Sculpture of the United States
Encyclopedia
The history of sculpture in the United States begins in the 1600s "with the modest efforts of craftsmen who adorned gravestones, Bible boxes, and various utilitarian objects with simple low-relief decorations." American sculpture in its many forms, genres and guises has continuously contributed to the cultural landscape of world art into the 21st century.
Folk art
There is frequently art in well-made tombstones, iron products, furniture, toys, and tools—perhaps better reflecting the character of a people than sculptures made in classical styles for social elites. One of these specific applications, the carving of wooden figureheads for ships, started in the Americas as early as 1750 and a century later helped launch the careers of Samuel McIntyre and the country's first famous sculptor, William RushWilliam Rush
William Rush was a U.S. neoclassical sculptor from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is considered the first major American sculptor....
(1756–1833) of Philadelphia,. The tradition begun then continues today in the folk sculpture style known as Chainsaw carving
Chainsaw Carving
The art of chainsaw carving is a fast-growing form of art that combines the modern technology of the chainsaw with the ancient art of woodcarving.- The beginning of the art form :...
.
The Italian years
In the 1830s, the first generation of notable American sculptors studied and lived in Italy, particularly in FlorenceFlorence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and Rome creating in the Neoclassic
Neoclassical sculpture
Neoclassical sculpture was a sculptural style of the 18th and 19th centuries. The neoclassical period was one of the great ages of public sculpture, though its "classical" prototypes were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. The neoclassical sculptors paid homage to an idea of...
style. At that time, Italy. "provided the proper atmosphere, brought the sculptor close to the great monuments of antiquity, and provided museum collections that were available to study." They also gave the artists access to the carvers of Italy who translated their clay works into marble. During this period the themes from which the subjects of sculptural works were chosen tended to be drawn from antiquity, the exceptions being portraits (whose subjects were frequently shown wearing Roman or Greek garb) or works that included Native Americans
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
. These artists included Horatio Greenough
Horatio Greenough
Horatio Greenough was an American sculptor best known for his United States government commissions The Rescue and George Washington .-Biography:...
(1805–1852), Hiram Powers
Hiram Powers
Hiram Powers was an American neoclassical sculptor.-Biography:The son of a farmer, Powers was born in Woodstock, Vermont, on the July 29, 1805. In 1818 his father moved to Ohio, about six miles from Cincinnati, where the son attended school for about a year, staying meanwhile with his brother, a...
(1805–1873), Thomas Crawford (1814–1857), Harriet Hosmer (1830–1908), Chauncey Ives
Chauncey Ives
Chauncey Bradley Ives was a prolific American sculptor who worked primarily in the Neo-classic style. His best known works are the marble statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman enshrined in the National Statuary Hall Collection.-Early years:Ives was born in Hamden, Connecticut and at the...
(1810–1894), Randolph Rogers
Randolph Rogers
Randolph Rogers was an American sculptor. He was a prolific sculptor of subjects related to the American Civil War and other historical themes.-Biography:...
(1825–1892) and (somewhat later) William Henry Rinehart
William Henry Rinehart
William Henry Rinehart was a noted American sculptor. He is considered "the last important American sculptor to work in the classical style."-Biography:...
(1825–1874).
19th century American women sculptors
American women also became active sculptors during the Italian Period despite the sexism of the age. Among them were Edmonia LewisEdmonia Lewis
Mary Edmonia Lewis was the first African American and Native American woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world...
, Harriet Hosmer
Harriet Goodhue Hosmer
Harriet Goodhue Hosmer was an American sculptor.-Biography:Harriet Hosmer was born at Watertown, Massachusetts....
Anne Whitney
Anne Whitney
Anne Whitney was an American sculptor and poet. She was born in Watertown, Massachusetts on September 2, 1821 and died in Boston, Massachusetts on January 23, 1915.-Early years:...
, and Emma Stebbins
Emma Stebbins
Emma Stebbins was among the first notable American woman sculptors.- Career :Born and raised in a wealthy New York family, Stebbins was encouraged by her family in her pursuit of art from an early age. In 1857, sponsored by her brother Col. Henry G...
).
The Paris years
In the following decades, American sculptors more often went to Paris to study — falling in with the more naturalistic and dramatic style exemplified by the works of Jean-Baptiste CarpeauxJean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a French sculptor and painter.Born in Valenciennes, Nord, son of a mason, his early studies were under François Rude. Carpeaux entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and won the Prix de Rome in 1854, and moving to Rome to find inspiration, he there studied the works of...
(1827–1875) and Antoine-Louis Barye
Antoine-Louis Barye
Antoine-Louis Barye was a French sculptor most famous for his work as an animalier, a sculptor of animals.-Biography:Born in Paris, Barye began his career as a goldsmith, like many sculptors of the Romantic Period...
(1796–1875). Among them were Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the Irish-born American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the "American Renaissance"...
, Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...
, and John Quincy Adams Ward
John Quincy Adams Ward
John Quincy Adams Ward was an American sculptor, who is most familiar for his over-lifesize standing statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street.-Early years:...
.
Home grown
American sculpture of the mid- to late 19th century was often classical and often romantic, but it showed a special bent for a dramatic, narrative, almost journalistic realism (especially appropriate for nationalistic themes) as witnessed by the frontier life depicted by Frederic RemingtonFrederic Remington
Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...
. This was the beginning of the style of "Western Art" that continued with Alexander Phimister Proctor
Alexander Phimister Proctor
Alexander Phimister Proctor was an American sculptor with the contemporary reputation as one of the nation's foremost animaliers.-Birth and early years:...
and others through the 20th into the 21st century.
Wildlife sculptors (Animaliers)
The naturalism of the French school, exemplified by Antoine Barye, had a great impact on the first sculptors of American wildlife. The first generation of American animaliers included, Edward KemeysEdward Kemeys
Edward L. Kemeys was an American sculptor.He is best known for his sculptures of animals, particularly the two bronze lions that mark the entrance to the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago Illinois.-Life:...
, Edward Potter
Edward Clark Potter
Edward Clark Potter was an American sculptor best known for his equestrian and animal statues. His works include the "Fortitude" lion in front of the New York Public Library.-Early years:...
(who occasionally worked with Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...
, producing horses for his equestrian statues), Alexander Phimister Proctor
Alexander Phimister Proctor
Alexander Phimister Proctor was an American sculptor with the contemporary reputation as one of the nation's foremost animaliers.-Birth and early years:...
(who executed mounts for Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the Irish-born American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the "American Renaissance"...
' riders), Charles Russell
Charles Marion Russell
Charles Marion Russell , also known as C. M. Russell, Charlie Russell, and "Kid" Russell, was an artist of the Old American West. Russell created more than 2,000 paintings of cowboys, Indians, and landscapes set in the Western United States, in addition to bronze sculptures...
, Herbert Haseltine
Herbert Haseltine
Herbert Chevalier Haseltine was an Italian-born French/American animalier sculptor, most known as an Equestrian sculptor.-Early life and education:...
, Albert Laessle
Albert Laessle
Albert Laessle was an American sculptor and educator. He taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for more than twenty years.- Life, education and career :...
and Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington was an American sculptor.-Life and career:Huntington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Alpheus Hyatt, was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT, and served as a contributing factor to her early interest in animals and...
.
Public monuments
The years following the close of the War Between the States saw a huge increase in the number of public monuments erected in the United States. "By far the most prevalent monument features a fully equipped Confederate soldier (the same prototype held true for Union monuments) in a realistic pose."This style of monument was popularized by sculptor Martin Milmore
Martin Milmore
Martin Milmore was a noted American sculptor.Milmore immigrated to Boston from Sligo, Ireland at age seven, graduated from Boston Latin School in 1860, took art lessons at the Lowell Institute, and learned to carve in wood and stone from his older brother Joseph...
who created one of the first ones in 1868. Milmore's own monument, authored by Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...
, Death and the Sculptor remains one of America's "noble tributes."
As the century closed, the pace of monument-building quickened in the great cities of the East, especially those erected to memorialize the Civil War. Several outstanding sculptors emerged, most of them trained in the beaux-arts academies of Paris. Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...
stands out, as do Frederick William Macmonnies
Frederick William MacMonnies
Frederick William MacMonnies was the best known expatriate American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school, as successful and lauded in France as he was in the United States...
, Hans Schuler
Hans Schuler
Hans K. Schuler was a German-born American sculptor and monument maker. He was the first American sculptor ever to win the Salon Gold Medal. His works are in several important museum collections, and he also created many public monuments, mostly for locations in Maryland and in the Washington,...
, and Lorado Taft
Lorado Taft
Lorado Zadoc Taft was an American sculptor, writer and educator. Taft was born in Elmwood, Illinois in 1860 and died in his home studio in Chicago in 1936.-Early years and education:...
. This tradition continued to the 1940s with Charles Keck
Charles Keck
Charles Keck was an American sculptor, born in New York City. He studied in the National Academy of Design and Art Students League with Philip Martiny and was an assistant to Augustus Saint-Gaudens from 1893 to 1898. He also attended the American Academy in Rome. He is best known for his...
, Alexander Stirling Calder
Alexander Stirling Calder
Alexander Stirling Calder was an American sculptor and teacher; son of the sculptor Alexander Milne Calder, and father of the sculptor Alexander Calder...
and others and the use of figurative sculpture in monuments persists into the 21st Century. After the middle of the 20th Century sculpture used in public monuments was increasingly abstract.
Carving mountains
There are at least three major mountain sculptures in the United States. These are Mount RushmoreMount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States...
, Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain
Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome monadnock in Stone Mountain, Georgia, United States. At its summit, the elevation is 1,686 feet amsl and 825 feet above the surrounding area. Stone Mountain granite extends underground at its longest point into Gwinnett County...
, and Crazy Horse Memorial
Crazy Horse Memorial
The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument complex that is under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in Custer County, South Dakota. It represents Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Lakota...
. Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was an American artist and sculptor famous for creating the monumental presidents' heads at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, the famous carving on Stone Mountain near Atlanta, as well as other public works of art.- Background :The son of Mormon Danish immigrants, Gutzon...
, an accomplished sculptor with such pieces as Seated Lincoln and a variety of other public monuments, oversaw the sculpture of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills
Black Hills
The Black Hills are a small, isolated mountain range rising from the Great Plains of North America in western South Dakota and extending into Wyoming, USA. Set off from the main body of the Rocky Mountains, the region is something of a geological anomaly—accurately described as an "island of...
in South Dakota. The monument was finished after his death by his son Lincoln Borglum.
Gutzon Borglum also was responsible for starting the Stone Mountain project in Georgia but had a falling-out with its overseers. The monument was then taken up by Augustus Lukeman
Augustus Lukeman
Henry Augustus Lukeman was an American sculptor, specializing in historical monuments. He was born in Richmond, Virginia, and introduced to sculpting at age 10 at a boys' club miniature workshop. From 10 to 13 he worked with clay and wood. He then became a pupil of sculptor Launt Thompson until...
, who died during its carving in 1935. The memorial was finished by Walker Hancock
Walker Hancock
Walker Kirtland Hancock was a 20th-century American sculptor and teacher. He created notable monumental sculptures, including the Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
and was considered complete in 1972.
The Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota depicts the Oglala Lakota warrior Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse was a Native American war leader of the Oglala Lakota. He took up arms against the U.S...
riding a horse and pointing into the distance. It was begun in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski
Korczak Ziólkowski
Korczak Ziolkowski was the Polish American designer and sculptor of Crazy Horse Memorial.-Early life:...
and continued after his death by his wife, Ruth, and several of their children. The face was dedicated in 1998.
Architectural sculpture
Public buildings of the last quarter of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century provided an architectural setting for sculpture, especially in relief. Karl BitterKarl Bitter
Karl Theodore Francis Bitter was an Austrian-born United States sculptor best known for his architectural sculpture, memorials and residential work.- Life and career :...
, Lee Lawrie
Lee Lawrie
Lee Oscar Lawrie was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II...
, Adolph Alexander Weinman
Adolph Alexander Weinman
Adolph Alexander Weinman was an American sculptor, born in Karlsruhe, Germany.- Biography :Weinman arrived in the United States at the age of 10. At the age of 15, he attended evening classes at Cooper Union and later studied at the Art Students League of New York with sculptors Augustus St....
, C. Paul Jennewein
C. Paul Jennewein
Carl Paul Jennewein was a German-born American sculptor.-Early career:Jennewein was born in Stuttgart in Germany. He immigrated to the United States in 1907....
, Rene Paul Chambellan
Rene Paul Chambellan
Rene Paul Chambellan was an American sculptor, born in West Hoboken, New Jersey.Chambellan studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris and with Solon Borglum in New York City. Chambellan specialized in architectural sculpture...
, Corrado Parducci
Corrado Parducci
Corrado Giuseppe Parducci was an Italian-American architectural sculptor who was a celebrated artist for his numerous early 20th Century works.-Early life and education:...
, and many others worked in the simple, sometimes narrative style that fit these spaces. Much of this work was created by anonymous sculptors and carvers.
Twentieth century
As the century began, many young European sculptors migrated to the free, booming economy across the Atlantic, and European trained sculptors account for much of the great work created before 1950. These include Elie NadelmanElie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman was an American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of Polish birth.-Early years:...
, Albin Polasek
Albin Polasek
Albin Polasek was a Czech-American sculptor and educator. He created more than four hundred works during his career, two hundred of which are now displayed in the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Winter Park, Florida.-Career:Born as Albín Polášek in Frenštát, Moravia , Polasek...
, Gaston Lachaise
Gaston Lachaise
Gaston Lachaise was an American sculptor of French birth, active in the early 20th century. A native of Paris, he was most noted for his female nudes such as Standing Woman.-Early life and education:...
and Carl Milles
Carl Milles
Carl Milles was a Swedish sculptor, best known for his fountains. He was married to artist Olga Milles and brother to Ruth Milles and half brother to the architect Evert Milles...
.
Modern Classicism
Several notable American sculptors joined in the revitalization of the classical tradition at this time, most notably Paul ManshipPaul Manship
Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...
, who "discovered" archaic Greek sculpture while studying on a scholarship in Rome. C. Paul Jennewein
C. Paul Jennewein
Carl Paul Jennewein was a German-born American sculptor.-Early career:Jennewein was born in Stuttgart in Germany. He immigrated to the United States in 1907....
and Edward McCartan
Edward McCartan
Edward Francis McCartan was an American sculptor, best known for his decorative bronzes done in an elegant style popular in the 1920s.-Life:He studied at the Pratt Institute, with Herbert Adams....
were also leaders in this direction who fit easily with the art-deco tastes of the 1920s.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the ideologies that rent European politics were reflected in associations of American sculptors. On the right was the group, mostly native-born, mostly old-school classical, mostly modelers of clay, who founded the National Sculpture Society
National Sculpture Society
Founded in 1893, the National Sculpture Society was the first organization of professional sculptors formed in the United States. The purpose of the organization was to promote the welfare of American sculptors, although its founding members included several renowned architects. The founding...
, led by the heiress and sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington was an American sculptor.-Life and career:Huntington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Alpheus Hyatt, was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT, and served as a contributing factor to her early interest in animals and...
and preserved in the sculpture park that she endowed — Brookgreen Gardens
Brookgreen Gardens
Brookgreen Gardens is a sculpture garden and wildlife preserve, located just south of Murrells Inlet, in South Carolina. The property includes several themed gardens with American figurative sculptures placed in them, the Lowcountry Zoo, and trails through several ecosystems in nature reserves on...
in South Carolina.
American Expressionism
On the left, often immigrant, often expressionistic, was the New York-based Sculptor's Guild, with an emphasis on more current themes and direct carving in wood or stone. Its most famous member was William ZorachWilliam Zorach
William Zorach was a Lithuanian-born American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and writer. He won the Logan Medal of the arts.-Life and career:...
.
African-American sculptors
With the Harlem Renaissance, an African-American sculpture genre emerged. Richmond BarthéRichmond Barthé
James Richmond Barthé was an African American sculptor known for his many public works, including the Toussaint L’Ouverture Monument in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and a sculpture of Rose McClendon for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House.Barthe once said that “all my life I have be interested in...
was an outstanding example. Augusta Savage
Augusta Savage
Augusta Savage, born Augusta Christine Fells was an African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was also a teacher and her studio was important to the careers of a rising generation of artists who would become nationally known...
was a sculptor and teacher. Other contemporary sculptors include Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett Mora is an African-American sculptor and printmaker. Catlett is best known for the black, expressionistic sculptures and prints she produced during the 1960s and 1970s, which are seen as politically charged....
, Martin Puryear
Martin Puryear
Martin Puryear is an African American sculptor. He works in media including wood, stone, tar, and wire, and his work is a union of minimalism and traditional crafts.-Life:...
, Jerry Harris
Jerry Harris
Jerry Harris is an African American abstract sculptor, collagist and writer. Harris is primarily a constructivist sculptor, working in media such as wood, stone, bronze, fiberglass, clay, metal, mixed media , and collage.After graduating from high school in Pittsburgh, he spent a year in Portland,...
, Thaddeus Mosley
Thaddeus Mosley
Thaddeus G. Mosley is a United States sculptor who works mostly in wood and is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.-Biography:A native of New Castle, Pennsylvania, Mosley enlisted in the U.S. Navy, then graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, where he majored in English and journalism, then...
, and Richard Hunt
Richard Hunt (sculptor)
Richard Hunt is an internationally renowned sculptor.He was born in 1935 on Chicago's South Side. From an early age he was interested in the arts, as his mother was an artist. As a young boy, Hunt began to show enthusiasm and talent in artistic disciplines such as drawing and painting, and also...
.
The turn toward abstraction
Some Americans, such as Isamu NoguchiIsamu Noguchi
was a prominent Japanese American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces,...
, had already moved from figurative to nonfigurative design, but after 1950, the entire American art world took a dramatic turn away from the former tradition, especially as exemplified in its application by the totalitarian and genocidal regimes of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and America led the rest of the world into a more iconoclastic and theoretical approach to modernism.
Within the next ten years, traditional sculpture education would almost completely be replaced by a Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
-influenced concern for abstract design. To accompany the triumph of abstract expressionist painting, heroes of abstract sculpture such as David Smith
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
emerged, and many new materials were explored for sculptural expression. Louise Nevelson pioneered the emerging genre of environmental sculpture
Environmental sculpture
The term environmental sculpture is variously defined. A development of the art of the 20th century, environmental sculpture usually creates or alters the environment for the viewer, as opposed to presenting itself figurally or monumentally before the viewer...
.
Gallery of Modernist American sculpture
Pushing the boundaries of art
George Segal (artist)
George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.-Works:...
made with plaster. Jim Gary
Jim Gary
Jim Gary was an American sculptor popularly known for his large, colorful creations of dinosaurs made from discarded automobile parts...
created life-sized figures composed of metal washers and hardware almost invisibly welded together, as well as those of stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
and even used automobile parts and tools in his sculptures.
Blokus
Blokus
Blokus is an abstract strategy board game for two to four players, invented by Bernard Tavitian and first released in 2000 by Sekkoïa, a French company. It has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award and the 2004 Teacher's Choice Award....
Concerns for the qualities of forms and design continued — but usually without representing a human figure. Minimalist sculpture by artists such as Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
and Norman Carlberg
Norman Carlberg
Norman Carlberg is an American sculptor and printmaker. He is noted as an exemplar of the modular constructivist style....
often replaced the figure in public settings. Sculpture of the late 20th century was mostly a playful exploration of the boundaries of what could be called art.
Minimalism
The MinimalistMinimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
style reduces sculpture to its most essential and fundamental features. Minimalists include Tony Smith
Tony Smith (sculptor)
Tony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.-Education:...
, Donald Judd
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
, Robert Morris
Robert Morris (artist)
Robert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...
, Larry Bell
Larry Bell (artist)
Larry Bell is a contemporary American artist and sculptor. He lives and works in Taos, New Mexico, and maintains a studio in Venice, California. From 1957 to 1959 he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles as a student of Robert Irwin, Richards Ruben, Robert Chuey, and Emerson Woelfer...
, Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt was a major American artist of the mid-20th century; she is associated with both minimalism and Color Field artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland....
, and Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Early life and career:...
;
Site-specific movement
Site specificSite-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...
and environmental art
Environmental art
The term environmental art is used in two different contexts: it can be used generally to refer to art dealing with ecological issues and/or the natural, such as the formal, the political, the historical, or the social context....
works are represented by artists: Donald Judd
Donald Judd
Donald Clarence Judd was an American artist associated with minimalism . In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy...
, Richard Serra
Richard Serra
Richard Serra is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large-scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement.-Early life and education:...
, Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin (artist)
Robert Irwin is an American Installation artist. He lives and works in San Diego, California.-Beginnings:Robert Irwin was born in 1928 in Long Beach, California to Robert Irwin and Goldie Anderberg Irwin...
, George Rickey
George Rickey
George Rickey was an American kinetic sculptor.Rickey was born on June 6, 1907 in South Bend, Indiana.-Life and work:...
, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude were a married couple who created environmental works of art...
led contemporary abstract sculpture in new directions. Artists created environmental sculpture
Environmental sculpture
The term environmental sculpture is variously defined. A development of the art of the 20th century, environmental sculpture usually creates or alters the environment for the viewer, as opposed to presenting itself figurally or monumentally before the viewer...
on expansive sites in the 'land art in the American West
Land Arts of the American West
Land Arts of the American West is a studio-based field program that seeks to construct an expanded definition of land art through direct experience connecting the full range of human interventions in the landscape—from pre-contact indigenous to contemporary practice...
' group of projects. These land art
Land art
Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...
or 'earth art' environmental scale sculpture works exemplified by artists such as Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
, Michael Heizer
Michael Heizer
Michael Heizer is a contemporary artist specializing primarily in large-scale sculptures and earth art .Heizer was born in Berkeley, California in 1944; and he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. Traveling to New York City in 1966, he began his career producing more conventional, small-scale...
, James Turrell
James Turrell
James Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
(Roden Crater
Roden Crater
Roden Crater is a cinder cone type of volcanic cone from an extinct volcano, with a remaining interior volcanic crater. It is located northeast of the city of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, United States.-Art project:...
) and others
The land art
Land art
Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...
(earth art) environmental scale sculpture works by Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
, Michael Heizer
Michael Heizer
Michael Heizer is a contemporary artist specializing primarily in large-scale sculptures and earth art .Heizer was born in Berkeley, California in 1944; and he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. Traveling to New York City in 1966, he began his career producing more conventional, small-scale...
, James Turrell
James Turrell
James Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
and others.
Postminimalism
Artists Bill Bollinger, Eva HesseEva Hesse
Eva Hesse , was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. -Early life:Hesse was born into a family of observant Jews in Hamburg, Germany...
, Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
, Jackie Winsor, Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier is a Postminimalist, performance, video and light artist. Sonnier was one of the first artists to use light in sculpture in the 1960s, and has been one of the most successful with this technique...
, Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....
, and Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras
Lucas Samaras , is an artist, born in Kastoria, Greece. He studied at Rutgers University on a scholarship, where he met Allan Kaprow and George Segal. While at Rutgers, he joined Gamma Sigma . He participated in Kaprow's "Happenings," and posed for Segal's plaster sculptures...
, among others were pioneers of Postminimalist sculpture.The later works of Robert Graham
Robert Graham (sculptor)
Robert Graham was a sculptor based in the state of California in the United States. His monumental bronzes commemorate the human figure and are featured in public places across America.-Biography:...
continued evolving, often in public art
Public art
The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
settings, into the 21st century.
Also during the 1960s and 1970s artists as diverse as Stephen Antonakis, Chryssa
Chryssa
Chryssa Vardea Mavromichali is a Greek American artist who works in a wide variety of media. An American art pioneer in light art and luminist sculpture widely known for her neon, steel, aluminum and acrylic glass installations, she has always used the mononym Chryssa professionally...
, Walter De Maria
Walter De Maria
-Early life and career:De Maria was born in Albany, California on October 1, 1935. He studied history and art at the University of California, Berkeley from 1953 to 1959. Although trained as a painter, De Maria soon turned to sculpture and began using other media...
, Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin
Dan Flavin was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.-Early life and career:...
, Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
, Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin (artist)
Robert Irwin is an American Installation artist. He lives and works in San Diego, California.-Beginnings:Robert Irwin was born in 1928 in Long Beach, California to Robert Irwin and Goldie Anderberg Irwin...
, Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
, George Segal
George Segal (artist)
George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.-Works:...
, Edward Kienholz
Edward Kienholz
Edward Kienholz was an American installation artist whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he assembled much of his artwork in close collaboration with his artistic partner and wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz...
, Duane Hanson
Duane Hanson
Duane Hanson was an American artist based in South Florida but born in Minnesota, a sculptor known for his lifecast realistic works of people, cast in various materials, including polyester resin, fibreglass, Bondo and bronze...
, and John DeAndrea
John DeAndrea
John De Andrea was born in Denver, Colorado on November 24, 1941 and is an American sculptor, known for realistic sculptures of human figures, dressed and nude in true-to-life postures.- Classification :...
explored abstraction, imagery and figuration through Light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
sculpture, Land art
Land art
Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...
, and installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
in new ways.
Late 20th century revival of figurative sculpture
Other kinds of sculpture grew in importance, some evolving from the work of leaders in ironwork during the early 1900s who included Samuel YellinSamuel Yellin
Samuel Yellin , American master blacksmith, was born in Galicia Poland where at the age of eleven he was apprenticed to an iron master. By the age of sixteen he had completed his apprenticeship. During that period he gained the nickname of "Devil," both for his work habits and his sense of humor...
. A center for the western style of American sculpture developed at Loveland, Colorado
Loveland, Colorado
Loveland is a Home Rule Municipality that is the second most populous city in Larimer County, Colorado, United States. Loveland is situated north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. Loveland is the 14th most populous city in Colorado. The United States Census Bureau that in 2010 the...
, and many studios, magazines, and even a museum (the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with more than 28,000 Western and American Indian art works and artifacts. The facility also has the world's most extensive collection of American rodeo, photographs, barbed wire, saddlery, and early rodeo trophies...
in Oklahoma City) pursued this interest. A neo-Victorian style emerged, pioneered by the sculptor of the National Cathedral, Frederick Hart
Frederick Hart (sculptor)
Frederick Elliott Hart was an American sculptor, best known for his public monuments and works of art in bronze, marble, and clear acrylic .-Biography:American master sculptor Frederick Hart is recognized for creating work that is at once traditional in its...
. Meanwhile, many American sculptors persisted in their pre-war, modern/classical-style training. Some of these include Joseph Erhardy
Joseph Erhardy
-Biography:Joseph Erhardy was born in Welch, West Virginia in 1928. In 1949, in full vogue of the American abstract movement, he left his native country and went to Florence and studied classical sculpture at the . In Rome, he became the assistant of Mirko Basaldella, who was himself the...
, Milton Horn
Milton Horn
Milton Horn is a Russian American sculptor and artist known for work that, according to a 1957 citation of honor from the American Institute of Architects, demonstrated "the truth that architecture and sculpture are not two separate arts but, in the hands of sympathetic collaborators, one and the...
, Charles Umlauf
Charles Umlauf
Charles Umlauf was an American sculptor and teacher who was born is South Haven, Michigan.In 1929 he began three years of study with Albin Polasek at the Art Institute of Chicago. He subsequently spent one year as an assistant to Lorado Taft at his Midway Studio before returning to the AIC where...
, and John Henry Waddell.
Other genres of sculpture
The art-doll and ceramic sculpture communities also grew in numbers and importance in the late 20th century, while the entertainment industry required large-scale, spectacular (sometimes monstrous or cartoon-like ) sculpture for movie sets, theme parks, casinos, and athletic stadiums. Industrial product design, especially automobiles, should not be ignored.Legal issues regarding photographs
United States courts have consistently said that sculptors maintain an intellectual propertyIntellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
right to sculptures and are entitled to compensation if photographs are used for commercial purposes. The rights apply even if the sculptor no longer owns the sculpture or is even in a public space. The sculptor however could sign away those rights. Some other countries such as Germany give permission to take the photographs via the concept of Panoramafreiheit
Panoramafreiheit
Freedom of panorama, often abbreviated as FOP, is a provision in the copyright laws of various jurisdictions that permits taking photographs or video footage, or creating other images , of buildings and sometimes sculptures and other art which are permanently located in a public place, without...
.
On February 25, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
-Vacancies and pending nominations:-List of former judges:-Chief judges:Notwithstanding the foregoing, when the court was initially created, Congress had to resolve which chief judge of the predecessor courts would become the first chief judge...
ruled 2-1 that the Frank Gaylord, sculptor of the Korean War Veterans Memorial
Korean War Veterans Memorial
The Korean War Veterans Memorial is located in Washington, D.C.'s West Potomac Park, southeast of the Lincoln Memorial and just south of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall...
was entitled to compensation because an image of it was used on a 37 cent postage stamp and he had not signed away his intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights. The appeals court rejected arguments that the photo was transformative
Transformativeness
Transformativeness is a concept used in United States copyright law to describe a characteristic of some derivative works that makes them transcend or place in a new light the underlying works on which they are based...
.
In 2002 amateur photographer and retired Marine John All paid was $1,500 to use one of his photographs of the memorial on a snowy day for the stamp which sold more than $17 million worth of stamps. In 2006 sculptor Frank Gaylord enlisted Fish & Richardson
Fish & Richardson
Fish & Richardson P.C. is a national law firm practicing intellectual property law.Fish is the 109th largest firm in the United States. Fish has over 350 attorneys, of which 96 percent are dedicated to intellectual property law. Fish is one of the most sought-after firms for both patent...
to make a pro bono
Pro bono
Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and strategy consulting firms...
claim that the Postal Service had violated his Intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights to the sculpture and thus should have been compensated. The Postal Service argued argued that Gaylord was not the sole sculptor (saying he had received advice from federal sources – who recommended that the uniforms appear more in the wind) and also that the sculpture was actually architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
. Gaylord won all of his arguments in the lower court except for one…the court rule the photo was fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders...
and thus he was not entitled to compensation. Gaylord appealed and won the case on appeal. The case can now either be appealed to the United States Supreme Court or be damages can be assessed by the lower court.