Sculpture Today

In the great sea-change marking the end of Modernism -- a general set of views and assumptions about art which reigned during the first half of the twentieth century -- critical opinion began to shift from painting to sculpture. Sculpture was felt to be more socially engaging because it occupied actual space rather than creating an illusionistic realm using perspective and other techniques.

In recent years sculpture has become a capacious and enormously inventive category that includes an astonishing range of phenomena. These encompass installations, environments, staged video displays and even choreographed humans. This sheer array of materials, forms and techniques that has been -- and continues to be -- presented under the term of ‘sculpture’ in the twenty-first century indicates that the discipline is not an immutable art form with fixed boundaries and commandments, but rather that it can expand its terms of reference with unflagging energy, and is apparently inexhaustible.

Judy Collins’s authoritative yet accessible text explores the various subjects, materials, techniques and styles utilized by contemporary sculptors and celebrates both the vitality and sheer diversity of this wide-ranging art form.