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The Form of Things

A Self-Guide to Sculpture in the Meadows Museum Collection

Table of Contents

• Welcome
• Guidelines for Visiting
• Reading a Label
• Before Your Visit and Sculpture Questions
• About Sculpture 7-
• During Visit Activity K-5
• Sketching Sculpture
• During Visit Activity 6-12
• Sculpture Critique
• Meadows Museum Sculpture Self-Guided Tour 13-
  • Meadows Museum Map
  • Joy of Life
  • Three Piece Reclining Figure no.
  • Sho
  • Geometric Mouse II
  • Spirit’s Flight
  • Wave
  • Cubi VIII
  • Femme de Venise IV
  • Eve in Despair
  • St. Ignatius Loyola
  • St. John the Baptist
• Post-Visit Activities
• Vocabulary 26-

Guidelines for Visiting the Meadows Museum

Following these guidelines will help keep the works of art safe:

Do not touch the artwork.

Only use pencils when writing and sketching in the galleries.

Food, beverages, and chewing gum are not allowed in the galleries.

Leave backpacks on the bus. If you have a backpack, it can be left under

the main staircase.

No cameras are allowed in the galleries.

Student groups must be accompanied by an adult chaperone at all times.

One adult chaperone is required for every ten students.

Why We Ask You Not to Touch

PROTECTING ART FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

It‘s only natural for visitors to the Meadows Museum to want to touch the

beautiful artworks. Usually the visitors do not realize the cumulative damage that

results when many individuals touch objects, even very lightly. Before your visit,

try the following classroom activity to help your students understand why they

cannot touch the art on display at the Museum. Although many of the museum‘s

sculptures are outdoors, they still need protection. Please remind students not to

lean on or touch the sculptures.

Step 1: Take two pieces of ordinary white paper (about four by five inches) and

pass one of the sheets around the classroom. Ask each student to rub it between

his or her fingers for a moment before passing it along. The activity will work

even better with sunglasses or a small mirror.

Step 2: After everyone has touched the paper, have students compare it to the

piece that was not passed around.

Step 3: Discuss with students how much dirt and oil is on the sheet that they

touched and how these residues can damage works of art. Tell students that

thousands of people visit the Museum each year, and speculate on what the

paper might look like if thousands of people had touched it! Use student

comments as a springboard for a discussion on the importance of protecting art

for future generations. Why is it important to preserve artworks? What can we

learn from art? What artworks at home or in the community would students want

to preserve? Why?

Reading A Label

Throughout the Meadows Museum, you will see captional information about the

art and artists presented on labels throughout the galleries. The following

exercise, featuring a work from the self-guide materials, teaches how to read this

information.

AUGUSTE RODIN (1840–1917)

Eve in Despair , 1915

Marble

Elizabeth Meadows Sculpture Collection, 69.

What is the name or title of the artwork?

________________________________________________________________

When was the artwork made? (note: on some works you will see c. which means

circa, or about)

________________________________________________________________

What is the name of the artist who made the artwork?

________________________________________________________________

When was the artist born?

________________________________________________________________

Is the artist still alive? __________ If not, when did the artist die? ____________

What materials were used to make the artwork?

________________________________________________________________

When did the Meadows Museum acquire the artwork?

________________________________________________________________

Note: The acquisition number for this work is 69.06. This was the sixth artwork

purchased by the Museum in 1969.

About Sculpture

A sculpture is a three-dimensional work of art, meaning the work shares the

space with the viewer. Because of this, viewers can identify with a sculpture in a

different way than with a painting. Looking at sculpture is a dynamic activity; the

work changes as the viewer moves through space and time. Sculptures range

from objects in the round that can be viewed from any direction, to incised reliefs,

which are images cut into flat surfaces. Sculpture is also tactile—it contains

various textures and forms. There are four primary techniques to produce

sculpture: modeling, carving, casting, and construction/assemblage. Sculptures

are typically made from durable materials such as metal (including bronze , steel,

aluminum, iron, lead, wire, copper, and sheet metal), plaster, plastic, stone, wood

or found objects. The majority of the sculptures in the Meadows Museum

Sculpture Collection are made from bronze, stone, or steel.

Frequently, sculptures are created for public display and are positioned in sites,

such as plazas, memorials, and parks. When many sculptures are grouped

together in a garden setting, it may be referred to as a sculpture garden, such as

the sculpture plaza at the Meadows Museum. Some sculptures depict historical

and Biblical people and events; while others, at first glance, may look as if they

do not represent anything we can identify in real life, but in fact they do. These

works are called abstract art, where artists depict objects in simplified shapes

that illustrate certain characteristics and eliminate other features.

While paintings traditionally hold the most popular appeal, sculpture is probably

the oldest of the arts with the earliest known sculpture dating back to around

32,000 B.C. However, fewer sculptures have survived from previous civilizations.

Many have been lost or reused since they were made from precious materials.

After the 17th^ century, sculpture became less important in the mind of artists and

patrons of the arts. It was not until the mid-1800s that sculpture returned as a

vital art form. The subject matter became less dependant on Biblical or classical

themes. Instead, formal issues of light, form, and space bridged the gap between

sculpture and painting. Non-western (African, Oceanic, and Asian) sources

became influential to western (European) audiences. We will see the affect of

non-western sources in the Meadows collection through the sculpture of Alberto

Giacometti, Isamu Noguchi, and Fritz Wotruba. Painters also began to

experiment with sculpture as a means to expand their search for inspiration.

Artists in our collection such as David Smith and Claes Oldenburg were both

painters and sculptors.

Modern sculptors showed less interest in naturalism and paid more attention to

stylization, form, and contrasting qualities of the surface of the material. Artists

placed importance on psychological realism over physical realism. In more recent

modern art, artists' interest in the psychological resulted in more abstractedly

stylized sculpture (as in the work of Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti). In the

later 20th century, many artists continued to work in traditional mediums but

began to explore abstraction or simplification of forms and eliminated realistic

details. While artists look to one another for inspiration, many referred back to the

great masters of 20th^ century sculpture such as Constantin Brancusi , a Romanian

sculptor who used simplified forms and focused on subjects such as birds and

fish. While he is not included in our sculpture collection, he had a great influence

over the works of other artists, such as Noguchi.

During the middle of the 20th^ century, artists began to explore new avenues.

Some removed their sculptures from traditional pedestals and hung the work on

cables to allow movement and create kinetic sculptures. Others began to explore

new materials, using found or discarded objects to create what is called

assemblages. Pablo Picasso and Julio Gonzalez produced iron Cubist

sculptures. (The Meadow‘s permanent collection includes paintings from Picasso

and drawings from Gonzalez. You may want to further look into their influence on

modern sculpture.) Additionally, some sculptors orchestrated the construction of

their works using cranes to piece together large-scale sculptures in wood, stone,

and metal. Other artists, valuing the idea or concept behind a work of art over the

actual object, took a more hands-off approach in their work and created drawings

and designs for art works, which were then fabricated by others.

More recently, artists blurred the boundaries of art by mixing sculptural materials

with sound, light, video projection, and two-dimensional images to create three-

dimensional environments. This form of art, known as installation art, went

beyond the traditional viewing of a sculpture. Installation artists modify the way

viewers interacted with a particular space by creating an immersive, multi-

sensory experience in which a viewer can participate.

Activity Worksheet to Use on a Self-Guided Visit: Sketching Sculpture

Look closely at the sculptures in the Meadows Museum. Fill in the artist‘s name

and the title of the sculpture. Then sketch the general shape of each pair of art

terms.

Organic

Artist:

Title:

Positive Space

Artist:

Title:

Smooth Texture

Artist:

Title:

Geometric

Artist:

Title:

Negative Space

Artist:

Title:

Rough Texture

Artist:

Title:

During Your Visit Activity for Grade 6-12: Sculpture Critique

Use the following activity to aid students in thinking critically about an artwork. Have

your students choose a sculpture and write a one-page critique. Ask them to look

closely at the surface and details of the sculpture and to walk around the work to view

it from different angles. Then use the questions to begin to think more in-depth about

the artwork.

You may also ask the students to explain their reason for choosing each particular

sculpture to write about.

Navigating the Meadows Museum with these materials

This packet is designed to prompt looking. The activities and questions in this

packet are created for use with the sculpture collection located in the Elizabeth

Meadows Sculpture Garden on the Plaza in front of the Meadows Museum as

well as select sculptures through the galleries inside the museum. Please be

sure to check with the Education Department to make sure which sculptures will

be on view inside the museum. The works on the plaza are permanently installed

there. Below is a diagram of the plaza. Choose just three or four works to use

in discussion with your students while you are at the museum. Due to the

size of the museum, if you come to a gallery where there is already a group

touring, please be sure to keep voices lowered, or try to bypass the gallery and

return when it is free.

Sculpture from left to right: Joy of Life, Jacques Lipchitz; Three Piece Reclining Figure no. 1 , Henry Moore; Sho, Jaume Plensa; Geometric Mouse II, Claes Oldenburg; Spirit’s Flight, Isamu Noguchi; and in front, Wave , Santiago Calatrava.

Museum Entrance

Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973) Joy of Life (La Joie de Vivre), 1927 Bronze 140 x 25 x 25 inches

Questions for Teaching Move around the sculpture and describe what you see. How are the shapes in this work interconnected?

Do you see a figure in this work? Why or why not?

Have each student choose a one word title for this sculpture.

About the Sculpture In 1927, Jacques Lipchitz had what he called ―one of the great commissions‖ of his life, the Joy of Life. The artist was asked by Viscomte Charles de Noailles to create a sculpture for his estate at Hyéres in the south of France. Although a commission, the sculpture was personal for Lipchitz, as it was inspired by his sister, who was ill at the time. In hopes of cheering her up, the artist set out to create an uplifting work, which he describes as representative of a dancing figure with a large guitar. Joy of Life , Lipchitz writes, creates ―its own sense of three-dimensional space by the large masses which are interpenetrated from every point of view so that space flows around and through the sculpture.‖

About the Artist In early 20th^ century Paris, Lipchitz was involved in the Cubist movement where he formed close relationships with Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris. Although the interaction with other artists influenced Lipchitz‘s work, in 1924 he left Montparnasse in order to seek solitude. Because Lipchitz endured many personal struggles throughout his career, such as the death of his beloved sister, as well as a fire in 1952 that destroyed almost all of his work, he described making art as, ―a struggle against dying.‖ For him, each new obstacle heightened his passion for making art. He has been described by some scholars as the father of Cubist sculpture, and broke ground with his 1916 work , Man with Guitar , in which a hole was cut through the center. This sculpture, now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, reinforces to the viewer that this is not a natural figure, but a man-made piece of art. In much the same way that Cubist painters sought to underline the two-dimensional quality of their work, Lipchitz worked to emphasize the three-dimensionality of sculpture.

For Further Comparison Discuss the use of positive and negative space in relation to David Smith‘s use of space in Cubi VIII.

Jaume Plensa (b.1955) Sho, 2007 Stainless steel 10 x 13 feet

Questions for Teaching What do you notice first as you move around this work? How would you describe the person in this sculpture?

Does the large scale of this work cause us to look at the human head and its contours in a new way?

At night, this sculpture can be lit from underneath. How would viewing this work during the day differ from experiencing it at night?

About the Work Jaume Plensa‘s work is deeply influenced by the human body, as can be seen in Sho , where he creates an intimate portrait on a monumental scale. The sculpture is of a young girl‘s head whose facial features are poetically formed in a stainless steel grid. The artist is concerned with both the physicality as well as the spirituality of the human body. Mimicking the idea of the unity of cells to create a larger mass, Plensa manipulates the wire into small squares and carefully intersects the sections to create a large-scale artwork that is dependent on the relationship of its smaller elements. Leaving the face void of detailed features allows the sculpture to become more universal and in turn more relatable to many viewers. In terms of conveying the spiritual aura of the human body, Plensa views art as a living organism born from a living process and in turn creates works that speak to these notions and portrays a life, or energy, of their own. Sho can be lit from underneath, so that at night it glows with the same ―energy‖ that the artist feels is emitted from people. The various elements that are often incorporated into his pieces, particularly light, are suggestive of the energy of lived experience and thought.

About the artist Born in Spain, Jaume Plensa has established himself as a transnational success over the past two decades. He was raised in an atmosphere where books and music were prominent. According to the artist, the piano was a particularly special instrument for him as a child. Plensa transposed this idea of physicality into his art, stating, ―Music, books, the body…all of the elements are the essence of my work today.‖ His works, in both museums as well as public spaces, are focused on the interactions of the materials used, in addition to the relationships that are formed between the viewers and the artwork. The artist is concerned with the idea of space, and its public role in urban settings, and believes his sculptures have the ability to form the personality of a place. The artist believes that art is a consequence that helps people understand life; therefore it is important to him that both social as well as individual interactions transpire from viewers engaging with his artwork.

For Further Comparison Compare this figurative work to other sculptures in the Meadows collection. How is Sho similar to works such as Crouching Woman? How is it different?

Claes Oldenburg (b. 1929) Geometric Mouse II, 1969- Cor-ton steel and aluminum 122 x 180 x 84 inches

Questions for Teaching Begin by asking your students what they think this sculpture represents. The artist combined images of Mickey Mouse and a film projector to create the sculpture. Can you find the shape of Mickey Mouse? Can you find the shape of the film projector?

How big is a mouse normally? Why would Oldenburg make this sculpture so big?

Oldenburg made similar versions of this sculpture in other sizes. How would the affect of this work change if it was larger? Smaller?

About the Sculpture Claes Oldenburg created Geometric Mouse II by combining an image of Mickey Mouse and profile of a film projector. The projector‘s reels make up the ears while the eyes are constructed from camera shutters. Geometric Mouse II contains tension between the recognizable and abstract objects; both of which are blown up to monumental proportion. Additionally, Geometric Mouse is a symbol of the process of projection as well as of the projected image itself. Oldenburg made his Geometric Mouse sculptures in many scales that range from small tabletop size (―Scale A‖ at 145 x 143 x 73 inches) to ―Scale X‖ which is monumental in dimension (20 x 15 x 12 feet). The Meadow‘s Geometric Mouse II is ―Scale D.‖ Oldenburg also places autobiographical associations on the Geometric Mouse , particularly with the image‘s links to Mickey Mouse. Both Disney‘s popular cartoon character and Oldenburg are seen as ―anti-heroes,‖ both full of mischief, pranks, and whimsy.

About the Artist Claes Oldenburg was born in Sweden and moved to the United States in his youth. As a pop artist, he was interested in the materialistic culture of the 1960s and 1970s. By enlarging the scale of everyday, familiar objects and then rendering them in hard and soft forms, the artist creates parody and humor while at the same time emphasizing the formal qualities of the object itself. Oldenburg also explores geometric qualities of hard surfaces and clean contour lines. His end result produces an animated human-like quality in his sculptures. Furthermore, the large scale of his objects takes away their everyday meanings and allows the viewers to see the sculptures in a more abstract manner. For Oldenburg, public art was the most appropriate means to convey his ideas of the ―poetry of scale,‖ which involves producing multiple sizes of the same object.

For Further Comparison Compare the construction of Oldenburg‘s Geometric Mouse II to how David Smith assembled Cubi VIII.

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Santiago Calatrava (b. 1958) Wave , 2002 Steel, bronze, nylon, granite 40 x 90 feet

Questions for Teaching Discuss the placement of Wave. Why do you think this work was chosen to be placed in front of the Meadows Museum? How does it relate to the architecture of the building? How does it relate to its own setting within the fountain?

The relationship between movement and structure is an important idea in Calatrava‘s work. Describe how the sculpture moves. How do you think it operates?

About the Work The idea of mimicking the elements of nature can be seen in Santiago Calatrava‘s Wave which consists of 149 green-patinated bronze bars that rock back and forth atop a pool of water. In this combination of organic and geometric, Calatrava remains true to his goals of creating a successful relationship between movement and rest. The sculpture‘s placement in front of the Meadows Museum mimics the rising and falling architectural elements of the museum, while exhibiting an energy that brings life to the façade of the plaza. The use of water emphasizes the importance of nature, in addition to reflecting the movement of the sculpture. Calatrava claimed that his inspiration for the work was the students at SMU. The artist stated, ―Wave sends out a message of lightness, repetition and hope. Hope, that with new ideas and techniques, art can come alive.‖

About the Artist: Born in Valencia, Spain Santiago Calatrava‘s sculptural structures are influenced by his background in art and engineering. This combination, as well as his focus on the poetics of architecture, have set him apart and made him one of the most sought after architects in the world. Following his formal education at Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura, Calatrava secured small commissions until 1984 when he undertook what would be his most pivotal structure thus far – the Bach de Roda Bridge in Barcelona. His works function as bridges between movement and stability. When creating architectural works, the artist‘s goal is to create a harmony between the geographic landscape, the culture, and human nature of society. Calatrava feels that the movements of people as well as elements of nature should be mimicked by the architectural elements surrounding them. In addition to being concerned with the interactions between his works and their communities, the artist is also interested in highlighting the beauty of structures, such as bridges, bus stations, and airports. An example of Calatrava‘s ability to bring a higher level of aesthetics to functional structures is Dallas‘ own Trinity River Project. The artist is designing three bridges. Just as his other bridge projects have focused on the relationship of the cultural and landscape to the structures, Calatrava hopes to bring a new beauty and energy to this area of Dallas.

For Further Comparison How does the sculpture resemble a landscape? Compare the use of landscape in Wave to how Moore‘s Three Piece Reclining Figure no. 1 resembles a landscape.

David Smith (1906-1965) Cubi VIII , 1962 Stainless steel 91 ¾ x 38 x 34 inches

Questions for Teaching Describe Cubi VIII (pictured on the left) based on what you see. Placed outdoors, how would viewing this work at different times of the day affect your experience of it? What affect would a cloudy sky versus a sunny sky have on the surface of the work?

Discuss positive and negative space. How do the terms apply to this work?

Some say Smith‘s works resemble architecture. How is Cubi VIII like a building? If not a building, what do you think it resembles?

About the Sculpture David Smith embraced new technology and industrial materials for his Cubi series, yet through the subtle scratch marks in the surfaces that bear traces of the artist‘s hand, he both focuses attention on the surface and makes it seem insubstantial. The exteriors also fulfilled Smith‘s desire to fuse painting and sculpture together. How the light reflects across the textured surface make the sculpture seem transparent while at other times there is a sense of color that is not really there. The works were intended to be experienced so that viewers could notice how the surface changes as the light of day vary. Smith assembled the pre-cut sheets of steel into geometric shapes in a collage -like construction that was seen at the time as a sign of modernism. In this series, Smith also created new types of compositions through the use of voids where solid forms were expected. Jacques Lipchitz, another sculptor represented in the Meadows collection, also makes use of positive and negative space in his works.

About the Artist American sculptor David Smith was formally trained as a painter at the Art Students League in New York, but it was a job on an auto assembly line at a Studebaker plant in South Bend, Indiana that would influence his career as a sculptor. Smith‘s job as a welder and riveter allowed him to become familiar with steel and the machines used in building cars. It was not until years later that he realized art was being produced by Pablo Picasso and Julio Gonzalez using materials (steel) that were typically associated with labor. Smith‘s reduction to basic geometric structures is also seen in the Meadow‘s collection in the work of Austrian sculptor Fritz Wotruba (upper right corner). Wotruba rejected of the anatomy of the human body and instead accentuated the basic structures. While Smith‘s shapes are not related to the body, both artists constructed their sculpture as if the pieces were building blocks that result in block-like forms stacked in a seemingly causal arrangement.

For Further Comparison Compare the two works pictured above. Think about how they might have been made. What about the process could have been the same? Different?