Freya Eloise McWatt

I am going to look at the history of figurative sculpture from the very earliest to the more recent forms. I will look at the earliest known sculpture found in a German cave over 36,000 years ago. To start with large sculptures were predominately either religious or political due to the expense of producing a large sculpture. Where most religions have rejected sculpture Buddhism seems to be the only one which has stayed interested in it.

I don’t think that we can determine who created the first figurative sculpture as there are bound to be many more unfound. But the earliest known one is from Germany found in a cave that dates back at least 36,000 years ago. These sculptures have either been depicted as the first Art Porn or just worshipping fertility as the women in these sculptures have had some of their organs accentuated. These figures represent a boom in the way that people thought which links to a language leap in civilisation. I don’t think there is a particular style to these sculptures as there won’t have been many sculpture forms to take example from but I could be wrong there might have been lots that have been destroyed we don’t know.

After these figurines there are another group of figures also found in a German cave they date to be five thousand years younger than the earliest found mentioned above. These figures were found just outside the city of Ulm there have been around 20 finds in four different areas close to Ulm. These artefacts are proof of early shamanism. These sculptures cannot be proven to be made be either the modern human or Neanderthals as both are believed to be from the same area at the same time, so it’s hard to prove who actually produced them. I really like these sculptures although they aren’t very realistic (I can’t be sure people may have looked like that then? I hope not) I think its most likely been done by a man as the reproductary glands have been made out of proportion to the rest of the body. It’s very abstract and I think it shows a nice artistic talent I like how the heads are so small, possibly even showing more that it could have been a man who made it as women were seen as the bearer of children they weren’t seen as the intelligent person of the family its quite a derogative piece.

Figurative sculptures have had many purposes such as to worship them in the belief that they may bring you good fortune in that your crops would live and your wife would bear many children. To sculptures placed in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs so that they could stand in place of the body and look after them if they had to do manual labour in the next life. They could have possibly just been for decoration we don’t know that somebody simply wanted to give somebody they loved a present. They could have been used as offerings from tribe to tribe in Native America.

Buddha sculptures have featured a lot in their religion as they represent the Buddha god. They feature in a way for people to worship them.
I really like this sculpture of the Buddha although it doesn’t look very realistic you can tell its not meant to be its more for decoration and worship rather than to show off anatomical reference although the hand and face look realistic to a point although to me they look a bit cartoonish.
Every religion is different though a lot of religions choose not to have figures such as protestants they don’t have any figures for their religion as they tend to keep their worship quite simple which contrasts against the Catholics quite well as they have lots of figurative sculptures to worship such as Jesus being crucified, Mary with the baby as the virgin mother. I like this sculpture of Christ I think it’s very realistic and shows obvious knowledge of anatomical reference. It is just quite scary that there’s obviously supposed to be blood on it. The expression on the face is quite haunting too. Although the hair and cloth is absolutely perfect. The shine on the body makes it look even more realistic too.

These sculptures are from egypt. I think as the times go on the sculptures get more true to life I really like these ones although they are quite simple not a lot of detail and not been painted. But they have obviously taken more time than other sculptors at the time making the features realistic. The faces are lovely but the hair is quite weird I think it was probably a head-dress instead of hair.

To conclude I think that my favourite figurative pieces are the first ones discovered. They are so abstract and show a lot more character than the other sculptures. I think that they show a lot more about the mind set of the person who made them too. It’s a lot more playful style rather than the simple but beautiful works from egypt, and from religions such as catholic. The catholics always seem to make the martys instead of just common people which is what I like about the earlier pieces. I think the buddhist ones show a lot of detail and are very decorative and beautiful its nice that they have thought about adding mosaic and painting them gold which makes them stand out as something beautiful and something that should be worshipped.

2012-05-11 0 notes

More final peice planning…

Ive decided on two images for my two final pieces. Ive changed my mind on the three i picked before.

I will use a picture of my Mum and my Grandad for the Main final piece of my project seen here…
And for the image for the upcoming exhibition at Ruskins i will use this image as it indicates Kendal town. It has lots of intricate detail in it but i still think its doable for the cutting of the wire mesh.

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Final peice planning…

For my final peice im going to do a wire mesh sculpture. I will do this by cutting up fine mesh into A3 size as many layers as i can get out of this 3m roll. I will then put the layers all at different angles. Then i will use a projector to project an image i have taken onto it. Then using specialist wire cutters i will cut out the white parts of the image all at different layers to give a gradient of tone. Then once this process is done i will take the projector away and i should hopefully have the image on mesh in front of me! I have decided that the image i will use will either be the image of lisa…
Or an image of my grandad that i didn’t take but as it will be 30 years since he died this year it will be nice to do one of him to commemorate it.
Or i could also link this to a future exhibition at ruskins that i need a piece for the Title is Colour in the Auld grey town to if i used an image of kendal i would have a piece for the exhibition and a piece for my assessment. Such as this image…

The only difficulty would be that there is a lot of detail in the tree which could be difficult as i don’t know how easy it is to cut the wire…

Freya Eloise McWatt - McWhat?

2012-05-16 0 notes

2012-05-15 0 notes

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History of figurative sculpture

2012-05-11 0 notes

More final peice planning…

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Final peice planning…