WHAT IS––

Sculpture ?
––––––––––––––––

Education and Community Programmes,

Irish Museum of Modern Art, IMMA
 WHAT IS–––––––?
information programme

There is a growing interest in contemporary art, yet the ideas,

methodologies and theoretical frameworks which inform its practice
can be complex and difficult to access. The What is_? Information
programme is intended to contribute to the on-going enquiry into
modern and contemporary art. It is framed as a question rather than
presenting a definitive answer. Drawing on the expertise and experience
of lecturers, artists, curators and critical writers, it provides
a broad overview of some of the central themes and directions in modern
and contemporary art.

03
The programme addresses aspects of modern and contemporary
art theory and practice through talks, booklets and web-based resources:

Series 1 1970 to the present

Series 2 1900 to 1970
Series 3 Materials and methodologies
Series 4 Theory (in collaboration with MA Art
in the Contemporary World, NCAD)

The intention is to provide background and contextual information about the

art and artists featured in IMMA’s exhibitions and collections in particular, and
about contemporary art in general; to promote information sharing and to
encourage critical thinking, debate and discussion about art and artists.
CONTENTS
For further information see www.imma.ie
What is_? information programme page 03
Introduction: Sculpture page 04
What is sculpture? – Sinéad Hogan page 10
Bibliography and Further Reading page 20
Glossary of terms page 22
Sculpture : ressources page 26

Image:
Alcove in formal gardens,
Royal Hospital Kilmainham
 WHAT IS––
Sculpture ?
––––––––––––––––

Introduction The Irish Museum of Modern Art is the national cultural institution for the
collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art in Ireland.
IMMA exhibits and collects modern and contemporary art by established
and emerging Irish and International artists. The temporary exhibitions
programme features work by established and emerging artists ranging
from painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, video and
performance. IMMA initiates many of its exhibitions but also works closely
with a network of international museums and galleries. IMMA’s Collection
includes artworks across a range of media and genres, acquired through
purchase, donations, loans and commissions. Many art works have also been
acquired through IMMA’s temporary exhibitions programme and, on occasion,
04 through IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme.
This introductory text provides a brief overview of sculpture. Terms
associated with sculpture are indicated in CAPITALS and are elaborated on
in the glossary on p. 22. Lecturer Sinéad Hogan’s essay, What is Sculpture?
provides an overview of sculpture, identifing some of the challenges in
attempting to define this broad and evolving subject. The essay includes
examples of artists and art works, some of which are included in IMMA’s
Collection. By focusing on IMMA’s Collection we hope to draw attention to
the range of sculpture in the Collection by artists such as Ulrich Rückreim,
Janet Mullarney, Michael Warren, Aleana Egan and Antony Gormley.
We also hope to highlight the potential of IMMA’s exhibitions and
Collection as resources for further investigation and enquiry into the subject
of sculpture.

Image:
Crate, IMMA
 What is Sculpture is the term used to describe three-dimensional artworks. Traditionally,
sculpture? sculpture was created using permanent materials such as stone, metal, clay,
ceramic or wood although works made from durable material such as stone
were more likely to survive over time whereas sculptures made of wood such
as TOTEM POLES were less likely to survive. Contemporary sculpture can
be made from any kind of material: stone, metal, light, sound, found objects,
people or even the site itself. It can also comprise no materials. Sculptures
can be permanent such as the monumental sculptures and statues honouring
famous people and events, situated in prominent positions in city spaces.
They can also be EPHEMERAL, TEMPORARY, PERFORMATIVE or TRANSIENT
depending on the artist’s intentions, the context in which the sculpture came
about and its purpose.
Sculptural forms can be found in many cultures dating back to
prehistoric times. In some societies sculptures took the form of figures such
as STATUES or RELIEFS while in others they took on more abstract forms
such as OBELISKS, standing stones or pyramids. The size and function of
sculpture varies considerably depending on the context, materials and purpose.
Traditionally, religious institutions, rulers and wealthy individuals were the main
commissioners of sculpture. Sculpture in the form of statues, VOTIVES and
shrines were commissioned to decorate palaces and sacred spaces such as
06 churches, temples or tombs or to communicate a religious message, especially
to a non-literate public. The form and presentation of sculpture was also
influenced by religious prohibitions as religious institutions were the major
PATRONS of art. Figurative representation is prohibited in Judaism and Islam
Innovations associated with early AVANT-GARDE movements such
resulting in ANICONISM and a preference for abstract and decorative sculptural
as CUBISM, FUTURISM, DADAISM, SUPREMATISM, CONSTRUCTIVISM and
forms. Figuration played an important role in Christianity evident in some of
SURREALISM resulted in the use of new materials and subject matter and
the innovations in sculptural practice during the Renaissance. However, even
the emergence of new ABSTRACT forms. Artists also began to experiment
within Christianity there have been periods when figuration has been rejected
with FOUND OBJECTS and READYMADE objects and also with the new
resulting in ICONOCLASM, the destruction of figurative images of religious
forms and materials derived from industrialisation. Emerging trends towards
figures. Sculpture, especially MONUMENTAL sculpture, was also created for
ABSTRACTION in MODERNIST sculpture emphasised consideration of
political purposes, to communicate a particular message such as triumph in
the formal aspects of the artwork separate from its context. Innovations
battle or to reinforce the wealth and status of a ruler.
in sculpture were also influenced by new forms of public sculpture and
Rapid social, political, economic and cultural changes towards the end of
memorialisation in the twentieth century in the aftermath of two world
the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century influenced changes
wars. Although figuration remained the dominant form of commemorative
in the form, practice and purpose of sculpture. Prior to this period, sculptural
sculpture, new forms of memorialisation such as the CENOTAPH employed
training and practice was quite prescriptive: artists trained in academies and
the ambiguous vocabulary of modernist abstraction seeking an alternative
followed strict guidelines with regard to the form, subject and presentation
to earlier celebratory and triumphal forms. Developments in ARCHITECTURE
of their sculptural works. Traditional sculpture tended to be figurative and
and increased urbanisation and modernisation resulted in increased public
created in a limited range of materials such as stone and bronze; therefore, the
spending on the built environment and a growing awareness of the role of
techniques of carving, modelling and casting were essential skills for a sculptor.
sculpture in public spaces. This also generated new opportunities for artists
However, new developments in technology, in particular PHOTOGRAPHY
to create large-scale sculpture in public spaces.
and FILM, meant that traditional concerns with naturalistic representation in
drawing, painting and sculpture could be discarded in favour of more innovative
and experimental approaches. Artists began to experiment with different types
of materials and techniques reflecting their own interests and concerns.

Image:
Sculptural features from the plinth for Queen Victoria,
OPW, Royal Hospital Kilmainham
 Developments in MINIMALISM, which favoured sculptural forms and
focused on the material conditions of the artwork, shifted attention from
representation to experience. They also expanded the possibility of sculpture
in terms of its materials and construction, employing industrial materials and
modes of fabrication. During the 1960s and ‘70s, prompted by social, cultural
and political changes, new forms of practice such as ENVIRONMENTAL ART,
LAND ART, INSTALLATION ART and SITE-SPECIFIC ART emerged providing
new modes and contexts for sculptural practice.
Emphasising the relationship of the art object to its context and
challenging its status as a commodity, these new forms of practice presented
alternative ways to produce and display artworks outside the museum or
gallery space such as in the landscape. Encountering a sculpture in a field or
in an open public space is a different experience to encountering a sculpture
in a gallery space. They also extended the possibilities for sculptural practice
in terms of materials, subject matter, location and audience engagement.
Informed by developments across a range of theoretical disciplines
such as POSTSTRUCTURALISM, FEMINISM, POSTCOLONIAL THEORY,
PSYCHOANALYSIS and CRITICAL THEORY, artists devised temporary, text-
based and performative sculptural practice. Innovations in CONCEPTUAL ART
shifted emphasis from the tangible art object to the concept, so that an idea
08 or set of instructions could comprise an art work rather than a physical object.
Advances in technology, particularly in FILM, VIDEO and DIGITAL
09
TECHNOLOGY, the INTERNET and SOCIAL MEDIA have further expanded
the possibilities of sculptural practice into the realm of the VIRTUAL
and performative. Employing found, mass-produced, impermanent and
APPROPRIATED objects and materials, contemporary artists continue to
explore and expand the boundaries of sculpture in terms of form, materials,
location and timeframe. Despite the expansion of the possibilities of sculpture
beyond its physical properties into the more ephemeral space of ideas,
sound, movement, light and virtual reality, the term sculpture continues to be
employed to describe the construction and situation of an artwork in space.

Image:
Armorials from the Gates
of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham,OPW
 What is
sculpture...? Sinéad Hogan

What is A lot of ‘stuff’ could be referred to when asking the question ‘what is
sulpture? sculpture?’ It would be easy to become snowed under by such stuff and,
in the hope of capturing its diversity, anxiously produce a list of keywords,
names, descriptions of materials, processes, works and affects. I could then
attempt to find a logic that might point to how all those things are caught
in the net of such a category. Should this trail take the historical route?…
10 but then where should I decide to start?... with the Greeks? Or do I go as far
back as some of the oldest known ‘sculptural’ archeological artefacts such
11
as the ‘venus figurines?’ These however pre-date our category, concept and
understanding of ‘art’, as well as of subject, object and space, all of which are
also historically shaped notions. And these inevitably frame any questioning
around ‘what is sculpture?’ Asking what sculpture might be involves therefore
many different intersecting histories. As well as an art history made up
of periods, movements, artists and styles, we may need to include the
cultural and anthropological histories of monuments and commemoration,
of architectures and statuary, histories of votive rituals, totems, religious Highly significant for sculpture whether taking place as structures,
fetishes and decorative or symbolic architectural embellishments. Are all objects or spaces are the tensions and polemics of how cultures, societies
these relating to the same thing or, when approached through the lens of and individuals approach the practice of ‘giving form to …’ of creating
one of these histories, does the question ‘what is sculpture?’ itself show a objects to draw attention to a material presentation or ‘stand for’ or ‘in
plasticity and keep shifting its form and meaning? Matter, materials – the place of’ something or someone. These show themselves through different
stuff that art gets made out of – also have histories, those of functions and strategies of representation ranging from celebratory forms of construction
effects, histories that lead us to question how we think about the role and to oppositional practices of iconoclastic destruction to spaces that reflect
phenomenology of things, leading to fundamental questions such as ‘what is prohibitions against idol-making through providing a place for non-
matter...?’ Art as sculpture is a practice in dialogue with these histories. representation.
The question of sculpture also demands that we think about the
‘object-nature’ of art, its physicality, its materiality, its spatiality, its tactility.
These questions in turn pose the further question of how sculpture is in
relation with our embodied and temporal sense of being. It is therefore also
the history of affect and the phenomenology of how we, as thinking-bodies,

Image:
Unidentified photographer, The selection of sculpture for
the Summer Exhibition, 1933. Royal Academy of Arts, London
 experience the concrete material world. Sculptures can also be determinately
different from this, showing a mute material refusal of psychological readings
or projections. Sculpture often poses questions itself in terms of how it
may sit in the context of everyday functional things, which we more usually
differentiate (in often contested ways) as design, craft or architecture.
And many sculptures now play self-reflexively with these discourses and
disciplines through the recent sculptural history of the ‘ready-made’.
Further, we might also, in response to the material strangeness of sculptural
practice, ask ‘what is the role of non-object making, of de-materialising and
performative practices within sculpture?’ Thinking about these questions
often operates by using the strategy of binary distinctions and relations, such
as those between matter-form and form-function and form-content. Often it
is through the very staging of these tensions that ‘sculpture’ takes place.
Therefore the simple clear elegance of the question ‘what is sculpture?’
may unfortunately need to be rephrased here into the more awkward form of
‘what task does art set for the materials we encounter, when we encounter
them as something transformable into something else, yet without a clearly
designated functionality determining its final form?’ Sculpture, as well as
transforming materials into ‘art’, is also often required to perform other
functions – its art ‘work’. At times this may require it to represent, to depict,
12 to affect, to evoke, to commemorate, to monumentalize, to decorate, or to
physically stop us in our tracks and make us think or be amazed or surprised.
If it is the kind of sculpture that is so effective that it physically stops us in
our tracks, then what happens when that happens? Does sculpture demand
that we look, or touch, or ‘don’t touch’? Are we required to imaginatively or
literally activate it, participate as spectator from the ‘outside’ or become a
necessary component material or participant ‘within’ the work?
The sculptor Eva Rothschild puts it like this, ‘the question of its
materiality should lead to a kind of intense looking where a sort of exchange
takes place. Rather than a sort of passive looking, there is a sense of search,
that I can merely evoke here, but cannot hand to you to touch and feel. I could
as sense of […] demand from the eye in terms of what the sculpture might
show images that depict these but these would not communicate their visceral
give it.’1 This approach might at first seem to emphasize the visuality of
impact as a sculptural experience.
sculptural objects, but for all its fascinating visualities, a defining feature of
A crucial example for sculptural effect is that of scale. In order for
sculpture is that it is never fully reducible to an image or verbal description
something to appear huge or tiny the sculptural effect requires a shared
(even though many sculptors may use image and text as components).
space where a direct physical relation between our body encounters the other
Regardless of how high the quality of a particular documentation image
physical elements. Phenomenologically, sculpture is therefore a very different
or descriptive text is, it is always necessarily inadequate when it comes
way of engaging with artwork than that which we experience through an
to those aspects of sculpture that by their sculptural nature can evidently
image. Sculpture’s way of using materials engages us by being able to affect
not be presented through image and text as such. What is not reducible
our embodied situation through its situatedness, through the capacity to
to an image is perhaps therefore what is most ‘sculptural’ about it, what
walk around it, experience it from different angles and sometimes in different
is untranslatable. Just think of the experiential tactile impact of materials,
spaces. (This can include different, complex and perhaps contradictory
structures and volumes and their affective qualities, such as hardness,
sculptural sensations we may encounter from, for example, tactile, plastic,
roughness, smoothness, shininess, hollowness, transparency, solidness,
free-standing ‘presences’ to the staging of immaterial, ungraspable ‘absences’).
spikyness, furriness, smelliness, disappearing-over-time-ness, stickiness,
Like a body or an architecture, one of the potentials for sculptural objects
delicacy and all the almost infinite nuanced physicality of materials and forms
is to create an inside and an outside. Boundaries are formed which create

Image:
Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda.
 new spaces, volumes, and interventions in already existing spaces. These
new spaces can be created by a sculptural intervention or sculptures can
dynamically reactivate previously existing places.
Some sculptures appear as singular objects that aim for a
decontextualised autonomy, their aspiration to be as if impossibly self-
contained, ie. a ‘pure-object-in-itself’. Others are made up of many different
objects, forming component parts of a wider whole or constellation points
in a series operating as a network of encounters. Some ‘sculptures’ are
not even physical objects per se but the staging of interactions between
materials and forces, or a showing by means of something else. Some move
in the direction of merging with architecture and some in the direction of
commodity and some seem to hardly exist except as a set of instructions
related to the idea of what it might be.
When we engage with such phenomena as art-objects we are
necessarily then led also to focus on how these relate to their support
structures and frameworks. These are never separable aspects whether
literal, conceptual or metaphorical and can be fascinating structures
themselves. They include quasi-sculptural objects and spaces such as plinths
or podiums, display cases, plazas, museums, galleries, public sites, private
rooms, gardens, sides of motorways, boxes, mantelpieces, pockets, etc.
14 Each space that waits or allows for sculptures to take place also reflects the
changing histories of our relations to objects; for example, the courtyard of
IMMA, once used for military rituals, displays and parades, now operates as
an iconic open architectural setting, waiting for its next sculptural moment.
The Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda is a ‘decommissioned’ chapel, repurposed
and designed using a secularised white cube aesthetic with emptied alcoves
and altar as part of its display area. The ‘Fourth Plinth’ project in London’s
Trafalgar Square keeps active a public space for temporary sculpture,
setting these in direct dialogue with a different culture of permanent
commemorative monumentality.
In taking on this task I requested permission not to rely on any images
of specific artworks in this text, in preference for images of some spaces
that might host sculpture. My justification for this ‘cop-out’, as well as the
(as mentioned) inadequacy of representation through image of the question
‘what is sculpture?’ is that I am wary that any images I might have chosen
would necessarily give a false sense of being exemplary. They might act as if
‘explaining, demonstrating or illustrating,’ as if pointing out the answer to the
question ‘what is sculpture?’... but of course in another way, each different
work has a sculptural reality and particularity that, when encountered, is
exactly an answer because each keeps open the tension between a work’s
singular particularity and its participation in the question ‘what is sculpture?’
This is not because the category ‘sculpture’ is now so huge that it indicates
a meaningless relativity, but rather each work adds to the discourse on
sculpture rather than closing it down.

Image:
Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London.
 If we look then at the development of the objects, things or materials
that have been variously considered ‘sculpture’ throughout the history of
art, then we might say that, since modernity, our understanding of any
firm category defining art, appears to follow the trajectory indicated by
Karl Marx’s famous quote, that ‘all that is solid melts into air.’2 If that is so,
then what does asking the question ‘what is sculpture?’ mean for us, now?
To keep asking that question means that we still want to know something
about what it means to name some things as ‘sculpture,’ in differentiation
from other things that are not-sculpture. To respond to an artwork from the
IMMA collection, we can ask what makes Michael Craig Martin’s work On the
Table (1970) more than just 4 buckets of water, a tabletop and some rope?
That is, what makes On the Table accurately described as both 4 buckets
of water, a tabletop and some rope and not 4 buckets of water, a tabletop
and some rope? What makes a work of art more than the sum of, and not
reducible to, the materials that go into its making and yet is only those
materials? What transforms those materials, processes or activities into
sculptural art? In these peculiar ways sculptural objects appear to mimic
en-soul-ed or animated things, have a fetish-like quality ; yet, rather than
being inspired by a force of agency, by a power to act autonomously, these
objects are activated by a set of relations between environment, materials,
16 spaces, makers, skills, techniques and these, gathered together, work as a
place of interaction called ‘sculpture’. In turn, when sculpture is set in place,
it activates the specific area it occupies, as a set of relations, affects and
discourses, like a concrete hyperlink. 4 buckets of water, a tabletop and some
rope, hanging from a ceiling, become enlivened when On the Table is put into
place. We could say it sets into action an example of the effect of the joie de
vivre of ‘what is sculpture?’
So, the term sculpture as we find it in a dictionary definition, is
evidently no longer very evocative of what sculpture is. As a word ‘sculpture’
originally indicated a specific practice of carving or cutting and is now a loan
word that gets applied to a wide variety of techniques and practices. It is
interesting to note that ‘sculpture’ etymologically included the art of carving
figures in relief and also the art of intaglio.3 This suggests that it may always
have indicated a hybridity between object and form that emphasises the
sense of materiality in any technique or technology, since intaglio is a form of
printmaking that uses techniques of incision/cutting into a surface to make
an image. Therefore the term sculpture perhaps focuses us on a sense of the
material aspect of all artwork including those that operate predominantly
through imagery. Every image has an object and material form for instance,
where the image ‘takes place’ on a surface or through a screen with light
effects, etc. This is why we can talk of both the ‘sculptural’ aspects of
something that is not a physical sculpture as such and practices that are
now forms of ‘expanded sculpture’ and installations which may not quite be
limited to the experience of literally tactile objects as such, as may happen
through screen-based or virtual technologies.

Image:
Michael Craig Martin, On the Table, 2004.
 If we think of sculpture as a Theseus’ ship, we might think of it currently
as having sailed through a kind of modernity that reflects Marx’s description
of ‘the solid melting into air’. Yet, after a focus privileging conceptualism, there
is now currently a trend reengaging art with the question and nature of the
‘object’ and new ways of thinking materiality. Therefore, the story of sculpture
seems like one where all that is solid melts into air … and then condenses
and reforms into different stuff, objects or plasticities and presumably
these will then evaporate again and reform again. An example of a work
that uses sculptural means to pose these kinds of questions for sculpture is
Shedboatshed (Mobile Architecture No 2), (2005), by Simon Starling, where
a functioning shed on the banks of the Rhine was disassembled, with parts
constructed into a boat that transported the other parts and all were then
reassembled as a shed-sculpture in the Kunstmuseum, Basel.
Our story of sculpture has therefore been intertwined with the history
and tensions that appear between the brute fact of the materiality of an object
and the question of how function might determine its form and the apparent
immateriality of the ideas informing what an object is or may be. These places
of fascinating tension, when thought about, may best help answer why 4
buckets of water, a tabletop and some rope is also not 4 buckets of water, a
tabletop and some rope but a sculpture known as On the Table, by Michael
Craig Martin – one answer among many other answers, within IMMA’s collection,
to the question what is sculpture?

19
1 Tate Shots: Eva Rothschild, 24 July 2014, available at: www.tate.org.uk/context-
comment/video/tateshots-eva-rothschild

2 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848.

3 Robert K. Barnhart, Ed., Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, The H. W. Wilson Company,

p. 974.

I propose therefore that it may be interesting to consider ‘sculpture’ to

Sinéad Hogan Sinéad Hogan is a lecturer and researcher in the Institute of Art, Design
be something akin to a Theseus’ ship. Theseus’ ship is the famous philosophical and Technology (IADT). She lectures on the Art and Research Collaboration
thought experiment proposed by the Greek historian and biographer, Plutarch MA (ARC) and the BA in Art programmes and her teaching and research focuses
(c. AD 46 - AD 120). It poses the enigmatic question ‘if all the material on art practice and the cross-over between art and philosophy.
components of the object are replaced over time, is it still the same thing?’ It
was added to by the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679), to
provide what we could appropriately call here ‘the curator’s or conservationist’s
angle’. He asked what if all the worn bits of the ship were collected as they were
being discarded and reconstructed according to the original design? You would
then have two ships. Then the question becomes ‘which would be the Theseus’
ship?’ The paradox opens out the classical question of identity and difference as
an oscillation between materiality and essence and leads us to the enigmas of
the affects of presence, change, time and continuity.

Image:
The Broighter Boat,
National Museum of Ireland
 What is Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, London: Verso, 1998. Lucy R. Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialisation of the Art Object from 1966 to
1972, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
sculpture?: Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.
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further reading Dutton, 1968.
Thomas McEvilley, Sculpture in the Age of Doubt, Allworth Press, 1999.
Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Les Presses Du Réel, 1998.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge
Martha Buskirk, The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art, Cambridge, MA and Classics, 2002.
London: MIT Press, 2003.
Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space, Berkeley:
Frances Colpitt (ed.), Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge and University of California Press, 2000.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Alex Potts, The Sculptural Imagination: Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist, New
Claire Doherty, Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation, London: Black Dog Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Publishing, 2004.
John B. Ravenal, Artificial Light: New Light-based Sculpture and Installation Art,
Editors of Phaidon Press, Vitamin 3-D: New Perspectives in Sculpture and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2008.
Installation, London and New York: Phaidon Press, 2009.
Anne Rorimer, New Art in the 60s and 70s: Redefining Reality, London: Thames and
Steve Edwards and Paul Woods (eds.), Art of the Avant-Gardes (Art of the Twentieth Hudson, 2001.
Century), New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with the
Open University, 2004. Brandon Taylor, Contemporary Art: Art Since 1970, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2004.

Anne Ellegood and Joanna Burton, The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas: Recent Linda Weintraub, Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art’s Meaning in
Sculpture. Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 2007. Contemporary Society, 1970s – 1990s, Litchfield, CT: Art Insights Inc., 1997.

Hal Foster, The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century,

18
20 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Hal Foster, Rosalind E. Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois & Benjamin Buchloh (eds.),
21
Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmdernism, New York: Thames and
Hudson, 2004.

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Anthology, New York: Harper and Row, 1982.

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Critical Texts, New York: Icon Editions, Harper Collins, 1992.

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University, 2003.

Tony Godfrey, Conceptual Art, London: Phaidon, 1998.

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Anthology of Changing Ideas, Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

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University Press, 2000.

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Press, 1977.

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Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1985.

Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another, Site Specific Art and Locational Identity,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
 sculpture: ABSTRACTION CONSTRUCTIVISM CUBISM ENVIRONMENTAL ART FUTURISM LAND ART
Artwork that is An abstract art movement An early twentieth century A form of art practice Early twentieth century A US art movement from
Glossary
non-figurative, non- founded by Vladimir Tatlin movement led by Pablo which emerged in the movement which originated the 1960s which emerged
representational and and Alexander Rodchenko Picasso and Georges 1960s in response to in Italy and embraced out of environmental and
which is concerned with in Russia around 1915, which Braque which focused growing concerns all things modern, ecological concerns and
the formal elements of the embraced developments on the physical qualities about environmental including technology, the perceived limitations of
artwork rather than the in modern technology and of painting rather than and ecological issues. speed, industrialisation the conventional art object
representation of subject industrialisation. the subject matter. It Traditionally associated with and mechanisation. It or sculpture to respond to
matter. is characterised by the site-specific and installation also embraced violence these concerns. Artworks
breaking up of the picture practice, contemporary and nationalism and was were created within the
CONTEMPORARY
plane, merging of figure Environmental Art associated with Italian landscape, often using the
ANICONISM Refers to the present or
and ground, the adoption encompasses a broad Fascism. materials of the landscape.
The avoidance of recent past.
of multiple viewpoints, range of media and
representation of divine
and simplification of form methodologies.
beings, human figures ICONOCLASM MINIMALISM
CONTEMPORARY ART into geometric shapes. It
or animals as part of a The opposition to the An abstract art movement
Refers to current and is considered to be the
religious belief system. It EPHEMEREAL worship of figurative or developed in the US in the
very recent art practice. forerunner of Abstract Art.
is a feature of Islam and Something that is representational depictions 1960s which emphasised
Attributed to the period
Judaism. temporary, transient or of religious figures, often the use of simple,
from the 1970s to the
DADA lasting a very short time. resulting in the destruction geometric forms and
present, it also refers to
An anti-establishment and of paintings and sculptures modern materials drawn
ARCHITECTURE works of art made by living
anti-war art movement of religious figures. from industry. It was an
The discipline concerned artists. Contemporary Art FEMINISM
founded in 1916 which used extension of abstraction
with the planning, design can be driven by both A social, political,
abstraction, nonsense texts focusing on the properties
and construction of the theory and ideas, and is also intellectual and INSTALLATION
and absurd performances of the materials used but
22 built environment in terms
of its aesthetic, functional
and social considerations.
characterized by a blurring
of the distinction between
art and other categories of
to protest against the social
and political conditions
23 philosophical movement
advocating equal rights and
representation for women
A broad term applied to a
range of arts practice which
involves the installation or
also a rejection of the
ideology and discourse of
prevailing in Europe during Abstract Expressionism.
cultural experience, such in all aspects of society. configuration of objects in a
World War I. Associated
as television, cinema, mass space, where the totality of
AVANT-GARDE with the work of Tristan
media, entertainment and the objects and the space MODERN
French for advance guard Tzara, Hans Arp and Marcel FILM
digital technology. comprise the artwork. Generally refers to
or ‘vanguard’, a military Duchamp. The medium used for the
the present or the
term to describe an creation of still or moving
contemporary, it is
advance army group. The CRITICAL THEORY images. The term is also INTERNET
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY associated with the period
term is used to describe A range of theories, drawn used to describe a motion A globalised system
Electronic data storage and of Modernism from the
innovative, experimental mainly from the social picture which is a sequence of computer networks
transmission technology late nineteenth century to
or cutting edge artists and sciences and humanities, of images projected onto linked by copper wire,
that enables immense the mid-twentieth century.
practitioners. and associated with the a screen, collectively fibre-optic cables and
amounts of information Modern can also be used to
Frankfurt School, which referred to as cinema. In wireless connections, which
to be compressed on describe the period since
adopt a critical approach to Contemporary Art, film is provides services, resources
CONCEPTUAL ART small storage devices, the Enlightenment in the
understanding society and referred to as an art form. and information, such as
Originating in the 1960s, such as computers and seventeenth century or the
culture. the hypertext of the World
Conceptual Art emphasises telephones, that can easily Renaissance in the fifteenth
Wide Web, electronic mail,
the idea or concept rather be preserved, retrieved and FOUND OBJECTS century.
file sharing, online gaming
than the production of a transported. The re-use of objects,
and social networking sites.
tangible art object. The either manufactured or
MODERNISM /
ideas and methodologies of occurring in nature, which
MODERN ART
Conceptual Art continue to are not designed for artistic
Refers to art theory and
inform Contemporary Art purpose, and are kept for
practice from the 1860s
practice. their inherent qualities.
to the late 1960s and is
Often exhibited in random
defined in terms of a linear
juxtapositions to create new
progression of styles,
meanings.
periods and schools,
such as Impressionism,
Cubism and Abstract
Expressionism.
 MONUMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY READYMADE SOCIAL MEDIA TOTEM POLE VOTIVE
Something very large and The process of recording an A term used in Internet based platforms An arrangement of An offering in support
significant associated with image - a photograph, on manufacturing to such as Facebook and symbolic figures and of a wish or expression
a monument – a structure light-sensitive film or, in the distinguish between Twitter for people to animals carved on a of devotion usually in a
used to celebrate or case of digital photography, handmade and interact share and wooden pole usually religious context such as a
commemorate a significant via a digital electronic or manufactured goods, information and ideas. associated with North church or temple.
person or event within a magnetic memory. adopted by French artist American indigenous
society Marcel Duchamp to cultures. Totem poles
SOUND ART
describe the selection serve many purposes
POSTCOLONIAL THEORY / A form of art practice
and modification of a such as celebration,
PATRON POSTCOLONIALISM concerned with sound,
manufactured object by an commemoration,
Someone who provides An intellectual discourse of listening and hearing,
artist to create an art work. recounting local history or
support to artists or arts the late twentieth century often involving an
even to ridicule or shame.
organisations in the form drawing on theories from interdisciplinary approach.
of finance, materials, literature, film, philosophy RELIEF Sound Art encompasses
conditions, encouragement, and social and political A raised sculptural acoustics, electronics, audio TRANSIENT
protection or access to science, concerned with form created on a two media and technology, the Brief, passing, not long-
markets. Traditionally, the cultural legacy of dimensional surface, such body, ambient sound, etc. term.
patrons were often key colonialism in terms of as a wood or stone panel
figures or institutions national and cultural usually by carving or
STATUE VIDEO
associated with the church, identity, race and ethnicity. chiselling.
A figurative three- Technology used to
royalty, the aristocracy or
dimensional sculpture record, store and project
the merchant classes.
POSTSTRUCTURALISM SCULPTURE traditionally made in stone static images in a moving
Theories and methods A three-dimensional art or bronze. format similar to film. The

24 PERFORMANCE ART
Involves an artist
undertaking an action or
of analysis drawn from
Deconstruction and
Psychoanalysis which
object which is either
created or constructed
by an artist. Includes
25 SUPREMATISM
production of lightweight,
low-cost video technology,
such as the Sony
Russian abstract art
actions where the artist’s reject the objectivity of constructions, assemblages, Portapak, in the late 1960s
movement founded by
body is the medium. Structuralism emphasising installations, sound, new contributed to the growth
Kasimir Malevich around
Performance art evolved in the plurality of meaning and media, etc. in experimental video
1913 which emphasised
the late 1950s and is closely the instability of categories making during this period.
the supremacy of form
associated with Video Art of intellectual enquiry.
SITE expressed through the use
as this was the primary Associated with the work
The space in which an of a limited range of colours VIDEO ART
means of recording this of Michel Foucault, Jacques
artwork is located either and geometric shapes. Artwork created using a
ephemeral art form. Derrida and Roland Barthes.
temporarily or permanently, video recording device.
such as a gallery space, Video Art emerged as
SURREALISM
PERFORMATIVE PSYCHOANALYSIS a space in an art fair or an art form in the 1960s
An anti-establishment,
The action of performing A theoretical paradigm biennial, a public space or and 1970s due to the
literary and visual art
or acting out an aspect for understanding human a site-specific space where development of new
movement founded in
of an artwork either on behaviour, and a form of the artwork is created in technology, and it is a
1924 by André Breton
the part of the artist or in intensive psychotherapeutic response to the conditions prevalent medium in
and influenced by Dada,
collaboration with other treatment in which of the space. Contemporary Art practice.
psychoanalysis and
artists or participants. free association, dream
Sigmund Freud’s theories of
interpretation and
SITE SPECIFIC the unconscious. VIRTUAL REALITY
consideration of resistance
Phenomenology Artwork that is created in A simulated environment
and transference are used
The study of the way things response to a specific site generated by computer
to resolve psychological TEMPORARY
(phenomena) appear to us with the intention of being technology and
problems. Developed by Short-term, brief or
as an experience. located in the site and experienced through
Sigmund Freud in the transient.
where removal from the site sensory stimuli.
late nineteenth century,
would change the meaning
there are many strands
of the artwork. Often
of psychoanalytic theory,
associated with Installation
including Object Relations
Art, Land Art and Public
Theory, Jungian Analytical
Art.
Psychology and Lacanian
Psychoanalysis.
 sulpture : The following is a select Republicart Sculpture in Woodland The International Journal ICA San Francisco Museum of
list of resources. A more www.republicart.net http://www.coillte.ie/index. of Cultural Policy Institute of Contemporary Modern Art
General Resources
detailed list of resources php?id=249 www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ Arts, London www.sfmoma.org
can be found on IMMA’s Sheffield Hallam University titles/10286632.asp www.ica.org.uk
website www.imma.ie www.shu.ac.uk Sculpture in Parklands Saatchi Gallery, London
www. Irish Arts Review Kunst-Werke Institute for www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk
IXIA sculptureintheparklands. www.irishartsreview.com Contemporary Art, Berlin
Information Websites www.ixia.org.uk com www.kw-berlin.de Serpentine Gallery, London
Journal of Visual Culture www.serpentinegallery.org
AN - The Artists Public Art Fund Visual Artists Ireland www.sagepub.com/journals Maxxi, Rome
Information Company www.publicartfund.org www.visualartists.ie www.maxxi.parc. Solomon R. Guggenheim
www.a-n.co.uk Printed Project beniculturali.it/english/ Museum, New York
Sculpture Network www.visualartists.ie museo.htm www.guggenheim.org
Artcyclopedia www.sculpture-network. Journals and Magazines Third Text
www.artcyclopedia.com org/en/home.html www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ Metropolitan Museumof Stedelijk Museum,
Art and Architecture titles/09528822.asp Art, New York Amsterdam
Intute Situations Journal www.metmuseum.org www.stedelijk.nl
www.intute.ac.uk www.situations.org.uk www. The Visual Artists
artandarchitecturejournal. New Sheet Moderna Museet, Tate, UK
The Artists SKOR com www.visualartists.ie Stockholm www.tate.org.uk
www.the-artists.org www.skor.nl www.modernamuseet.se
Art Forum Magazine The Vacuum Whitechapel Gallery,
STOT Storm King, NY www.artforum.com www.thevacuum.org.uk MOMA London
www.stot.org www.stormking.org Museum of Modern Art, www.whitechapel.org

26 Art Monthly
www.artmonthly.co.uk
27 Variant
www.variant.randomstate.
New York
www.moma.org White Cube, London
Sculpture and Public Art Irish Sculpture and Public org www.whitecube.com
Websites Art websites Art Newspaper Mori Art Museum, Japan
www.theartnewspaper.com www.mori.art.museum/eng Whitney Museum of
Artangel EV+A Museums and Galleries American Art, New York
www.artangel.co.uk www.eva.ie Art Review International Museums Museum of Contemporary www.whitney.org
www.artreview.com and Galleries Art, Chicago
Art-public Firestation Artists Studios www.mcachicago.org Witte de With, Rotterdam
www.art-public.com www.firestation.ie Circa Art Magazine Art Institute of Chicago www.wdw.nl
www.recirca.com www.artic.edu Museum of Contemporary
Cass Sculpture Foundation Irish Architectural Art Kiasma, Finland
www.sculpture.org.uk Foundation Contemporary Australian Centre for www.kiasma.fi Irish Museums and
www. www.contemporary- Contemporary Art, Victoria Galleries
International Sculpture architecturefoundation.ie magazines.com www.accaonline.org.au Museum of Contemporary
Centre Art, Los Angeles Butler Gallery, Kilkenny
www.sculpture.org Leitrim Sculpture Centre Critical Inquiry Baltic Centre for www.moca.org www.butlergallery.com
www.leitrimscultpurecentre. www.criticalinquiry. Contemporary Art,
Publicartonline ie uchicago.edu Gateshead Musee d’Orsay, Paris Catalyst Arts Gallery,
www.publicartonline.org.uk www.balticmill.com www.musee-orsay.fr Belfast
Publicart.ie E-flux www.catalystarts.org.uk
Public Art Development www.publicart.ie www.e-flux.com/journal Centres Georges Museum of Contemporary
Trust Pompidou, Paris Art, Sydney Context Gallery, Derry
www.henry-moore.org/hmi National Sculpture Factory Flash Art www.cnac-gp.fr www.mca.com.au www.contextgallery.co.uk
http:// www.flashartonline.com
Public Monuments and nationalsculpturefactory. Dia Art Foundation, New Museum of Crawford Municipal Art
Sculpture Association com Frieze Art Journal New York Contemporary Art, New Gallery, Cork
(PMSA) www.frieze.com www.diacentre.org York www.crawfordartgallery.
www.pmsa.org.uk www.newmuseum.org com
Guggenheim Museum,
Bilbao Reina Sofia, Madrid Cross Gallery, Dublin
www.guggenheim-bilbao.es www.museoreinasofia.es www.crossgallery.ie
 Dock Arts Centre, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Istanbul Biennial Acknowledgements All rights reserved. No Page 13
Carrick on Shannon Cork www.iksv.org/bienal11 part of this publication Highlanes Gallery,
www.thedock.ie www.glucksman.org may be reproduced, Drogheda. Photo: Jenny
Published by the Irish
Liverpool Biennial stored in a retrieval system Matthews.
Museum of Modern Art
Douglas Hyde Gallery, Limerick City Gallery of Art www.biennial.com/ or transmitted in any
Royal Hospital Kilmainham
Dublin www.limerickcitygallery.ie form or by any means, Page 15
Dublin 8
www.douglashydegallery. Manifesta, European electronic, mechanical, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar
Tel: + 353 1 612 9900
com Model Arts and Niland Biennale of Contemporary photocopying, recording Square, London. Mayor
Fax: + 353 1 612 9999
Draiocht, Dublin Gallery, Sligo Art or otherwise, without the of London’s Fourth Plinth
Email: [email protected]
www.draiocht.ie www.modelart.ie www.manifesta.org written permission of the Commission. Photo: Greater
Publishers. London Authority.
ISBN Number
Dublin City Gallery, Mother’s Tankstation, Moscow Biennale
ISBN: 978-1-909792-13-5
The Hugh Lane Dublin www.2nd.moscowbiennale. Images Page 17
www.hughlane.ie www.motherstankstation. ru Every effort has been made Michael Craig Martin, On the
Text:
com to acknowledge correct Table, 2004. Collection Irish
What is Sculpture? Sinéad
Fenton Gallery, Cork Bienal de São Paulo copyright of images where Museum of Modern Art.
Hogan
www.artireland.net/ Pallas Contemporary www.bienalsaopaulo.globo. applicable. Any errors or
Introduction ‘What is
systmpl/ Projects, Dublin com omissions are unintentional Page 18
Sculpture?’ and all other
www.pallasprojects.org and should be notified to The Broighter Boat,
texts written and edited by
Gallery of Photography, Shanghai Biennale the Irish Museum of Modern National Museum of Ireland.
Lisa Moran
Dublin Project Arts Centre, Dublin www.shanghaibiennale.com Art What is _? series. Photo: National Museum of
www.galleryof www.projectartscentre.ie Ireland.
Series Editors:
photography.ie Skulptur Projekte, Münster List of illustrations
Lisa Moran, Curator:
RHA www.skulptur-projekte.de Page 2

28
28 Galway Arts Centre
www.galwayartscentre.ie
The Royal Hibernian
Academy, Dublin Venice Biennale
29 Education and Community
Programmes
Sophie Byrne, Assistant
Alcove in formal gardens,
Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
www. www.labiennale.org Photo: Sinéad Hogan.
Curator: Talks & Lectures
Green On Red Gallery, royalhibernianacademy.com
Dublin Page 5
Research and Copyright
www.greenonred Rua Red Gallery, Dublin Crate, IMMA. Photo Lisa
clearance:
gallery.com www.ruared.ie Moran.
Lisa Moran, Curator:
Education and Community
Hallward Gallery, Dublin Rubicon Gallery, Dublin Page 7
Programmes
www.hallwardgallery.com www.rubicongallery.ie Sculptural features from the
plinth for Queen Victoria,
Image sourcing:
Highlanes Gallery, Temple Bar Gallery & OPW, Royal Hospital
Nuria Carballeria, Registrar:
Drogheda Studios, Dublin Kilmainham. Photo: Sinéad
Collections
www.highlanes.ie www.templebargallery.com Hogan.

Design:
Irish Museums Association Taylor Galleries, Dublin Page 9
Red and Grey Design
www.irishmuseums.org www.taylorgalleries.ie Armorials from the Gates
www.redandgreydesign.ie
of the Royal Hospital
IMMA Kilmainham, OPW. Photo:
Texts © Irish Museum of
Irish Museum of Modern Art Biennials and Art Fairs Sinéad Hogan.
Modern Art and authors
www.imma.ie
2015
Documenta, Kasel Page 11
Images © Irish Museum of
Kerlin Gallery, Dublin www.documenta.da Unidentified photographer,
Modern Art and artists 2015
www.kerlin.ie The selection of sculpture
ev+a, Limerick for the Summer Exhibition,
Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, www.eva.ie 1933. Photo: Copyright
Dublin Royal Academy of Arts,
www.kevinkavanagh Freize Art Fair, London London.
gallery.ie www.freizeartfair.com
 What is_?
Series 3
Dublin 8, Ireland
Military Road, Kilmainham,
Royal Hospital,

The question of sculpture also demands that we think about the ‘object-
nature’ of art, its physicality, its materiality, its spatiality, its tactility. These
questions in turn pose the further question of how sculpture is in relation
with our embodied and temporal sense of being. It is therefore also the
history of affect and the phenomenology of how we, as thinking-bodies,
experience the concrete material world.

Sinéad Hogan
E. [email protected]
F. 00 353 1 612 9999
T. 00 353 1 612 9900

What is Sculpture? is part of series 3 of the What is_? information

programme which aims to provide a general introduction to key concepts
and themes in Modern and Contemporary Art. What is Sculpture? provides
an overview of the broad subject of sculpture. It includes a comprehensive
essay by Sinéad Hogan What is Sculpture?
www.imma.ie

Irish Museum o

Ireland
Kilmainham, Dublin 8
Royal Hospital, Milita