: Pantheon, 1956.
Classic survey that famously distinguishes between “nude” and “naked.” Associates the “naked” bodies of medieval art with shame
and sin, in contrast to the ideal “nudity” of Greek sculpture. Although greatly outmoded, the book has remained remarkably
influential and is still in print. Ambrose 2013 can be read as a counterargument.

Curtis, Penelope. Sculpture 1900–1945: After Rodin 1999. Oxford History of Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Examines the resurgence of the ideal figure and archaic classicism in sculpture of the first half of the 20th century, focusing on
Europe.

Harrison, Charles. “Seeing Sculpture.” In An Introduction to Art. By Charles Harrison, 173–291. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2009.
Eloquent history of sculpture through the human figure. Argues that the privileging of classical traditions has created a narrow view
of sculpture. Offers an “alternative” history that takes the rich variety of non-classical representations of the human body as its
organizing principle, thus turning sculpture into a vast, global field.

Larsson, Lars Olof. Von Allen Seiten Schön: Studien zum Begriff der Vielansichtigkeit in der europäischen Plastik von der
Renaissance bis zum Klassizismus. Stockholm Studies in History of Art 26. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964
Seminal study of the concept Vielansichtigkeit (multiple viewpoints) with particular reference to the figura serpentinata. Returns to
Cinquecento sources in order to recover historical interpretations of these concepts.

Neer, Richard. The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture. Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 2010.
Intervention into the debate about the origins of the classical style in Greek sculpture. The realism of the classical style has long
been seen as representing a radical break from Archaic sculpture. Neer argues that, in order to understand this change, more
attention needs to be paid to the material and aesthetic qualities of the objects and their effects on the viewer.

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Potts, Alex. The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.
Important study that considers the distinctive qualities of sculpture from the 18th century through the 20th. Includes a detailed
reconsideration of Canova, the ideal body, and figurative sculpture.

Prettejohn, Elizabeth. The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture: Greek Sculpture and Modern Art from Winckelmann to Picasso.
New Directions in Classics 2. London: I. B. Tauris, 2012.
Argues for the persistence of ancient sculpture in modern art, intended to challenge the notion that the emergence of avant-garde
art necessitated a radical break from classical traditions. As well as countering orthodoxies of modernism, Prettejohn reconstructs
the history of the reception of the antique.

Nonclassical Figures

In the early 20th century, the indigenous arts of the Americas, Oceania, and Africa were avidly embraced by European and
American artists, scholars, and collectors. At a time of growing opposition to beaux-arts conventions, artifacts from these cultures
were welcomed for introducing a visual vocabulary that appeared utterly distinct from classical European traditions (Sweeney
1935). The concept of “Primitive Art” was invented to characterize the arts of cultures considered to be simpler and less evolved
than European ones, indicating the colonialist and racist lens through which they were regarded. The sculpted representation of the
human figure—as body, head, or mask—was key to this development, enabling nonclassical artifacts to be assimilated into
recognized figurative tropes and recast as sculptures in a framework of avant-garde art. Even the supposed “primitivism” of the
objects served a purpose within European and North American frames of meaning, as a polemical alternative to traditional ways of
ascribing value to art. Since this process of appropriation was bound up with assumptions about race and cultural progress, it also
highlights the ways in which racial stereotypes have shaped the categories of sculpture (see also Race). Museums played a major
part in turning so-called “primitive” artifacts into a category of figurative sculpture. The use of photography played a similar and
often related role (see Photography and Historiography). Recognition of the sophistication of the indigenous arts of the Americas,
Oceania, and Africa was slow in coming—a process that can be tracked through Flam and Deutch 2003. The citations listed here
include anthologies of historical texts that show changing scholarly and curatorial approaches. For a comprehensive bibliography of
the art history of African art, see the entry in Oxford Bibliographies Art, Art History, and the Study of Africa Also helpful are the
entries on Arts of the Pacific Islands. Also relevant is the entry Museums of Art in the West.

Barron, Stephanie, ed. German Expressionist Sculpture. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association
with the University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Catalogue to an innovative exhibition that examines expressionism through the medium of sculpture. The appropriation of African
and Oceanic art by the German artists included here is evoked through historical reviews and statements, reprinted to demonstrate
how this work, and its influences, were understood in the early 20th century.

Flam, Jack D., and Miriam Deutch, eds. Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History. Documents of 20th
Century Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Excellent collection of over seventy original texts that collectively trace an historiography of “primitivism” from its initial embrace by
modern artists in the early 20th century to MoMA’s controversial exhibition Primitivism in 20th Century Art in 1984 (Rubin 1984).

Harney, Elizabeth. “Canon Fodder.” Art Journal 66.2 (2007): 120–127.

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Critical review of three major exhibitions of contemporary African art: African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi
Collection, 2005; Africa Remix, Contemporary Art of a Continent, 2005; and A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad,
2003. Harney examines this series of projects as a “discursive space” that highlights the arc of African art’s relationship to the
mechanisms of European and North American art history. Includes an extended assessment of Thomas McEvilley’s contribution to
African Art Now.

Howard, Jeremy, Irena Bužinska, and Z. S. Strother, eds. Vladimir Markov and Russian Primitivism: A Charter for the
Avant-Garde. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2015.
A Russian perspective on the concept of “Primitivism” through the work of Latvian artist and theorist Vladimiar Markov. Part 1
consists of essays on Markov, including a chapter by Z. S. Strother on the interplay of text and photography in Markov’s book on
West African sculpture, one of the earliest texts on the subject. Part 2 consists of translations of selected essays by Markov (see
also Strother 2013 cited under Photography and Historiography).

McEvilley, Thomas. “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief: Primitivism in Twentieth Century Art at the Museum of Modern Art.”
Artforum 23.3 (1984): 54–61.
Devastating review of Rubin 1984. Critical of the ways in which tribal artifacts at the MoMA exhibition were appropriated as source
material for Europeanavant-garde art.

Rubin, William, ed. Primitivism in 20th Century Art. 2 vols. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1984.
Sweeney 1935 and Rubin 1984—both born from exhibitions at MoMA—read as the bookends of a period of Eurocentric
engagement with African art. The exhibition juxtaposed some 200 tribal artifacts from Oceania, Africa and the Americas with around
150 works of modern European art. Rubin 1984 was severely criticized for perpetuating no-longer acceptable appropriations of
“primitive” art. The exhibition and book precipitated a shift in attitudes and scholarly approaches to tribal arts.

Sweeney, James Johnson, ed. African Negro Art. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1935.
Catalogue to a landmark exhibition at MoMA that is now called out for the ways in which it downplays ethnographic readings and
instead recasts African objects as aesthetic works of sculpture important for European avant-garde art (see also Webb 2000, cited
under Photography and Historiography).

Portraits

In sculpture, portraiture is often discussed in relation to the interplay between naturalism and idealism and, in turn, between
individual subjectivity and a sense of timelessness and immortality. This also speaks to a key function of the portrait—to
commemorate—which is active in private as well as public or political portraits, if in different ways. Although portraiture, in particular
in the form of the bust, represents one of the most ubiquitous forms of sculpture (in many cases the bread-and-butter of sculptors’
professions), the study of the genre is spotty. Greek and Roman portraits tend to remain under the purview of classics without
necessarily penetrating broader histories of sculpture, despite their importance for later conceptions of the bust. Medieval,
Renaissance and Baroque portraits have been more widely studied (Little 2006; Lavin 1970; Bacchi, et al. 2008). For the 18th
century and later there are only isolated studies (Baker 2014, Milano 2015). The works listed here range across periods and treat
the bust either as a distinct form or (as in Kohl and Müller 2007 and Little 2006) in relation to the breaking apart of the traditional
category to encompass the head and fragment.

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Bacchi, Andrea, Catherine Hess, and Jennifer Montagu, eds. Bernini and the Birth of Baroque Portrait Sculpture. Los
Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008.
In-depth study of Bernini’s portrait sculptures with detailed catalogue entries to an exhibition that was presented at the Getty and
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Essays by the editors and by Steven S. Ostrow extend the discussion to broader considerations
regarding function, status, and typologies of portrait sculpture.

Baker, Malcolm. The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2014.
Major study that not only illuminates Roubiliac’s exceptional skills as a portrait sculptor but expands our understanding of the status
and function of the bust in the 18th century.

Kohl, Jeanette, and Rebecca Müller, eds. Kopf/Bild: Die Büste in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Munich: Deutscher
Kunstverlag, 2007.
Collection of essays reconceptualizing the bust from the medieval period through the 18th century, opening the category to include
sculpted heads. Opens with an essay on the phenomenology of the bust by Kohl, who has published extensively on aspects of
portraiture. Essays in German and English.

Lavin, Irving. “On the Sources and Meaning of the Renaissance Portrait Bust.” Art Quarterly 33.3 (1970): 207–226.
Important introduction of the development of the Renaissance portrait bust, tracing the transition from medieval reliquary busts.

Little, Charles T., ed. Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.
Many of the sculpted heads examined here are accidental portrait busts—fragments once attached to architectural figures in
doorways, portraits, and pillars, separated from their context by iconoclastic attack or neglect. This innovative exhibition shows how
antiquarians and collectors contributed to the survival of objects prized for their expressive power as portraits.

Milano, Ronit. The Portrait Bust and French Cultural Politics in the Eighteenth Century. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual
History 242, no. 8. Boston: Brill, 2015.
Compared to other aspects of the rococo, portrait busts have been largely overlooked. Milano posits the bust both as a distinct
sculptural genre with its own history and traditions, and as a culturally significant form that at the time was recognized for its
capacity to convey social and political values.

Monuments

The word monument can refer to a sculpture, building, pantheon, or tomb and is often used interchangeably with memorial, since
memorialization sums up the chief purpose of monuments. When monuments are explicitly associated with sculpture, the type that
is most commonly evoked is that of the public statue. In a practice dating back to Antiquity, kings, queens, emperors, empresses,
and dictators have erected portrait statues as symbols of their power (Droth, et al. 2014). Statue-building is synonymous with
coronations, inaugurations, royal birthdays and deaths, military campaigns, and regime changes (Benton 2004). Thus, in the
context of the history of sculpture, the monument is most often studied in relation to the political ideologies and pressures that gave

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rise to it. Scholarship on monuments is mostly specific to particular places, periods, or regimes—for example, Savage 1997 on the
American Civil War, and Bogart 1989 on civic sculpture in turn-of-the-century New York. Among the few broader studies is Michalski
1998. In the 20th century, the public statue became associated with totalitarianism, and a new self-consciousness developed about
its ideologically freighted connotations (Benton 2004). The genre was increasingly seen as outmoded, inadequate, and even
symbolically unacceptable, giving rise not only to new forms, but to anti-monumental forms and Counter-Monuments. Associations
with oppression and exclusion continue to haunt monuments in the 21st century, bringing sculpture into public debate.

Benton, Charlotte, ed. Figuration/Abstraction: Strategies for Public Sculpture in Europe 1945–1968. Subject/Object: New
Studies in Sculpture. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2004.
Thoughtful anthology that considers postwar public sculpture in relation to tensions between figurative and abstract modes of
commemoration, as mirrored in political confrontations between East and West. Includes several translations and presents
Hungarian, Finnish, and German case studies. Includes a useful appendix of reprinted texts that give a vivid sense of the critical
contexts.

Bogart, Michele Helene. Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989.
Important milestone which marked a new approach to understanding public sculpture in the context of its time. Considers the social,
economic, and cultural contexts that motivated the production and erection of public statues and memorials.

Cassidy, Brendan. Politics, Civic Ideals, and Sculpture in Italy c. 1240–1400. London: Harvey Miller, 2007.
Broad-ranging in scope, this book provides a synthetic study of the political and civic motivations that stimulated the production of
public sculpture in Italy, thus shifting the scholarly emphasis away from more conventional concerns with style and attribution.

Cherry, Deborah, ed. Special Issue: Afterlives of Monuments. South Asian Studies 29.1 (2013).
Collection of essays focusing on South Asia and the conception of its historic monuments. Case studies consider how monuments
have been documented, interpreted, preserved, defaced, remodeled, and redefined, through local and colonial agency. See
especially the editor’s introduction (pp. 1–14). See also Guha-Thakurta 2013 under Photography and Historiography.

Droth, Martina, Michael Hatt, and Jason Edwards, eds. Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention, 1837–1901. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014.
Catalogue to an exhibition held at the Yale Center for British Art and Tate Britain, with sections considering the political role of
sculpture in the Victorian era, in particular the deployment of monuments as symbols of imperial power.

Elsen, Albert Edward. Rodin’s Thinker and the Dilemmas of Modern Public Sculpture. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press. 1985
Classic study by an early leading scholar of Rodin examining one of the most famous works of modern sculpture, Rodin’s The
Thinker. Presents an exhaustive account of the statue’s origins, the controversy that surrounded it, and its impact in visual culture.

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McWilliam, Neil. Monumental Intolerance: Jean Baffier, a Nationalist Sculptor in Fin-de-Siècle France. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000
Monographic study of the French sculptor Jean Baffier, whose controversial career provides a lens for examining nationalism and
the politics of monuments and memorialization in the French Third Republic.

Michalski, Sergiusz. Public Monuments: Art in Political Bondage 1870–1997. Essays in Art and Culture. London: Reaktion,
1998.
Provocative history of public monuments which examines the political ideologies and propaganda campaigns that underpinned
statue-building. Focuses on key moments of political pressure in a European context.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Deeply researched study that considers the centrality of public sculpture in the aftermath of the Civil War.

Counter-Monuments

The monument’s strong association with imperialist and, later, fascist ideologies prompted the search for new forms of public
commemoration, often consciously in opposition to the trope of the figurative statue. A crisis of the monument is identified in the
literature by Musil 1987 and reflected in the creation of anti-monuments and counter-monuments (Quentin, et al. 2012). Non-
figurative monuments, however, asserted themselves slowly and often amid great controversy (Sturken 1991, Weyergraf-Serra and
Buskirk 1991).

Musil, Robert. “Monuments.” In Posthumous Papers of a Living Author. By Robert Musil. Translated by Peter Wortsman,
61–64. Eridanos Library. Hygiene, CO: Eridanos, 1987.
Essay originally published in Nachlass zu Lebzeiten, 1936. Pithy polemical article on the modern condition of the traditional
monument. Musil’s statement, “There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument” is frequently cited in scholarship
considering the crisis of the monument in the postwar era.

Quentin, Stevens, Karen A. Franck, and Ruth Fazakerley. “Counter-Monuments: The Anti-Monumental and the Dialogic.” In
The Journal of Architecture 17.6 (2012): 951–972.
How the purpose and traditional forms of the monument have been challenged in the 21st century, in particular those that seek to
express troubling histories. The authors analyze the terms used to describe contemporary monuments in scholarly literature,
distinguishing between “counter-monuments,” “anti-monuments,” and the “dialogic.”

Sturken, Marita. “The Wall, the Screen, and the Image: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial.” In Special Issue: Monumental
Histories. Representations 35 (Summer 1991): 118–142.
Since its inauguration in 1982, an extensive literature has accumulated around Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington, DC, now widely considered a touchstone for modern forms of memorialization. Sturken offers a partly feminist analysis
of Lin’s anti-monumental design and the reactions it provoked. Of particular consideration are the construal of Lin’s gender and

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ethnicity, and the perceived relationship of the memorial to modernist sculptural tropes.

Weyergraf-Serra, Clara, and Martha Buskirk, eds. The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents. October Books. Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 1991.
Detailed study of the controversy generated by Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, installed in New York City’s Federal Plaza in 1989, which
ultimately resulted in a court case and the removal of the sculpture. An important case study for considering the public discourse
around sculpture in civic space.

Widrich, Mechtild. Performative Monuments: The Rematerialisation of Public Art. Rethinking Art’s Histories. Manchester,
UK: Manchester University Press, 2014.
Sophisticated and original study of performance as a public art that appropriates and reconceives the function of the monument.
Rejecting the authoritarian qualities of traditional sculptural monuments, the “performative monument” represents an ephemeral
mode of interaction.

Young, James E. “The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today.” Critical Inquiry 18.2 (Winter 1992):
267–296.
Pivotal essay on the rise of the “counter-monument” (from the German Gegendenkmal), provoked by the “paralyzing” question of
how to adequately memorialize the traumas of the Holocaust. Pays particular attention to conceptual artists Jochen and Esther
Gerz’s Gegendenkmal (Hamburg, 1986).

Tombs

The survey of tomb sculpture in Panofsky 1964 is one of the only broad trans-historical studies of this sculptural form (recently
revisited by Adams and Barker 2016). In contrast, most tomb histories are either highly specialized or embedded within studies of
individual artists or periods. Tomb monuments also appear in architectural, archaeological, and classical studies, without
necessarily attending to the sculptural character of the structures (Naginski 2009). The citations included here point to a broader
engagement with sculptural programs of tomb monuments. Studies in British contexts are particularly strong (Baker and Bindman
1995, Craske 2007, Llewellyn 2000).

Adams, Ann, and Jessica Barker, eds. Revisiting The Monument: Fifty Years since Panofsky’s Tomb Sculpture. Courtauld
Books Online. London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2016.
Interdisciplinary essay volume that considers the reception and legacy of Panofsky 1964. First section reassesses Panofsky’s
analysis by returning to some of the tombs he examined and offering new readings. Other sections focus on tombs in the context of
the viewer and materiality.

Baker, Malcolm, and David Bindman. Roubiliac and the Eighteenth-Century Monument: Sculpture as Theatre. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
Ambitious study of Roubiliac’s ecclesiastical monuments, repositioning this sculptor as an important innovator of tomb sculpture.
Authored in two parts: the first (Bindman) sets the monument into its broader cultural framework, the second (Baker) presents a
detailed analysis of Roubiliac’s studio practice and the technical constructions of the monuments.

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Butterfield, Andrew. “Social Structure and the Typology of Funerary Monuments in Early Renaissance Florence.” RES:
Anthropology and Aesthetics 26 (Autumn 1994): 47–67.
Concise study of Renaissance funerary monuments that connects types of tombs to their social contexts, in order to discover norms
of tomb patronage and production.

Craske, Matthew. The Silent Rhetoric of the Body: A History of Monumental Sculpture and Commemorative Art in England,
1720–1770. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
Deeply researched study of the funeral monument in 18th-century Britain, focusing on major Flemish and British sculptors. Sheds
light on a rich and innovative corpus of works which has been largely overlooked by other scholars. Links the development of new
kinds of iconography to social and political contexts and changing cultures of death.

Llewellyn, Nigel. Funeral Monuments in Post-Reformation England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
First systematic study dedicated to funeral monuments in England between 1530 and 1660. Some five thousand were built during
the period, attesting to their significance. Rejecting stylistic analysis, Llewellyn takes his cue from visual culture and anthropology
for interpretinga form of sculpture that was primarily intended for ritual purposes.

Naginski, Erika. Sculpture and Enlightenment. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2009.
Sculpture here refers specifically to public monuments and buildings that were used for commemorative purposes in Enlightenment
France. Naginski’s impressive study argues that commemoration, and the physical forms it took, were reconfigured for a newly
secular and civic worldview. The book is structured as a series of case studies, from St. Denis to the Pantheon.

Panofsky, Erwin. Tomb Sculpture: Four Lectures on Its Changing Aspects from Ancient Egypt to Bernini. Edited by H. W.
Janson. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1964.
Classic survey by the ur-iconologist Erwin Panofsky. First presented as four lectures at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, in 1956.
Although superseded in its approach and methodology, this remains a standard and much-cited text, especially in relation to
Renaissance tomb sculpture. Panofky’s study is reconsidered in Adams and Barker 2016.

Relief

Relief can be high or low, flattened or almost in the round. It entails complicated perspectival constructions and combines pictorial
illusion with tangible forms. Relief thereby mediates between fictive space and actual space. For all these reasons it has an
important place in theoretical discussions about sculpture. In the context of Italian Renaissance art, relief appears in the paragone
debates, since it draws upon both painterly and sculptural elements (see Ostrow 2004 under Sculpture and Painting). Some of the
most provocative and influential texts dealing with relief appeared in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by writers like Walter
Pater (Østermark-Johansen 2011), Hildebrand 1994 (first published 1893), and Stokes 1934. But despite the historic significance
and ubiquity of relief as a sculptural form, few recent studies have contemplated its peculiarities in a sustained fashion. This shift
may partly be explained by the increasingly periodized and specialized nature of scholarship, which has moved away from the kind
of conceptual and speculative approaches that characterized earlier studies of relief.

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Cooper, Donald, and Mariko Leino, eds. Depth of Field: Relief Sculpture in Renaissance Italy. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007.
The first book dedicated to the examination of relief sculpture in Renaissance Italy. Although a central part of the art of the period,
the relief as a genre has eluded interpretation. The essays examine relief in the context of narrative, paragone, markets, and
reception history.

Hildebrand, Adolf von. “The Problem of Form in the Fine Arts.” In Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German
Aesthetics, 1873–1893. By Adolf von Hildebrand, 227–271. Translated by Francis Mallgrave. Santa Monica, CA: Getty
Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1994.
First published in 1893 in German as Das Problem der Form. This influential and contested theory of perception and pictorial space
was written by a sculptor. Hildebrand argued for the importance of a singular ideal viewing point, and the notion that all sculptures,
even those conceived in the round, should be perceived frontally like a relief.

Johnson, Geraldine A. “Art or Artefact? Madonna and Child Reliefs in the Early Renaissance.” In The Sculpted Object
1400–1700. Edited by Stuart Currie and Peta Motture, 1–24. Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1997.
Early Renaissance Marian reliefs considered collectively as a genre. Johnson analyzes different kinds of high and low relief, as well
as the use of color, which she argues developed in direct response to the increasing intensity of Marian devotion. An important
contribution to the study of relief as a specific sculptural mode.

Østermark-Johansen, Lene. Walter Pater and the Language of Sculpture. British Art: Global Contexts. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2011.
Examines Walter Pater’s ideas about sculpture but ranges well beyond this topic to a broad consideration of relief as a significant
hybrid form that was studied by some of the most influential aesthetic theorists in the 19th century. Includes an extended
examination of Hildebrand 1994.

Podro, Michael. “Donatello and the Planes of Relief.” In Depiction. By Michael Podro, 29–59. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1998.
Part of an extended meditation on the somewhat elusive nature of visual representation and seeing. Chapter closely examines a
number of Donatello’s relief sculptures, notably the shallow Donation of the Keys and Ascension of Christ. Podro’s description
remains among the most sustained engagements with the distinct spatial and planar qualities inherent in relief sculpture.

Stokes, Adrien. Stones of Rimini. London: Faber and Faber, 1934.

A major innovation of this text is its theoretical and psychological framing of materials and their methods. Stokes distinguishes
between modeling and carving not only as different practically, but in terms of their distinct effects and “feeling” that they produce in
the viewer. Although focusing on Italian Cinquecento art, this book is an indirect theory of direct carving in the early 20th century.

Modern Objects

The increasing visibility of artifacts from non-European cultures contributed significantly to eroding the authority of Eurocentric and
classical conceptions of sculpture over the course of the 20th century. Although these traditions did not entirely disappear (even in
objects made in opposition to them) they no longer represented the authoritative touchstones for sculpture’s content, appearance,

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or aspirations, nor for its materials and methods. Sculpture could be made of discarded or found materials, or it could simply be
found (Applin 2012). Just as European and North American curatorial and collecting practices had the effect of transforming almost
any cultural artifact into a work of art, so almost any object, properly aligned to art ideas and contexts, could become a sculpture.
Critics, curators, and artists emerged as significant voices for reshaping conceptions of sculpture, using exhibitions and periodicals
as the important vehicles for presenting these new ideas. In art criticism—especially as written by artists—the term “object” was
taken up as a concept that could better describe newly expandable conceptions of what sculpture could be (Burnham 1968, Fried
1967). The 1960s marks the key turning point for these developments, and is heavily represented in the literature both by texts
written at the time and by more recent scholarship returning to the period. To cut a path through this complex history, the texts
presented here are concerned with grappling with the disintegration of sculpture as a coherent category. Readers and Anthologies
are listed separately. For an expanded discussion of this topic and further references, readers should consult the article in Oxford
Bibliographies on Modern Sculpture.

Applin, Jo. Eccentric Objects: Rethinking Sculpture in 1960s America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.
Takes Judd’s seminal essay “Specific Objects” (Judd 1965) as a starting point to develop new interpretations of 1960s art,
foregrounding the “messy” works of Lee Bontecou, Claes Oldenburg, Lucas Samaras, H. C. Westermann, and Bruce Nauman.
Applin thereby seeks to complicate existing narratives which privilege the sleek, more austere forms of Minimalism.

Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. “Michael Asher and the Conclusion of Modernist Sculpture.” Art Institute of Chicago Museum
Studies 10 (1983): 276–295.
Pivotal essay positioning Michael Asher at the turning point of modernist conceptions of sculpture, which is equally significant for its
discussion of the changing status of sculpture and the material object since the time of Rodin.

Burnham, Jack. Beyond Modern Sculpture: The Effects of Science and Technology on the Sculpture of This Century. New
York: G. Braziller, 1968.
Pioneering reflection on the history and future of object sculpture. The book is divided into two halves: “Sculpture as Object,” which
offers a history of modern sculpture from Brancusi forward; and “Sculpture as System,” which considers a crisis of object sculpture
and envisions a technological future. Burnham’s ideas of a “systems aesthetic” remains an influential milestone in scholarly studies
of the period.

Diaz, Eva, Richard Flood, Massimiliano Gioni, et al. Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century. New York: New
Museum in association with Phaidon, 2007.
Published in conjunction with an innovative exhibition inaugurating the New Museum’s purpose-built space in New York. Focuses
on low-tech assemblage sculpture made from found and waste materials, and argues that this sculptural mode is redefining the
object of contemporary art.

Fried, Michael. “Art and Objecthood.” Artforum 5 (June 1967): 12–23.

Influential piece of art criticism which has become indelibly attached to any analysis of sixties art and Minimalism. Although hard to
pin down precisely, Fried’s polemical intervention into debates about the new art is essentially a repudiation of the “literalism” and
“theatricality” he identifies in Minimalism, and in particular the work of Judd and Morris.

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Judd, Donald. “Specific Objects.” Contemporary Sculpture: Arts Yearbook 8 (1965): 74–82.
Reprinted in Donald Judd Complete Writings 1959–1975: Gallery Reviews, Book Reviews, Articles, Letters to the Editor, Reports,
Statements, Complaints, 181–184 (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1975). Seminal essay by one of the
foremost artists associated with Minimalism which, contrary to Greenberg, replaces the medium-specific categories of sculpture and
painting with a broader and more diverse three-dimensional practice.

Krauss, Rosalind E. Passages in Modern Sculpture. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1981.

Groundbreaking and foundational study in modern sculpture theory. Locates modernism’s beginning with Rodin’s inversion of past
traditions; chronologically considers major works by Boccioni, Duchamp, Brancusi, David Smith. Ends with a “new syntax” for
sculpture in earthworks by Heizer and Smithson.

Krauss, Rosalind E. “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” In The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths.
By Rosalind E. Krauss, 276–290. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1985.
Canonical essay that traces the unraveling of the historical category of sculpture, as the logic of its central purpose—sculpture as
monument—is emptied out. Rodin and Brancusi are positioned at the threshold of this shift, as Krauss considers art of the 1960s
and 70s in relation to what sculpture is and is not (not-landscape, not-architecture).

Morris, Robert. “Notes on Sculpture.” In Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris. By Robert
Morris, 1–40. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1994.
First published in Artforum in 1966, 1967, and 1969, Morris’s series “Notes on Sculpture” is now seen as key in defining the
emergence of Minimalism. In distinction to Judd 1965, Morris considered the importance of the relationship between object and
viewer.

Schimmel, Paul, and Jenni Sorkin, eds. Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women 1947–2016. Los Angeles:
Hauser & Wirth in association with Skira, 2016.
Important book to an exhibition on postwar abstract sculpture produced by women, many of whom have been overlooked in
histories of the period. Includes essays by Jenni Sorkin and Anne M. Wagner, as well as a useful compendium of bibliographies and
exhibition histories.

Tucker, William. The Language of Sculpture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974.
Influential British sculptor and writer who published several thoughtful reflections on the conditions of modern sculpture. This survey
presents a familiar but personal narrative of sculpture’s revitalization beginning with Rodin and Brancusi, and attends to the
question of the object as a category of sculpture.

Readers and Anthologies

Although an extensive bibliography exists of anthologies of texts on modern art, few such collections focus specifically on sculpture.
The citations in this section include a useful anthology on 1960s sculpture first published in 1968 (Battcock 1995), as well as more
recent anthologies that cover the 20th century (Wood, et al. 2012), and contemporary sculpture since 1980 (Harper and Moyer

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2006).

Battcock, Gregory. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
First published in 1968, this useful collection of texts by writers of the sixties (art criticism, exhibition reviews, artists’ statements)
has become the classic anthology of Minimalism. Includes seminal essays grappling with changes in sculpture as a category, such
as by Fried, Judd, Morris, and Greenberg.

Harper, Glenn, and Twylene Moyer, eds. A Sculpture Reader. Perspectives in Contemporary Sculpture. Hamilton, NJ: ISC,
2006.
Anthology of over forty articles on the work of individual sculptors since c. 1980. Drawn from past issues of Sculpture Magazine.
Introduction by Karen Wilkin.

Wood, Jon, David Hulks, and Alex Potts, eds. Modern Sculpture Reader. Leeds, UK: Henry Moore Institute, 2012.
Excellent anthology of seventy texts pertaining to theories of modern sculpture. Notable for including many writings by sculptors.
Each entry is accompanied by a short contextual introduction. Includes both expected and lesser-known texts. Introduction by Alex
Potts.

Sculpture and Photography

The early 21st century has seen an upsurge in studies on photography’s relationship with sculpture, a growth that can be linked to a
broader interest in analyzing photography’s distinct role in the historiography of art. The invention of photography coincided with the
rise of art history as a scholarly field and offered a transformative medium for capturing and disseminating images of works of art.
Sculpture represented an important subject for early photographers—it lent itself to black-and-white depiction as it was itself often
monochrome (bronze, marble, or plaster); more importantly, it provided immobile subjects at a time when long exposures were
necessary. Photographs made visible a global world of sculpture that was otherwise unavailable to a larger public—from close-up
views of carvings high up on buildings to the artifacts of far-away cultures. The availability of such images allowed sculpture to
broaden its scholarly subjects, while also influencing and transforming encounters with sculptural objects. This symbiotic
relationship has been explored by scholars from a range of perspectives, perhaps most consistently in relation to early photography,
when the medium was seen as objective and truthful—a “Pencil of Nature” as William Henry Fox Talbot phrased it (Johnson 1998).
Deconstructing photographs to reveal the aesthetic choices involved in their making—framing, cropping, close-ups, depth of field,
and dark-room or post-production manipulation, as well as the atmospheric qualities of the medium itself—is now almost routinely
part of scholars’ analysis (Johnson 1998, di Bello 2013). The same questions have motivated scholarship examining photography’s
role in sculptural practice: how sculptors used photographs to document, interpret, and control images of themselves and their
studio spaces, as well as how they lit and staged their works in front of the camera (Wood 2001, Hamill 2015). A further important
strand in the scholarship is sculptors’ use of photography as a creative tool—prints that have been drawn on, edited, and collaged
in order to imagine new works (Johnson 1998), as well as the use of the camera to effect the transformation of ordinary objects into
“involuntary” sculptures (Dezeuze and Kelly 2013). The scholarship that considers photography’s influence in shaping the
historiography of sculpture is growing into its own distinctive field of inquiry and is treated in the section Photography and
Historiography. The interdisciplinary nature of the subject has resulted in strong essay collections as well as exhibition catalogues.

Dezeuze, Anna, and Julia Kelly, eds. Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art. Ashgate
Studies in Surrealism. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013.

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Essay collection on sculpture as an ephemeral, accidental, and involuntary product of photography. Introduction by the editors on
“involuntary sculpture” (from Brassai’s influential photo essay “Sculptures involontaires,” published in Minotaure in 1933).

Di Bello, Patrizia, ed. Special Issue: The Sculptural Photograph in the Nineteenth Century. History of Photography 37.4
(2013).
Interdisciplinary essay collection linking the representation of sculpture to the development and reception of photography. Topics
include stereoscopes, Roger Fenton’s interest in photographing sculpture as “nature morte,” picture postcards of urban statues, and
the sculptor/photographer Richard Cockle Lucas.

Hamill, Sarah. David Smith in Two Dimensions: Photography and the Matter of Sculpture. Oakland: University of California
Press, 2015.
Monographic study considering the sculptor David Smith’s use of photography to document his work and influence the way it is
perceived. While focused on one artist, this book opens up the wider question of how photography can shape the critical reception
and legacy of a sculptor’s oeuvre.

Johnson, Geraldine, ed. Sculpture and Photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension. Cambridge Studies in New Art
History and Criticism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Pioneering essay collection setting out different aspects of sculpture’s relationship with photography. Includes chapters on sculpture
as a subject for early photographers; photography’s dissemination of sculpture; and photography and the study of sculpture in art
history.

Marcoci, Roxana, ed. The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today. New York: Museum of Modern Art,
2010.
Catalogue to an innovative exhibition of some 300 photographs depicting or otherwise engaging with sculpture. Considers early
photographers’ interest in sculpture; the documentary role of photography; the ready-made and involuntary sculpture; the image of
the sculptor and the studio; and the photographed body as sculpture.

Wood, Jon, ed. The Sculptor’s Studio in the Age of the Camera. Leeds, UK: Henry Moore Institute, 2001.
Catalogue of a focused exhibition of images of sculptors’ studios. Draws subtle connections between individual works of sculpture
and their photographic representation. Considers iconic images, such as Brassai’s photographs for Minotaur in 1933, as well as
lesser-known archival photographs.

Photography and Historiography

In recent years, scholars have increasingly sought to deconstruct the ostensible objectivity of photographic documentation of
sculpture, paying particular attention to the imperial lens and the incorporation of tribal artifacts into a mainstream history of art
through the agency of photography (Ogbechie 2014). The belief in photography’s truthfulness historically underpinned its use as a
device for documentation (Bohrer 2011). In the history of photography, this notional neutrality has been thoroughly deconstructed
since the 1980s, notably with the publication of John Tagg’s seminal essay collection The Burden of Representation in 1988. But
this critical stance has been adopted slowly in other fields—including sculpture—where photographic documentation has played a

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central role. An early analysis of photographs of sculpture as an area of art historiography was published in Bergstein 1992. As the
citations here demonstrate, photography not only played a significant role in recasting artifacts for Western consumption but gave
birth to new disciplines of art history (Guha-Thakurta 2013, Ogbechie 2014).

Bergstein, Mary. “Lonely Aphrodite.” Art Bulletin 74.3 (September 1992): 475–498.
Important article on photographs of sculpture as an area of art historiography. Particular attention is given to Benjamin’s “Work of
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936) and Andre Malraux’s “Museum without Walls” (1947). Discusses the
homogenizing effect of photography in relation to the rise of the study of European, Asian, and African art in Britain and America.

Bohrer, Frederick N. Photography and Archaeology. Exposures. London: Reaktion, 2011.

Although not focused explicitly on sculpture, this study examines important archaeological excavations and considers how the
history of the discipline of archeology was enabled, shaped, and inflected by the photographic image.

Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. “The Production and Reproduction of a Monument: The Many Lives of the Sanchi Stupa.” In
Special Issue: The Afterlives of Monuments. Edited by Deborah Cherry, South Asian Studies 29.1 (2013): 77–109.
Case study examining the 19th-century colonial historiography of the ancient Buddhist stupa complex at Sanchi, India. The drive to
preserve the site was both physical and conducted through the agency of photography and other modes of imaging and copying
(see also Cherry 2013, cited under Monuments).

Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu. “Transcultural Interpretation and the Production of Alterity: Photography, Materiality and
Mediation in the Making of ‘African Art’.” In Art History and Fetishism Abroad: Global Shiftings in Media and Methods.
Edited by Gabriele Genge and Angela Sterken, 113–128. Image 54. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2014.
Examines the emergence of modes of photographic representation in the transformation of African sculptures into works of art to be
collected and catalogued. Offers helpful bibliographic references on the interrelationship between African art and the photographic
image.

Strother, Z. S. “Looking for Africa in Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik.” African Arts 46.4 (Winter 2013): 8–21.
Analysis of Einstein’s seminal 1915 study of African art, the first European treatise on the subject. Unpacks the strategies of
representation that homogenize works from twenty countries into an image of “African art.” Not only were the photographed objects
selective and staged, but they were doctored for representation. A powerful argument for the agency of photography in shaping art
history.

Webb, Virginia-Lee, ed. Perfect Documents: Walker Evans and African Art, 1935. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
2000.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Examines a little-known
portfolio of photographs by Walker Evans originally commissioned by Alfred H. Barr as a complement to MoMA’s 1935 exhibition
African Negro Art (see Sweeney 1935 under Nonclassical Figures). Barr intended the photographs to serve as educational tools to
teach about African art. Important contribution to the photographic legacies of MoMA’s pivotal exhibition.

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Sculpture and Painting

The paragone—a debate which originated in Renaissance Italy about the relative merits of the arts—is the most consistent context
through which scholars have considered the relationship between sculpture and painting. In distinction to Sculpture and
Photography, sculpture’s association with painting centers on comparison and historical notions of rivalry. The key themes of this
comparison are verisimilitude, illusion, materiality, color, and permanence. A large literature is concerned with the intellectual history
of the paragone through primary texts from the Renaissance through the 18th century (see especially Frangenberg 1995, Ostrow
2004, Lichtenstein 2008, Weinschenker, 2008). The study of an implicit paragone—that is, the analysis of works of art, rather than
written texts, as visual and material paragone arguments—has yielded a broader and in some cases more accessible scholarship
with relevance to pan-historical considerations of sculpture (Curtis 2009). The ramifications for 20th-century art and ideas of
medium specificity are explored in Lippard 1967. Additionally relevant material can be found in the sections on Color (especially
Krauss 1984) and Animation (especially Panzanelli 2008).

Curtis, Penelope, ed. Painting in Sculpture. Leeds, UK: Henry Moore Institute, 2009.
Catalogue to an exhibition of paintings depicting works of sculpture, ranging from the 16th century to the 20th. Unusual for bringing
together otherwise unrelated objects to examine the dialogue between the two media. Includes short essays by Etienne Jollet,
Fabio Barry, and David Batchelor.

Frangenberg, Thomas. “The Art of Talking about Sculpture: Vasari, Borghini, and Bocchi.” Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 58 (1995): 115–131.
On the art theory of three key Renaissance writers, focusing on the differences in their theoretical treatment of sculpture, relief, and
painting.

Lichtenstein, Jacqueline. The Blind Spot: An Essay on the Relations between Painting and Sculpture in the Modern Age.
Translated by Chris Miller. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008.
Originally published in French, 2003. Seminal study of debates about the rivalry between painting and sculpture as played out in
France between the 17th and 19th centuries. Highlights the theories of Roger de Piles, Diderot, Baudelaire, and others.

Lippard, Lucy R. “As Painting Is to Sculpture: A Changing Ratio.” In American Sculpture of the Sixties. Edited by Maurice
Tuchman, 31–34. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1967.
Polemical essay on the breakdown of the category of sculpture in the 1960s. Lippard argues that sculpture became more
interesting in the 1960s because it developed in response to the limitations of painting. Explores the notion of non-sculptural
sculpture and painting as object.

Mendelsohn, Leatrice. Paragoni: Benedetto Varchi’s Due Lezzioni and Cinquecento Art Theory. Studies in the Fine Arts:
Art Theory 6. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982.
Exhaustive study of two famous lectures published in Florence in 1550. The first deals with a sonnet by Michelangelo, the second
with the relative merits of painting and sculpture. Part 2 examines the sources of the paragone debate and nuances previous
analyses. Appendix with English translations of letters from eight artists to whom Varchi sent a questionnaire.

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Nagel, Alexander. The Controversy of Renaissance Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
On controversy over religious images in Renaissance Italy. Part 2, “Christ as Idol,” is especially concerned with religious images in
sculpture as well as sculptural visualizations in paintings.

Ostrow, Steven F. “Playing with the Paragone: The Reliefs of Pietro Bernini. For Rudolf Preimesberger.” Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte 67.3 (2004): 329–364.
Traces the distinctive relationship of relief sculpture to the paragone debate and reappraises the relief works of Pietro Bernini as
eloquent and deeply informed responses to contemporary theoretical issues.

Preimesberger, Rudolf. Paragons and Paragone: Van Eyck, Raphael, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Bernini. Translated by
Fiona Elliott and Sabine Eich. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2011.
Introduced by Gail Feigenbaum. Translation of texts previously only available in German and Italian. Five essays analyzing the
implicit presence of paragone debates in individual paintings and sculptures.

Weinschenker, Anne Betty. A God or a Bench: Sculpture as a Problematic Art during the Ancien Régime. French Studies
of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 21. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
Detailed study of the social and institutional contexts of French 18th-century sculpture. Chapter 4 offers an original contribution to
the study of the paragone by considering its “afterlife” in 18th-century France. Includes extensive references to primary literature.

Animation

Throughout history, and across all cultures, sculptures have been treated as if they possess an inner life and the potential to
become animated. Even though sculpture is generally static, and commonly made of solid, heavy materials, the notion that it
embodies a living presence has informed its meanings and functions, as well as viewers’ responses to it. This is particularly true of
figurative sculpture, which occupies physical space just like a living person. A familiar example of this phenomenon is the treatment
of religious statues, which were sometimes vividly painted to create illusory life-like effects, and carried through the streets on
religious holidays, literally putting them in motion (Kendall, et al. 2010). Worshippers have long invested religious sculptures with
healing powers, often desiring to touch and kiss them. These objects are often treated and handled with reverence, as if they have
feelings. Similar perceptions underpin the long-standing practice of erecting statues to powerful rulers. Statues project a sense of
permanence, unassailability, and power—both because they are symbols of the living person and because they appear to possess
a personhood of their own. The inner animus projected onto statues explains the impulse to desecrate them (see Iconoclasm).
Thus, statues can be objects of love for the same reasons they become targets for hate or dissent. The familiarity of the Pygmalion
myth—which is often used as a shorthand to invoke the living presence of sculpture—is indicative of how well-recognized the
phenomenon is. Studies of sculpture’s animism typically engage with the Pygmalion myth at some level, regardless of whether the
subject is classical or not. Several studies have analyzed the history of the myth itself (Gross 1992, Hersey 2009, Stoichita 2008),
while others have taken it as a point of departure for considering the theoretical, phenomenological, and psychological roots of
sculpture’s association with animation (Getsy 2014, van Eck 2015). Animation also relates to the study of Color and Materials and
Production insofar as they are often used to create the illusion of life in sculpture.

Getsy, David. “Acts of Stillness: Statues, Performativity, and Passive Resistance.” Criticism 56.1 (Winter 2014): 1–20.

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Insightful examination of the dynamic relationship between the active viewer and passive sculpture (in particular focusing on
statues). Posits this relationship as fundamentally distinct from the experience of two-dimensional art works, because of the shared
physical space that viewer and sculpture occupy.

Gross, Kenneth. Dream of the Moving Statue. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Classic study of the Pygmalion myth and the fantasy of statues coming to life. Explores the persistence of this trope across time
and media, including poetry, fiction, performance, and film.

Hersey, George L. Falling in Love with Statues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Quirky study of the Pygmalion myth connecting its historical origins in Cyprus and Ovid to modern automata and artificial life.

Kendall, Laurel, Vũ Thị Thanh Tâm, and Nguyễn Thị Thu Hu’o’ng. “Beautiful and Efficacious Statues: Magic, Commodities,
Agency, and the Production of Sacred Objects in Popular Religion in Vietnam.” Material Religion 6.1 (2010): 60–85.
Borrows from Gell’s influential anthropology of art, Art and Agency (Gell 1998, cited under Object Cultures), to examine the agency
of religious statues in the context of Vietnam. Mass-produced statues are compared to those handcrafted by master sculptors,
showing that materials and sculptural processes significantly qualify an object’s linh (aura, power, efficacy).

Panzanelli, Roberta, ed. Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute,
2008.
Essay collection on wax as a material for figurative sculpture, focusing on its power of verisimilitude and uncanny skin-like quality.
Case studies consider devotional effigies, anatomical models, and Madame Tussaud’s waxworks.

Papet, Edouard, ed. A Fleur de peau: Le moulage sur nature au XIXe siècle. Paris: Musée d’Orsay, 2001.
Catalogue to an exhibition held at the Musée d’Orsay and Henry Moore Institute. A separate catalogue was published in English
(Feeke, Stephen, ed. Second Skin: Historical Life Casting and Contemporary Sculpture. Leeds, UK: Henry Moore Institute, 2002).
Explores the relationship between life-casting and realism or verisimilitude in sculpture.

Stoichiță, Victor Leronim. The Pygmalion Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock. Translated by Alison Anderson. Louise Smith
Bross Lecture Series. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
A history of the “simulacrum”—magical, autonomous, and distinct from the copy—read through the Pygmalion myth. Reconsiders
Ovid’s text and examines Pygmalion’s appearance in medieval manuscripts, Renaissance art, 18th-century art and dance, and
finally photography and film.

Van Eck, Caroline. Art, Agency, and Living Presence: From the Animated Image to the Excessive Object. Studien aus dem
Warburg-Haus 16. Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015.
Takes Gell’s influential anthropology of art as a basis for exploring the phenomenon of viewers reacting to works of art as if they are
living presences (see Gell 1998 under Object Cultures). Although exploring similar terrain as Gross, Hersey, and Stoichita, Van
Eck’s aim is to develop a theoretical framework for understanding this phenomenon, arguing for an anthropological rather than an

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aesthetic approach.

Iconoclasm

Iconoclasm refers to the desecration of religious images, but the term is used more broadly to describe deliberate acts of
destruction, vandalism, or mutilation involving works of art. Where sculpture is concerned, these acts are closely bound up with
sculpture’s elemental function as a power symbol. Since Antiquity, rulers and leaders have erected statues of themselves as
ideological messengers and reminders of power. Although statues are symbols, they also become proxies for the living persons
they represent, as though the very act of portrayal lends them their own personhood. Statues become targets for attack because
they are caught up in the complex emotional responses provoked by the people and regimes they represent. It is not surprising
therefore that political resistance is often expressed in acts of iconoclasm on statues. The systematic removal of statues is a
hallmark of regime changes, as manifested in the history of colonial, fascist, and communist governments. The impulse to attack
sculpture extends beyond figurative statues and traditional monuments. The installation of abstract sculptural works in public
spaces can stir strong emotions among the people who use those spaces. It can be perceived as an imposition upon the use of
public land, as the controversial removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc highlights (Gamboni 1997; Weyergraf-Serra and Buskirk 1991
under Counter-Monuments). While iconoclasm is often studied in relation to political, cultural, and religious history, relatively few
studies consider the subject specifically from art historical perspectives; fewer still focus on its particular implications for sculpture.
This has begun to change only recently. Gamboni 1997 precipitated a number of studies that have made the field increasingly
accessible to art historians. Stacy Boldrick and Richard Clay have been at the forefront of the new wave of studies, extending
iconoclasm to broader contexts and focusing renewed attention on sculpture (Boldrick 2003; Boldrick, et al. 2013; Clay and Boldrick
2007). This growing interest can in part be attributed to high-profile media attention given to iconoclastic attacks on world heritage
sites, most recently at Palmyra.

Boldrick, Stacy, ed. Wonder: Painted Sculpture from Medieval England. Leeds, UK: Henry Moore Institute, 2003.
Exhibition catalogue that considers the concept of “wonder” in relation to idolatry and the mimetic qualities of painted medieval
sculpture. Draws out a collateral relationship between iconoclasm and polychromy, as fragments of broken sculptures that have lain
out of sight remained preserved with their painted surfaces.

Boldrick, Stacy, Leslie Brubaker, and Richard S. Clay, eds. Striking Images: Iconoclasms Past and Present. Burlington, VT:
Ashgate 2013.
Interdisciplinary essay collection that evolved from the research for an exhibition on iconoclasm at Tate Britain, Art under Attack
(2013). Brings together a wide range of geographical and cultural contexts. Of particular interest here are the chapters on Buddha
sculptures in Japan and Afghanistan.

Clay, Richard, and Stacy Boldrick, eds. Iconoclasm. Subject/Object: New Studies in Sculpture. Farnham, UK: Ashgate,
2007.
Important collection of essays that seeks to broaden the study of iconoclasm by considering iconoclastic acts not only literally but
conceptually. Essays consider different representational media, including Soviet monuments, French royal statues, and automata.

Gamboni, Dario. The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1997.

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The first wide-ranging art historical examination of iconoclasm in Europe. Presents numerous case studies of destruction wrought
on monuments, from the French revolution to key moments in the 20th century. Includes a comprehensive review of the literature
and further references.

Lindley, Phillip. Tomb Destruction and Scholarship: Medieval Monuments in Early Modern England. Donington, UK: Shaun
Tyas, 2007.
Detailed study of the destruction of medieval tomb monuments in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Chronicles the causes
and consequences of tomb destruction. Shows that the rise of hostility against religious images also spurred antiquarian interest in
and scholarship on the tombs.

Stewart, Peter. “The Destruction of Statues in Late Antiquity.” In Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity. Edited by
Richard Miles, 159–189. London: Routledge, 1999.
Statue destruction, an important aspect of classical studies, is here considered in the context of evolving iconoclastic traditions,
connecting secular iconoclasm to later manifestations of Christian iconoclasm.

Weyergraf-Serra, Clara, and Martha Buskirk, eds. The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents. October Books. Cambridge,
MA: MIT, 1991.
Detailed study tracing the commission, installation, and controversial removal and destruction of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, installed
in New York City’s Federal Plaza in 1989.

Color

Whether applied to the surface or achieved through the incorporation of colorful materials, the presence of color in sculpture is
more often the norm than the exception. Despite this, the history of color in sculpture is problematic and controversial. One reason
for this comes down to a fundamental misconception: the long-held characterization of classical sculpture as a monochrome art.
Although this misconception has been thoroughly dismantled and disproven, the myth that color is at odds with sculpture remains
deeply culturally ingrained. This is partly due to the narrow European narrative that has characterized the history of sculpture, and
because the objects at the root of this narrative remain monochrome, which means that knowledge of their former colored state has
to be imagined rather than seen. This disconnection has motivated some innovative recent scholarship. Brinkmann and Wünsche
2007 made a dramatic impact by presenting reconstructions of colored antique sculptures, based on detailed technical analysis of
paint fragments. The fresh, bright colors of these reconstructed objects made for unsettling viewing, a good indicator of how alien
polychromy remains to prevailing expectations about sculpture. In a further intervention, Bond 2017 outlines the racial implications
and consequences of ignoring the presence of color in ancient sculptures. Another important area of the scholarship focuses on the
intellectual, cultural, and artistic history of colored sculpture—how artists engaged with color and debates about its fittingness for
sculpture (Blühm 1996, Hatt 2014); the perceptual effects of color, such as the uncanny lifelikeness of colored figures (Panzanelli,
et al. 2008); and the symbolic and cultural meanings of specific colors and materials (Barry 2007, Barry 2011). Color also has an
important racial and colonial history. Whiteness symbolizes skin color and purity, and is deeply associated with classical culture
through the medium of white marble. The concept of the “whitewashing” of religious sculpture has been explored by scholars both
as a physical act—that is, the removal of color—and as an act of reinterpretation that undermines the cultural specificity of an
object’s coloration (Ebbinghaus 2011). In the context of 20th-century sculpture a key debatealso concerns ideas of whitewashing:
Clement Greenberg’s theory of medium specificity and his rejection of applied color in sculpture, which later was manifested in
relation to his physical stripping of paint from works by David Smith (Krauss 1984). Thus, sculpture’s relationship to color continues
to remain controversial and unsettled. The citations listed here consider both specific meanings and larger implications of color for

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the historiography of sculpture.

Barry, Fabio. “Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” The Art Bulletin 89.4 (2007): 627–656.
Interpretation of the materiality of floors in ancient and medieval churches, which are often overlooked in studies of the buildings.
Proposes that the use of colored marbles evoked associations with the sea and by extension the cosmos.

Barry, Fabio. “A Whiter Shade of Pale: Relative and Absolute White in Roman Sculpture and Architecture.” In Revival and
Invention: Sculpture through its Material Histories. Edited by Sébastien Clerbois and Martina Droth, 31–62. New York:
Peter Lang, 2011.
Examines the use of white marble in Roman sculpture and architecture. Argues for an understanding of whiteness as a condition of
radiance, rather than as an absence of color.

Blühm, Andreas, ed. The Colour of Sculpture 1840–1910. Zwolle, The Netherlands: Waanders, 1996.
Catalogue to an exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum and the Henry Moore Institute examining color in 19th-century sculpture,
mainly in the context of Britain and Continental Europe. Insightful essays by Andreas Blühm, Alison Yarrington, Philip Ward-
Jackson, and June Hargrove. Chronology of the use of color explored across almost one hundred objects (illustrated in color),
bringing to light many unusual and lesser-known works.

Bond, Sarah E. “Why We Need to Start Seeing the Classical World in Color. Hyperallergic (June 7, 2017).
Considers the racial implications of ancient sculpture’s associations with whiteness, showing that misconceptions about color in the
ancient world became a basis for ideologies about skin-tone, physiognomy, and racial superiority in the 19th and early 20th
centuries. Argues that this historiography continues to have repercussions in both public perception and specialist studies.

Brinkmann, Vincenz, and Raimund Wünsche, eds. Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity. Munich:
Stiftung Archäologie Glyptothek, 2007.
Catalogue to a groundbreaking exhibition that reconstructed the dazzling color schemes of ancient sculptures. Although it has long
been established that ancient statues had once been painted, this study for the first time demonstrated the evidence visually.

Diederen, Roger, and Christoph Kürzeder. Mit Leib und Seele: Münchner Rokoko von Asam bis Günther. Munich:
Sieveking, 2014.
Beautifully illustrated catalogue to a major exhibition held at Kunsthalle, Munich, focusing on the vibrant and dramatic sculpture of
the Bavarian Rococo. Brings out the sensuality and lifelike qualities of painted religious statuary and church sculptures.

Ebbinghaus, Susanne, ed. Special Issue: Superficial? Approaches to Painted Sculpture. Source: Notes in the History of
Art 30.3 (Spring 2011).
Interdisciplinary essay collection that examines painted sculpture in different historical and geographic contexts. Includes case
studies that show how colonial conceptions of classical whiteness impacted on the study of ancient sites inSouth Asia, China, and
Mesoamerica.

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Hatt, Michael. “Transparent Forms: Tinting, Whiteness and John Gibson’s Venus.” Sculpture Journal 23.2 (December
2014): 185–196.
On the use of color in sculpture in the 19th century, focusing on John Gibson’s Tinted Venus, a statue usually understood as
sensational and controversial. Hatt offers a more nuanced interpretation that connects color tinting with cultural signifiers of
whiteness.

Krauss, Rosalind E. “Changing the Work of David Smith.” Art in America 62 (May 1984): 30–34.
Famous public dispute in which Krauss attacks Greenberg for stripping paint from sculptures by David Smith, arguing that this is
intended to align the sculptures to Greenbergian ideas. Greenberg’s published response, and Krauss’s further riposte, make this a
pivotal argument in debates about color in modern sculpture.

Panzanelli, Roberta, Eike D. Schmidt, and Kenneth D. S. Lapatin, eds. The Color of Life: Polychromy in Sculpture from
Antiquity to the Present. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Research Institute, 2008.
Catalogue to a major exhibition of polychrome sculpture from Antiquity to the 20th century. Includes reconstructions of color
schemes on classical sculpture, and color plates of lesser-known works. An essay by Alex Potts connects historical controversies
with modern and contemporary debates.

Taubert, Johannes, ed. Polychrome Sculpture: Meaning, Form, Conservation. Translated by Carola Schulman. Los
Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2015.
Translation and extended edition. Originally published in German in 1978. A series of case studies of German altarpieces and
religious statues. Considers art historical questions and presents detailed technical analysis.

Sexuality

Sexuality is important to the consideration of sculpture in a number of distinct ways, most obviously in how it pertains to the naked
human body. Winckelmann and the classical nude represent major themes of scholarship. The male nude and homoeroticism are
considered by Potts 1994 and Davis 2010; it is also a subject for Randolph 2002 in the context of Donatello’s sculpture, although
here it is argued that too much has been made of the classical nude as a genealogy. The female nude is an equally important
strand of the scholarship and a key locus for feminist art theories and gender studies. Arscott and Scott 2000 and Salmon 1996
take up tropes of female nudity as inaugurated by classical statues of Venus, examining their persistence in art and thought. Both
studies show the important role that classical traditions have played in the construction of femininity and female sexuality. Other
considerations of sculpture and sexuality include ancient traditions of phallic sculpture and depictions of sexual intercourse (see the
essay on the phallus in wax sculpture in Panzanelli 2008, cited under Animation), along with anthropological interest in the sexual
practices of tribal cultures (African sculptures were frequently read in terms of sexual function), which can be seen as an
undercurrent in many early-20th-century texts (see Flam and Deutch 2003, under Nonclassical Figures).

Arscott, Caroline, and Katie Scott, eds. Manifestations of Venus: Art and Sexuality. The Barber Institute’s Critical
Perspectives in Art History. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000.
Essay collection considering the classical statue of Venus de Milo as a ubiquitous locus for interpreting sexuality in European art.

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Davis, Whitney. Queer Beauty: Sexuality and Aesthetics from Winckelmann to Freud and Beyond. Columbia Themes in
Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Collection of ten essays that considers European intellectual writings and philosophies of art in relation to sexuality, aesthetics, and
the homoerotic.

Getsy, David J. Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010.
Critical interpretation of established narratives of modern sculpture, in which Rodin’s pivotal position rests on ideas of sexuality and
virility. Seeks to go beyond familiar platitudes, suggesting that the tactile sensuality of Rodin’s nudes projected a sense of the
scenes of creation.

Hatt, Michael. “Near and Far: Homoeroticism, Labour and Hamo Thornycroft’s Mower.” Art History 26.1 (2003): 26–55.
Interpretation of the figure of a Mower by the sculptor Hamo Thornycroft as homoerotic and informed by a homosocial relationship
between the artist and the poet Edmund Gosse.

Nixon, Mignon. Fantastic Reality: Louise Bourgeois and a Story of Modern Art. October Books. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2008.
Reappraisal of the work and career of Louise Bourgeois in a psychoanalytic feminist context. Offers new readings of the phallic and
patriarchal symbols that Bourgeois became famous for by examining the artist’s motives through the child analysis pioneered by
Melanie Klein.

Potts, Alex. Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
It is possible to read entire exegeses on Winckelmann without coming into contact with his specific considerations of physical
objects of sculpture. This pivotal analysis pays attention to Winckelmann’s distinctive conceptions of the homoerotic content of ideal
sculpture.

Randolph, Adrian W. B. Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2002.
Provocative and contested study of gendered viewing in Renaissance Italy. The chapter on Donatello’s David looks at various
interpretations of its nudity and considers it in the context of male spectatorship and homosocial relationships.

Salmon, Nanette. “The Venus Pudica: Uncovering Art History’s ‘Hidden Agendas’ and Pernicious Pedigrees.” In
Generations and Geographies in the Visual Arts: Feminist Readings. Edited by Griselda Pollock, 69–86. London and New
York: Routledge, 1996.
Critical examination of the ubiquitous trope of Venus Pudica—the representation of an idealized female nude covering her pubis
with her hand. Traces its ancient and modern interpretations in relation to constructions of female sexuality.

Wagner, Anne Middleton. Mother Stone: The Vitality of Modern British Sculpture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,

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2005.
Argues that the image of the reproductive, maternal body became a central trope of modern British sculpture and a catalyst for new
sculptural idioms—a facet of modernism rarely acknowledged in standard narratives.

Race

Sculpture has a complex relationship with race and racial politics (often also intersecting with gender), which raises questions about
sculpture at multiple levels, and about the nature of art history itself. Historically, as a profession, sculpture was predominantly white
and male, and its subjects were orientated toward classical representation and portraits of wealthy or socially prominent individuals.
These tendencies are both reflected and perpetuated in the subjects that art history has traditionally prioritized. Since the 1990s,
there has been a growth in scholarship that is critically engagedwith sculpture’s relationship to race: in the context of materials,
color, and skin tone (see Bond 2017, under Color); in studying the experiences and works of sculptors of color; and in attending to
depictions of non-European peoples as a distinctive trope. These strands of inquiry complicate both the history of sculpture and
how it is studied. The depiction of non-European peoples activates distinct sculptural qualities that otherwise remain latent or
neutral—for example, imparting a figural register to the color of materials which is otherwise absent (Droth and Hatt 2016). In fields
such as anthropology, ethnography, and phrenology, sculpture—not unlike photography—was used to construct racial categories
that drew part of their power from the supposed objectivity and accuracy of the medium. Such ethnographic portraiture occupied a
middle ground between documentary representation and work of art. While this duality was negotiated successfully by some artists,
most famously the French sculptor Charles Cordier (Smalls 2013), sometimes led to perceptions of artistic inferiority, a problem also
shared by photography. Ethnographic portraiture’s separation from the art historical mainstream partly explains its conspicuous role
in the careers of women sculptors—it provided a niche outside competitive fine art circles (Kinkel 2011, Ater 2011). At certain
historical moments, depictions of individuals of color became particularly important for the broader construction of the category of
sculpture. The end of the American Civil War created a new impetus for portraying African individuals in public monuments and
statues—modes of sculpture that until then were the preserve of white and mostly male figures (Savage 1997). Today, racial politics
and the marginal position of Black artists in collections and the art market are explored by artists in all media, and relevant
discussions are not limited to sculpture. Most of the citations listed here focus on individual careers and historical moments, at the
same time as they helpfully broach issues with wider ramifications for the implications of race in the history and study of sculpture.

Ater, Renée. Remaking Race and History: The Sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller. The George Gund Foundation Imprint in
African American Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
First substantive study dedicated to the overlooked African American sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller. Examines the artist’s work in the
context of racial politics.

Bindman, David, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. Image of the Black in Western Art. 5 vols. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 2010–2014.
Extensive illustrated scholarly survey of works of art depicting peoples of African descent. Each volume spans a different period,
beginning with representation of Black peoples in the ancient world.

Buick, Kirsten Pai. Child of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian Subject.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Examination of the racial and gender politics that shaped the career and reception of the African American and Native American
sculptor Mary Edmonia Lewis.

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Droth, Martina, and Michael Hatt, eds. Special Issue: The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers: A Transatlantic Object. Nineteenth
Century Art Worldwide 15.2 (Summer 2016).
Collection of interdisciplinary essays focusing on Hiram Powers’s statue The Greek Slave (1844), which became a touchstone for
discussions of race, slavery, and abolition in the era before and after the American Civil War.

Kinkel, Marianne. Races of Mankind: Malvina Hoffman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Monograph on Malvina Hoffman’s statues and busts depicting the “races of mankind,” which were commissioned (and are still
owned) by the Field Museum, Chicago, in the 1930s. Hoffman’s work has been surprisingly little studied, despite its significance for
understanding racial and ethnographic debates in the early 20th century.

Nelson, Steven. “Freeman Murray and the Beginnings of an African American History of Art.” In Art History and Its
Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline. Edited by Elizabeth Mansfield, 283–294. London: Routledge, 2002.
Analysis of a seminal study published in 1916 by the civil rights activist Freeman Murray, the first text of African American art history
and the first critical exposition on representations of Black people in American sculpture.

Nelson, Charmaine. The Color of Stone: Sculpting the Black Female Subject in Nineteenth-Century America. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Examines race and sexuality in relation to color and depiction in sculpture, in particular white marble, the staple material of 19th-
century figurative sculpture.

Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
On public sculpture and the American Civil War. Analyzes the racial politics that led to an unprecedented monument building
campaign, often underpinned by the contradictory hope that sculpture would mark consensus and closure. Shows how sculptural
tropes were marshaled to represent new subjects, notably the freed and enslaved Black body.

Smalls, James. “Exquisite Empty Shells: Sculpted Slave Portraits and the French Ethnographic Turn.” In Slave Portraiture
in the Atlantic World. Edited by Agnes Lugo-Ortiz and Angela Rosenthal, 283–313. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2013.
Insightful analysis of the relationship between European portrait busts and ethnography. Reconsiders Charles Henry Joseph
Cordier’s busts of types raciaux in the politics of slavery.

Materials and Production

Materials and methods of production are integral to the understanding of sculpture but until recently have remained detached from
mainstream art historical inquiry. Scholarship in this area is fragmented, although a number of emphases and strands can be
identified. As with sculpture generally, research tends toward specialization, sometimes dealing with individual materials trans-
historically (such as Bushart and Haug 2016, cited under Interpretation and Material Iconology on bronze, Panzanelli 2008, cited

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under Selected Studies, on wax) but more often focusing on particular periods, cultures, and artists (such as Baxandall 1980, cited
under Interpretation and Material Iconology, Cole 2002, Levy and Mangone 2016, both cited under Selected Studies). Only a
handful of materials have attracted significant attention. For bronze, a well-studied material, the scholarship tends to concentrate on
classical and Early Modern works which are relatively rare and highly prized. Much less attention is given to postindustrial bronzes,
which are numerous and often considered of inferior quality. Apparently provisional, perishable, and process-related materials, such
as plaster and clay, tend to have less status and visibility and are treated only in isolated studies, despite representing the most
common and essential components of sculptural production (Marchand and Frederickson 2010, cited under Reproduction). Thus,
trends in the historiography are not a reflection of the historical prevalence of materials, or their sculptural importance, but rather
align to art historical proclivities for certain artists and periods. Although materials go hand in hand with technical processes,
scholars tend to treat these two areas in distinct ways. Materials are often approached with an emphasis on interpretation, and
have come to play an integral part in sculpture’s broader historiography. Some of the most innovative and progressive studies of
sculpture have focused on the meanings and agency of materials (see Interpretation and Material Iconology). In contrast, the
literature on techniques and processes is weighted toward empirical description and explication, and is often disconnected from the
cultural, social, and economic circumstances of sculptural practice (see Instruction). This disconnection has had far-reaching
implications for the way in which sculpture has been constructed as a scholarly field, divorcing a thorough comprehension of how
sculpture is made from the question of why sculpture looks the way it does. This lack of integration accounts for the emphasis on
sculpture as image and subject, reflecting the priority traditionally given to finished objects, rather than to the material cultures out of
which they arose. This section includes books of historiographical importance as well as recent titles that have broken new ground.
Readers interested in specific materials will find extensive further readings in the items listed here.

General, Reference

The texts cited here provide broad overviews of a diverse range of materials, taking account of their properties, origin, rarity, and
uses. They consider not only traditional materials associated with canonical artists and objects, such as marble, bronze, clay, but
also less obvious ones, such as shell, bone, and onyx, as well as modern or unorthodox materials like tin and felt. By virtue of
approaching sculpture through its materials, the scope of inquiry opens to a broad corpus of objects. Penny 1993 represents an
early example of a global, trans-historical study of sculpture, which should also be noted for incorporating decorative objects and
artifacts that more often are treated as distinct from sculpture.

Bassett, Jane, and Peggy Fogelman. Looking at European Sculpture: A Guide to Technical Terms. London and Los
Angeles: Victoria and Albert Museum and the John Paul Getty Museum, 1997.
In-depth alphabetical guide providing summary explanations of terms pertaining to the functions, forms, applications, methods, and
techniques of European sculpture. Based on the collections of the John Paul Getty Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Lipińska, Aleksandra, ed. Materiał Rzeźby: Mie̜ dzy Technika̜ a Semantyka̜ . Material of Sculpture: Between Technique and
Semantics. Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis 3156. Wrocław: Wydawn Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2009.
In Polish with summaries in English, German, or Italian. Divided into thematic sections, including state of the field of material
research; approaches to object-based research; hierarchies of materials; multiplicity and synthesis of materials in Baroque interiors;
trade in materials and influence on material choices; nontraditional materials after the 19th century; photography as a material for
sculptural practice.

Penny, Nicholas. Materials of Sculpture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
Global survey covering a wide range of materials. Each chapter considers a discrete material and how its properties determine its
use and the appearance of objects fashioned from it. Considers varieties of stones, wood, ivory, horn, clay, wax, bronze, and other
metals.

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Pingeot, Anne, ed. Sculpture Française, XIXe siècle. Paris: La Reunion des Musées Nationaux in association with
Ministère de la culture et de la communication, 1986.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris, this major study charts the history of sculptural practice in
France, from sculptors’ training to studio practice and manufacturing. Although focused on 19th-century French sculpture, this
comprehensive book provides a helpful survey of the key materials and methods of sculpture, with examples of their application.

Trusted, Marjorie, ed. The Making of Sculpture: The Materials and Techniques of European Sculpture. London: Victoria
and Albert Museum, 2007.
Considers individual materials with an emphasis on the technical processes used to work them. Limited to objects in the V&A
collections. Includes a valuable bibliography arranged by materials.

Wagner, Monika, Dietmar Rübel, and Sebastien Hackenschmidt, eds. Lexikon des Künstlerischen Materials: Werkstoffe der
Modernen Kunst von Abfall bis Zinn. Beck’sche Reihe 1497. Munich: Beck, 2002.
A-Z of materials beginning with Abfall (rubbish) and ending with Zinn (tin). Covers a comprehensive range of traditional materials as
well as unorthodox ones (e.g., blood, fat, feathers). Most entries span at least two or three pages and include useful bibliographic
references.

Interpretation and Material Iconology

An increasingly important strand in the study of sculpture focuses on interpretative approaches to materials; that is, an
understanding of materials as “Bedeutungsträger” (carriers of meaning). In Germany this approach is referred to as
Materialikonologie (material iconology, or an iconology of materials), outlined as early as Bandmann 1969 and gaining traction with
Raff 1994. Research concentrations in Hamburg and Berlin have resulted in a number of innovative studies. The term
Materialikonologie is chiefly in use in Germany, and even its translated form is not generally in use in English-language scholarship.
However, similar or related concepts can be identified in several of the studies listed here.

Baker, Malcolm. “Limewood, Chiromancy and Narratives of Making: Writing about the Materials and Processes of
Sculpture.” Art History 21.4 (December 1998): 498–530.
Baxandall 1980 ranks among the influential texts of art history, but, as Baker points out, this is more for its contribution to Northern
art and approach to description than for its innovative study of materials and sculptural practice. Baker considers the ways in which
Baxandall’s notion of chiromancy can be usefully extrapolated to sculptural processes in other contexts.

Bandmann, Günter. “Bemerkungen zu Einer Ikonologie des Materials.” Städel-Jahrbuch 2.2 (1969): 75–100.
Early essay setting out parameters for interpretative possibilities in the study of materials through a range of historical examples.
See Raff 1994 for an examination and critique of Bandmann’s contribution to the field of Materialikonologie.

Baxandall, Michael. The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980.

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A key text of art history, although historiographically Baxandall’s impact is perhaps more often considered in relation to his study
Paintings and Experience (1972), which introduced his concept of the “period eye.” The Limewood Sculptors explores this idea
further, while also delving into ideas about materiality and the particular character of limewood. See especially the mesmerizing
chapter on chiromancy.

Bushart, Magdalena, and Henrike Haug. Formlos-Formbar: Bronze als Künstlerisches Material. Interdependenzen 2.
Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2016.
Interdisciplinary collection of essays that explore the special demands of bronze and its unique properties as an artistic material.
Considers the changing relationship between artists and the casting process, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.

Clerbois, Sebastien, and Martina Droth, eds. Revival and Invention: Sculpture through Its Material Histories. New York:
Peter Lang, 2011.
Essay volume examining materials as agents of meaning. Content ranges from Antiquity to the end of the 19th century. Includes
translations of essays by French, German, and Flemish scholars.

Eberhard, König. “Gesellschaft, Material, Kunst Neue Bücher zur deutschen Skulptur um 1500.” Zeitschrift für
Kunstgeschichte 47.4 (1984): 535–558.
Critical review of the scholarly literature on medieval and Renaissance German sculpture, which notes the impact of Baxandall
1980 and Michael J. Liebmann, Die Deutsche Plastik 1350–1550 (translated from Russian into German by Hans Störel. Leipzig:
Seemann, 1982) on introducing a global perspective to a field previously served primarily by scholars within Germany looking at the
national corpus.

Lange-Berndt, Petra, ed. Materiality. Documents of Contemporary Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2015.
Innovative anthology of new and reprinted essays that consider materials as active agents in modern and contemporary art.
Includes seminal essay on wax by Georges Didi Huberman. Explores concepts of materiality, immateriality, transmateriality, and
dematerialization.

Raff, Thomas. Die Sprache der Materialien: Anleitung zu Einer Ikonologie der Werkstoffe. Kunstwissenschaftliche Studien
61. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1994.
Pioneering and influential study of sculpture materials as “Bedeutungsträger” (carriers of meaning). Offers a concise historiography
of anti-material emphases in art history, and a useful introduction to the field of “Materialikonologie” (iconology of materials).

Wagner, Monika, and Dietmar Rübel, eds. Material in Kunst und Alltag. Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte 1.
Berlin: Akademie, 2002.
Comes out of a research concentration on materials at the University of Hamburg (see also Wagner, et al. 2002, cited under
General, Reference). Focuses on the collision between art and “Alltag” (the everyday or commonplace) in the use of materials
normally foreign to art. Essays are weighted toward the 20th century but also include historical perspectives.

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Instruction

Among the most informative explanations of sculptural processes are those written by sculptors. Carradori 2002 (first published in
1802) is an early example of a sculptor’s illustrated instruction book for students. Although there are earlier sculptors’ treatises on
techniques—most famously Cellini’s Trattati dell’oreficeria e della scultura—these are generally unillustrated and do not readily lend
themselves to practical instruction. The sculptors’ books included here offer insights into technical procedures and the organization
of sculptor’s workshops, while at the same time representing self-consciously conceived autobiographical narratives. Their potential
as primary documents has been largely overlooked, presumably because they appear to present straightforward technical
narratives. Compton 2010 offers a rare treatment of sculptors’ manuals as a historical resource for art historians.

Art of Making.
Highly original website on processes and tools of stone-working. Explores types of tools, their functions, and the marks they make,
as well as outlining processes from quarrying to finished object. Although focused on ancient Roman sculpture, this remarkable
resource provides helpful insights applicable to understanding sculptural processes more generally.

Carradori, Francesco. Elementary Instructions for Students of Sculpture. Translated by Matti Kalevi Auvinen. Introduction
by Paolo Bernardini. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2002.
Translation of the earliest illustrated sculpture instruction book for students, first published in 1802 by Francesco Carradori, sculptor
and teacher at the Florence Academy. Translated and introduced by a marble carver trained in traditional techniques. Includes a
preface by Hugh Honor and a complete transcription of the original Italian text.

Compton, Ann. “Plastic Pleasures: Reconsidering the Practice of Modeling through Manuals of Sculpture Technique,
c. 1880–1933.” The Journal of Modern Craft 3.3 (November 2010): 309–324.
One of the few scholarly article to engage critically with sculptors’ instruction manuals as a distinct genre. Focuses on British books
published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Hoffman, Malvina. Sculpture Inside and Out. New York: W. W. Norton, 1939.
Instructional text illustrated with evocative photographs of the sculptor’s studio. Offers a brief history of sculpture, which includes
artifacts in ethnographic museums that were newly valued as sculptures. This relates the text to Hoffman’s famous bronze statues
depicting the “races of man” (Field Museum, Chicago). As such, this book reads like an artist’s manifesto.

Rich, Jack C. The Materials and Methods of Sculpture. New York: Dover, 1988.
Comprehensive overview of sculptural processes. Representative of the genre of instruction manuals or “how-to” books, which
became popular in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. Many such books, as is the case here, were written by sculptors.

Selected Studies

The scholarship is strong on case studies of individual materials and methods (Bassett 2008, Panzanelli 2008, Scholten 1998,
Scholten 2005), artists (Cole 2002, Honor 1972, Levy and Mangone 2016), or periods (Montagu 1989, Kalinowski 1992). Because
many materials are in common use across different contexts, even specialized studies offer insights broadly relevant to the history

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of sculpture. This list is by no means exhaustive and focuses on studies that offer new interpretations and directions for the field.

Bassett, Jane, ed. The Craftsman Revealed: Adriaen de Vries, Sculptor in Bronze. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation
Institute, 2008.
In-depth technical investigation of the bronze sculptures of de Vries, explaining in detail his methods and practice. The study was
prompted by a major international exhibition on the artist (Scholten 1998).

Boucher, Bruce, ed. Earth and Fire: Italian Terracotta Sculpture from Donatello to Canova. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2002.
Catalogue to an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which examines the
practices and techniques of clay modeling and terracotta. Argues for the distinct aesthetic cachet of clay and terracotta.

Cole, Michael Wayne. Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Significant reappraisal of the art of Cellini, which radically repositions this famous but marginalized sculptor in the milieu of 16th-
century artistic culture. Each chapter considers a key work, examined through the lens of its materiality. Cole has been at the
forefront of new approaches to sculptor’s materials.

Honor, Hugh. “Canova’s Studio Practice—I: The Early Years.” Burlington Magazine 114.828 (March 1972): 146–156.
Groundbreaking study of Canova’s working methods, which rebutted the misconception that the sculptor had little involvement in
carving his marbles. As Honor notes, this assumption led to the decline of Canova’s posthumous reputation. Honor’s study, despite
its age, remains an important corrective to common interpretations of 18th- and 19th-century marble sculpture. Article continues in
Burlington Magazine 114.829 (April 1972): 216–229: “Canova’s Studio Practice—II: 1792–1822.”

Kahan, Leonard, Donna Page, and Pascal James Imperato, eds. Surfaces: Color, Substances, and Ritual Applications on
African Sculpture. African Expressive Cultures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
Substantive (over 500-page) and well-illustrated study of materials in African sculpture, concentrating on appearance and
interpretation of surfaces. Offers historical and historiographical overviews of developing interest in African sculptural materials
since the early 20th century.

Kalinowski, Konstanty, ed. Studien zur Werkstattpraxis der Barockskulptur im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Seria Historia
Sztuki 18. Poznan, Poland: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza W Poznaniu, 1992.
Collection of essays on sculptors’ workshop practices in the Baroque period in Europe, with several chapters on Bohemia,
Germany, and Austria. Includes several discussions on sculptors’ drawings and bozetti.

Levy, Evonne Aniuta, and Carolina Mangone, eds. Material Bernini. Visual Culture in Early Modernity. New York:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2016.
Essays by leading scholars engaged with material studies and with Bernini’s working practices, including Maarten Delbeke, Steven
F. Ostrow, Michael Cole, C. D. Dickerson III, and Anthony Sigel. Introduction offers an insightful historiography of the obstacles laid

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in the path of material studies by major early historians like Wittkower and Read (see Wittkower 1977 and Read 1956, both cited
under Overviews, Surveys, General Reference).

Montagu, Jennifer. Roman Baroque Sculpture: The Industry of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.
Benchmark study of the materials and techniques of 17th-century Italian sculpture. Traces all aspects of sculpture production, from
training to studio practice; quarry and foundry; sculptors as designer; sculptor as restorer.

Panzanelli, Roberta, ed. Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute,
2008.
Thoughtful and imaginative essay collection on the use of wax in figurative sculpture. Considers a wide range of contexts, including
devotional effigies, anatomical models, and Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. Reprints an important essay by Georges Didi-
Huberman, and a full translation of Julius von Schlosser’s seminal History of Portraiture in Wax of 1910–1911.

Scholten, Frits. “Bronze: The Mythology of a Metal.” In Bronze: The Power of Life and Death. Edited by Martina Droth, 20–
35. Leeds, UK: Henry Moore Institute, 2005.
Evocative exhibition catalogue essay on the changing mythological, magical, and alchemical associations of bronze, from historical
to contemporary perspectives.

Scholten, Frits, ed. Adriaen de Vries 1556–1626: Imperial Sculptor. Amsterdam/Stockholm/Los Angeles:
Rijksmuseum/Nationalmuseum/John Paul Getty Museum, in association with Zwolle, The Netherlands: Waanders, 1998.
Exhaustive study of this once-obscure sculptor, which pays particular attention to his distinctive handling of materials and working
methods. Close object analysis and conservation science are used to understand de Vries’s sculpture and artistic motivations.

Wood, Jon, ed. Special Issue: Tools of Trades: Articulating Sculptural Practice. Journal of Modern Craft 3.3 (November
2010).
Collection of essays and artists’ statements reflecting on the ways in which sculptors articulate the use of tools. This unusual
inflection on the study of sculptural practice shifts the emphasis from processes to the tools themselves—their character, shape,
feel, sound.

Zikos, Dimitrios, ed. Marks of Identity: New Perspectives on Sixteenth-Century Italian Sculpture. Boston: Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum, 2012.
Papers from a conference held in 2003 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum alongside the exhibition Raphael, Cellini, and the
Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti. Includes three essays on Cellini, discussing his work as a jeweler, and
uncovering new technical evidence about his bronze casting.

Reproduction

Art history’s preoccupation with originality and singular objects poses a distinct problem for sculpture, an art more often than not

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predisposed to reproduction. This problem is embedded in the very foundations of sculpture’s history, as an art understood to be
indebted to the classical traditions of ancient Greece, which are however largely known only vicariously through Roman copies of
Greek originals (see Copying and Roman Sculpture). Copying is further inscribed into the history of sculpture because it serves as
the basis of training and knowledge dissemination, in particular through the form of the plaster cast (Marchand and Frederickson
2010). Moreover, traditional production methods revolve centrally around copying and reproduction—from the plaster model, which
is cast from the artist’s initial clay or wax model, to the transference into marble using measuring devices or the pointing system, or
into bronze, which requires yet further stages of copying. An added issue is that these processes involve specialist workshops and
practitioners, rather than being carried out by a single sculptor. As a result, sculpture is often described as an inherently
reproductive art. Collectively, these practicalities can appear to put sculpture at odds with the assumed aims of art, which are
associated with the unique, original, single-authored object. This conundrum has given rise to a substantial literature. Concepts of
reproduction have been subjected to detailed scrutiny, with distinct meanings ascribed to the key terms and their variants:
reproduction, reproductive, copy, copying, replica, replication, replicate. The issues have broad applications that are not confined to
any particular place or period. This is reflected in the nature of the scholarship, which is unusually trans-historical and
interdisciplinary. Several of the most important publications are multiauthor essay collections.

Camille, Michael. “A Range of Critical Perspectives. Rethinking the Canon: Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters.”
Art Bulletin 78.2 (June 1996): 198–201.
Concise meditation on the role of reproduction in canon formation by this influential scholar of medieval art. Takes the plaster cast
collection of the Musée des Monuments français as a jumping-off point for considering “the almost parasitic technology of
reproduction in two and three-dimensional copies.”

Cooper, Harry, and Sharon Hecker, eds. Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2003.
Seminal exhibition catalogue exploring Rosso’s preoccupation with reproducing his own work, to the exclusion of making “original”
work in his later years. Includes scholarly essays theorizing Rosso’s idiosyncratic approach, and detailed technical analysis of the
sculptures.

Gale, Matthew, and Bryony Fer, eds. Special Issue: Inherent Vice: The Replica and Its Implications in Modern Sculpture.
Tate Papers 8 (Autumn 2007).
Wide-ranging examination of replicas in relation to decay in modern sculpture, prompted by the disintegration of Naum Gabo’s
plastic constructions in the Tate’s collection. Artists, conservators, curators, and other scholars reflect critically on the ethics and
implications of replicas in the work of Duchamp, Gabo, Tatlin, Hesse, and others. This thoughtful and original publication includes
statements contributed by Tate’s own legal and copyright department on intellectual property and copyright laws.

Hughes, Anthony, and Erich Ranfft, eds. Sculpture and Its Reproductions. Critical Views. London: Reaktion, 1997.
Early example of an interdisciplinary essay collection discussing theoretical and material issues in relation to the reproduction of
sculpture. Authors consider the use of terms (copies, variants, originals, etc.), and address theories of emulation, consumerism,
markets.

Krauss, Rosalind E. “The Originality of the Avant Garde.” In The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist
Myths. By Rosalind E. Krauss, 151–170. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1985.
Seminal intervention in debates about posthumous casts. Krauss questions the validity of a 1978 cast of The Gates of Hell, which

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was left incomplete upon Rodin’s death. When Albert Elsen wrote in defense of the cast, Krauss wrote a further response, reprinted
as “Sincerely Yours” (pp. 171–194) Their exchange marks a key debate on the politics, ethics, and art historical consequences of
sculptural reproduction.

Marchand, Eckhard, and Rune Frederickson, eds. Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting, and Displaying from Classical
Antiquity to the Present. Transformationen der Antike 18. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010.
Extensive essay collection on the use of plaster casts in sculptural practice, training, pedagogy, and dissemination. These cheap
reproductive objects have been almost entirely ignored by scholars. Marchand has led efforts to concentrate attention on this
important but neglected material in the history of sculpture.

Molesworth, Helen Anne. “Duchamp by Hand Even.” In Part Object Part Sculpture. Edited by Helen Anne Molesworth, 178–
200. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005.
Exhibition catalogue offering alternative readings of Duchamp’s work and legacy, linking it to tactile, sensory qualities and the
handmade, rather than factory production or industrial fabrication. Detailed account of the circumstances of the reproduction of the
famous ready-mades.

Preciado, Kathleen, ed. Retaining the Original: Multiple Originals, Copies, and Reproductions. Proceedings of a
Symposium Jointly Sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington,
and the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 8–9 March 1985. Studies in the History of Art Symposium Papers 7.
Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1989.
Important early collection of essays on the problem posed by concepts of originality and replication as categories for the
understanding of art. The book has its origins in a conference hosted by the CASVA and chaired by Rosalind Krauss.

Wasserman, Jeanne L., ed. Metamorphoses in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1975.
Pioneering catalogue of an exhibition held at the Fogg Art Museum which focused on the serial production of sculpture in 19th-
century France. Remains one of the most detailed examinations of bronze reproduction. Includes an essay on serial sculpture by
Jacques de Caso.

Copying and Roman Sculpture

Classical art has its own distinct relationship to the concepts of copying, emulation, and originality, because Roman sculptures are
generally considered as copies of Greek originals. The traditional archaeological approach to this issue is known by the German
concept of Kopienkritik (copy criticism), which originated in the studies of Adolf Furtwangler (Hallett 1995, Fullerton 2003). Roman
sculpture, accordingly, was predominantly studied not for its own sake but for the clues it offered to lost originals, an approach now
generally considered reductive. The scholarship has been concerned to trace the historiography and development of Kopienkritik
(Hallett 1995, Fullerton 2003), and to open new pathways for considering Roman art (Marvin 2008, Perry 2005). The literature on
this subject is substantial and often highly specialized (see the article in Oxford Bibliographies, Greek Originals and Roman
Copies). The texts cited here were chosen for their broader critical engagement with the concept of copies and originals, which
have implications for the history of sculpture beyond the Roman period.

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Bredekamp, Horst, Tatjana Bartsch, and Marcus Becker; eds. Das Originale der Kopie: Kopien als Produkte und Medien
der Transformation von Antike. Transformationen der Antike 17. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010.
Wide-ranging essay collection that considers copies of antiquities and attendant conceptual questions in a variety of periods and
cultural frameworks.

Fullerton, Mark D. “Der Stil der Nachahmer: A Brief Historiography of Stylistic Retrospection.” In Ancient Art and Its
Historiography. Edited by A. A. Donohue and Mark D. Fullerton, 92–117. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Critical account of the use of stylistic progression as a means of understanding Greek art. Unpacks some of the problems attendant
to this approach, especially the use of Kopienkritik as a means of accounting for stylistic inconsistencies. While specific to the
historiography of ancient sculpture, this critique has ramifications for deconstructing concepts of copying, imitation, and emulation in
the study of sculpture.

Gazda, Elaine K., ed. The Ancient Art of Emulation: Studies in Artistic Originality and Tradition from the Present to
Classical Antiquity. Supplements to the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 1. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2002.
Interdisciplinary essay collection that takes the problem of Roman “copying” as a jumping-off point, but extends the discussion into
modern and contemporary contexts.

Hallett, C. H. “Kopienkritik and the Works of Polykleitus.” In Polykleitos, the Doryphorus, and Tradition. Edited by Warren
G. Moon, 121–160. Wisconsin Studies in Classics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
Provides a useful outline of the development of Kopienkritik, and how and why this mode of study has become contentious.

Haskell, Francis, and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1981.
Seminal and influential study that examines the creation of a canon of antique sculpture. Some of the works remained famous and
celebrated; others became better-known through reproductions while the originals fell into obscurity; others still were once
considered masterpieces but later dropped from the canon. The authors ask when, how, and why certain works were considered
important, and trace their afterlife.

Marvin, Miranda. The Language of the Muses: The Dialogue between Roman and Greek Sculpture. Los Angeles: J. Paul
Getty Museum, 2008.
Polemical study challenging the prevalent belief that Roman ideal sculptures can be simply understood as copies of “Greek
originals.” This view has profoundly shaped conceptions not only of Roman sculpture and sculptors, but also of Roman culture. The
first seven chapters examine the sources, historiography, and entrenchment of this notion; the last two chapters propose alternative
approaches to theories of Roman replication and emulation.

Perry, Ellen. The Aesthetics of Emulation in the Visual Arts of Ancient Rome. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
One of the key studies seeking to shift the debate about Roman art away from concepts of copying.

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Trimble, Jennifer, and Jas Elsner, eds. Special Issue: Art and Replication: Greece, Rome and Beyond. Art History 29.2
(April 2006): 201–342.
Collection of essays that seek to reconsider the meanings and implications of replication in art history. The editors offer an excellent
survey of key theoretical issues and further reading. Authors consider replication in relation to cult monuments (Milette Gaifman),
intaglio gems (Verity Platt), and honorific portrait statues (John Ma). One essay (Viccy Coltman) examines replication in the context
of 18th-century collecting of antiquities.

Object Cultures

As the category of sculpture has widened to accommodate more varied and more global kinds of objects, it has become harder to
justify its coherence as a category. Material culture and anthropology have become increasingly relevant as conceptual frameworks
for studying global spheres of sculptural production. But as the material culture historian Michael Yonan has argued, art history,
material culture, and anthropology remain remarkably little integrated with one another (Yonan 2011). Rather, they address the
same kinds of objects from separate spheres of understanding. The kinds of sculpture that are of the greatest interest to scholars of
material culture and anthropology—for example, painted wooden religious statues—are often relegated as secondary objects in the
history of art, or overlooked altogether. At the same time, the kinds of sculpture that conform to traditional conceptions of the
category—such as a neoclassical marble statue—tend to be ignored by those interested in material culture or anthropology.
Because of the different ways in which types of objects “count” in defining what sculpture is, art history’s master narrative of
sculpture remains largely undisturbed, even while newer narratives relevant to sculpture are being developed elsewhere. Studies
such as Soumhya 2014 and Whitehead 2013 (both cited under Selected Studies), which consider religious statues from a material
religion perspective, have virtually no bearing on art historical interpretations of religious statues, and vice versa. Notable
exceptions to this insularity include the expanding field of museum studies and the history of collections. Museums and exhibitions,
which often bring a global range of art into the same orbit, provide frames that make all kinds of sculptural artifacts appear naturally
aligned to the interests of European and North American art history (see Museums and Taxonomies). The citations listed here
highlight areas that intersect, or offer the potential to intersect, with a variety of approaches pertinent to understanding sculptural
artifacts, regardless of whether they are explicitly referred to as sculptures or not. The concepts of the “social life of things”
(Appadurai 1986), the anthropology of art (Gell 1998), and visual anthropology (Westermann 2005, cited under Selected Studies)
offer logical points of convergence between art history and anthropology, and underpin several of the texts cited under Selected
Studies. More often, sculpture is only implicit as a subject, embedded alongside a wide range of artifacts, but this is precisely what
makes collections such as Westermann 2005 and Smith, et al. 2014 (cited under Selected Studies) useful cues or pathways toward
a wider, more inclusive, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of sculpture.

Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1986.
Pioneering essay volume that considers things as though they have biographies and lead social lives. Especially notable for
Appadurai’s introduction and the essay by Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process” (pp. 64–
91).

Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. New York: Clarendon, 1998.
Pathbreaking study by leading anthropologist proposing a new anthropology of art. Perhaps the single most influential
anthropological study in relation to art history.

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art, and Architecture. New York: Routledge, 2013.

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Advocates for engagement with material processes that bring objects into being. Provides a critical introduction to prevailing
methodologies of anthropology and material culture, which attend only to finished objects without considering the corresponding
creativity of their making.

Jung, Jacqueline E. The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca.
1200–1400. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Original study that demonstrates the importance of considering sculpture as part of the material culture and experience of religious
practice and cathedrals.

Kendall, Laurel. “On the Problem of Material Religion and Its Prospects for the Study of Korean Religion.” Journal of
Korean Religions 1.1–2 (September 2010): 93–116.
Helpful overview of recent developments in the study of Korean religions and their artifacts, especially religious statues. Notes the
roles of Freedberg and Gell in the relatively new field of material religion, and its potential to bridge religious studies, material
culture, and art history.

Prown, Jules David. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” Winterthur Portfolio 17.1
(Spring 1982): 1–19.
Seminal essay on the methods, scope, and value of material culture studies. Prown’s own use of these methods in his teaching at
Yale became known as the Prownian method. Yonan 2011 argues that the lessons of this text open a path to better dialogue
between material culture and art history.

Yonan, Michael. “Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies.” West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts,
Design History, and Material Culture 18.2 (Fall–Winter 2011): 232–248.
Helpful analysis of the disconnections between art history and material culture, and how scholars have attempted to bridge them,
notably Prown 1982. Although not focused on sculpture, Yonan’s argument about the value of material approaches to the study of
objects has significant implications for the field.

Selected Studies

This section includes anthologies (Smith, et al. 2014; Westermann 2005) as well as individual essays (Van Eck, et al. 2015) that
have employed (directly or implicitly) some of the methodologies listed in the preceding section to consider sculptural and other
artifacts from new perspectives. Materiality (Soumhya 2014), creative processes (Rosenfield 2011), and the “biographies” of objects
(Visonà 2012) emerge as key strands.

Rosenfield, John M. Portraits of Chōgen: Transformation of Buddhist Art in Early Medieval Japan. Japanese Visual Culture
1. Boston: Brill, 2011.
On the statues and buildings associated Japanese Buddhist monk Chōgen (b. 1121–d. 1206), including painted wooden statues of
Chōgen himself. Art historical approach that pays attention to iconography, style, revival of realism, sculptural practice and training,
patronage, while also considering social and cultural history.

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Smith, Pamela H., Amy R. W. Meyers, and Harold J. Cook, eds. Ways of Making and Knowing: The Material Culture of
Empirical Knowledge. Bard Graduate Center Cultural Histories of the Material World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2014.
Interdisciplinary essays mostly focused on Early Modern Europe. Heterogeneous case studies are linked by an interest in
foregrounding not only finished artifacts but the processes and knowledge systems that inform their making. Relates to the Making
and Knowing research project directed by Pamela H. Smith at Columbia University.

Soumhya, Venkatesan. “From Stone to God and Back Again: Why We Need Both Materials and Materiality.” In Objects and
Materials: A Routledge Companion. Edited by Penny Harvey, Eleanor Conlin Casella, Gillian Evans, et al., 72–81. Culture,
Economy and the Social. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2014.
Case study of religious stone statues in southeast India, and the process by which they become charged or emptied of power.
Builds on Tim Ingold’s appeal for a return to materials as opposed to materiality (Ingold 2013, cited under Object Cultures).

Van Eck, Caroline, Miguel John Versluys, and Pieter ter Keurs. “The Biography of Cultures: Style, Objects, and Agency.
Proposal for an Interdisciplinary Approach.” Cahiers de L’École du Louvre 7 (October 2015): 2–22.
Takes as a starting point two giant phoenix sculptures by Chinese artist Xu Bing, made from construction debris left behind by
migrant laborers. Considers the mutable agency of artifacts across space and time, using methods of anthropology, archaeology,
and art history.

Visonà, Monica Blackmun. “Agent Provocateur? The African Origin and American Life of a Statue from Côte d’Ivoire.” Art
Bulletin 94.1 (March 2012): 99–129.
Draws upon the theories of Appadurai 1986 and Gell 1998 (both cited under Object Cultures) to follow the “social life” of a single
African statue, tracing its transportation to America and subsequent ownership and exhibition history.

Westermann, Mariët, ed. Anthropologies of Art. Clark Studies in the Visual Arts. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine
Clark Art Institute, 2005.
Essay volume developed from a Clark conference on the relationship between art history and anthropology, at the point of their
intersection as visual anthropology. Raises important questions about the geographical divide that leaves European and North
American practices of art history untouched by anthropological approaches. Case studies cover a broad global and chronological
span.

Whitehead, Amy. Religious Statues and Personhood: Testing the Role of Materiality. London: Bloomsbury Academic,
2013.
Examines two unrelated wooden religious effigies as “statue persons” in the context of their active shrines. Demonstrates some of
the ways in which material religion can contribute to the study of sculpture.

Yarrington, Alison, and Cinzia Maria Sicca, eds. The Lustrous Trade: Material Culture and the History of Sculpture in
England and Italy c. 1700-c. 1860. London: Leicester University Press, 2000.

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Essay collection that seeks to study 18th- and 19th-century sculpture through a wider material culture lens. Includes case studies
about the marble trade and movement of sculpture goods.

Museums and Taxonomies

Although studies of museums as institutional frames rarely focus exclusively on sculpture, they nevertheless provide important
sources for considering the distinct ways in which sculpture stands in relationship to the museum. The multicultural diversity of
sculpture activates and puts pressure on museum taxonomies. Sculpted objects might be classified as “ethnographic art” or as “fine
art” for reasons that have little to do with their original purpose. Thus, if an object incorporates materials not associated with
European high art traditions (such as feathers, leather, shells), it may still be called sculpture, but it will most likely be studied,
shown, and displayed in separate and distinct ways. This is evident in common museum display practices; for example, while
classical European statues tend to be shown individually as autonomous objects on pedestals, African figures are frequently seen
grouped together in large vitrines with other kinds of objects (see Bickford-Berzock and Clarke 2011). So familiar are these distinct
modes of display that they are barely noticed. Museums are intimately bound up with creating and maintaining taxonomies. The
texts cited here look at what happens when institutional categories and practices operating within museums grapple with the
boundaries around sculpture and other types of objects. There are still major distinctions between what is studied in what context,
but here the methods of material culture have been especially useful. (See also Nonclassical Figures.)

Bickford-Berzock, Kathleen, and Christa Clarke, eds. Representing Africa in American Art Museums: A Century of
Collecting and Display. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.
Essay volume by curators of African art, tracing the history of collections of African art in American museums. Shows how early
collections, modes of display, study, and publication, have influenced conceptions of African art.

Bohrer, Frederick N. Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Sustained examination of concepts of “exoticism” and “orientalism” in 19th-century Britain and Continental Europe. Demonstrates
the key role of imported Assyrian sculptural artifacts in shaping the European orientalist imaginary. Of particular interest here are
the chapters on the British Museum.

Colla, Elliott. Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2007.
Interdisciplinary study of the Europeanization of Egyptian history through its artifacts. Draws upon Arabic-language archives and
documents to bring Egyptian responses to bear on the story. See especially the first chapter on the “artifaction” of Egyptian
sculpture in the British Museum for discussions of the status of these objects in relation to the classical canon.

Guha-Thakurta, Tapati. Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. Cultures of
History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Important study of archaeology and art history in India from the 19th century to the second half of the 20th. Considers the elevation
of relics into works of art amid contested imperial, national, and local claims. Demonstrates the importance of museums in
structuring not only imperial but also national authority.

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Marshall, Christopher, ed. Sculpture and the Museum. Subject/Object: New Studies in Sculpture. Farnham, UK: Ashgate,
2011.
Unusual anthology examining the ways in which the rhetorics, ideologies, and conventions of museums have affected the
historiography and understanding of sculpture. Case studies consider museums devoted to single sculptors; display philosophies
and the changing status of sculpture in collections; categorizations of sculpture as “fine art” or “ethnography”; and contemporary
responses to museum architecture.

Sullivan, Bruce M., ed. Sacred Objects in Secular Spaces: Exhibiting Asian Religions in Museums. New York: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2015.
Eleven essays on the secularizing of religious sculptures, paintings, and artifacts, through the frame of collecting and museums.
Critical assessment of the role museums continue to play in bringing artifacts from Asian cultures into the purview of art history.

Turner, Sarah V. “The ‘Essential Quality of Things’: E. B. Havell, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Indian Art, and Sculpture in
Britain c. 1910–14.” In Special Issue: British Sculpture c. 1757–1947: Global Contexts. Edited by Jason Edwards. Visual
Culture in Britain 11.2 (2010): 239–264.
On the collecting of Indian artifacts in Britain and the establishment of museums in relation to modernist sculpture in Britain, with a
particular focus on the roles played by Havell and Coomaraswamy.

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