Favorite Sculpture Quote

[underfoot]

"Haven't you got got a real job yet?"

(underfoot's mum)

[StevenW]

Well it's not so much a quote as it is a simple inscription on a black glazed cup found at Olympia in his excavated workshop but, it has always had a powerful meaning for me and it may be all he left us apart from the dilapidated Parthenon, some Roman knock-offs and a slew of unanswered questions relating to technical matters... "I belong to Phidias".

Maybe some day when all our stuff is rust and dust and the biggest of the big one's fails and succumbs to entropy they'll dig up my favorite coffee cup..

[tobias]

I just quoted $5000 to do a sculpture does that count? This is my favorite private sculpture quote so far.

[Johnwebb6693]

Before I ever became a sculptor I had a friend named Phil Blue. I was trying to urge him to give me a lesson or two and asked him to show me some techniques. He refused stating with great enthusiasm. "There are none. Sculpture is about adventure and discovery."

Another cat I met had been a successful sculptor in Paris. His deal with a French accent was "They say you need to be artistic to be a sculptor. Actually you do not. You need to do it for five years and you will learn how to do it."

[Ries]

"The liberation of the human mind has been best furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries. …"

H.L. Mencken

[grommet]

some days you're the bulldozer, and some the blowup doll.

[jim collins]

EVERYONE GETS THE ART THEY DESERVE.

[evaldart]

"A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech. "

Cioran

[tonofelephant]

"I will take fate by the throat; it will never bend me completely to its will."
— Ludwig van Beethoven

Like understated statements of fact.

Carl

[rika]

"the sculptor in creating his work does so by the strength of his arm by which he consumes the marble, or other obdurate material in which his subject is enclosed: and this is done by most mechanical exercise, often accompanied by great sweat which mixes with the marble dust and forms a kind of mud daubed all over his face. The marble dust flours him all over so that he looks like a baker; his back is covered with a snowstorm of chips, and his house is made filthy by the flakes and dust of stone. The exact reverse is true of the painter...[who] sits before his work, perfectly at his ease and well dressed, and moves a very light brush dipped in delicate color; and he adorns himself with whatever clothes he pleases. His house is clean and filled with charming pictures; and often he is accompanied by music or by the reading of various and beautiful works which, since they are not mixed with the sound of the hammer or other noises, are heard with the greatest pleasure." Treatise on Painting by Leonardo

It's quite poetic, the sculptor part ("consumes marble", "snowstorm of chips", even "great sweat"). Wonder what Michelangelo's answer would have been to that; I'm reading he also had a low opinion of painting. You gotta love those Renaissance artists!

[GlennT]

"When a craftsman shapes crude matter, he leaves the imprint of his intelligence, which is his life-force, in the object he makes. The spirit of the maker is impressed and imprinted in the object made. If you have eyes to see it, you can recognize the spirit of the maker and his behavior in the object. The same principle applies to this world, which is the work of God's hands."

-Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1700-1760)

[tommymerle]

"Nor do I doubt that whoever considers this art well will fail to recognize a certain brutishness in it, for the founder is always like a chimney sweep, covered with charcoal and distasteful sooty smoke, his clothing dusty and half burned by the fire, his hands and face all plastered with soft muddy earth. To this is added the fact that for this work a violent and continuous straining of all a man's strength is required which brings great harm to his body and holds many definite dangers to his life. In addition, this art holds the mind of the artificer in suspense and fear regarding its outcome and keeps his spirit disturbed and continually anxious. For this reason they are called fanatics and are despised as fools. But, with all this, it is a profitable and skillful art and is in a large part delightful."

Biringuccio from the Pirotechnia first printed in 1540

[evaldart]

Very nice one Tommy. Thanks for that.
Yes, As we all know, there is nothing with more potential for reward than the pains of process. And though I am not sure whether Biringuccio cared much for the (higher) matters of significant form, as would some of his renaissance contemporaries, he certainly possessed as deep a relationship with his medium as one could have - taking it far beyond its threshold as a mere "trade". Plus, the illustrations are so great in that, THE ORIGINAL, tech manual.
Countless metal-manglers since are indebted to him.


Heres a good one from one of my favorite flatty makers.

The unfriendliness of society to his activity is difficult for the artist to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a lever for true liberation. Freed from a false sense of security and community, the artist can abandon his plastic bank-book, just as he has abandoned other forms of security. Both the sense of community and of security depend on the familiar. Free of them, transcendental experiences become possible.

-Mark Rothko

[tommymerle]

I have another favorite thanks to my mentor, Wayne Potratz, sculpture proffessor at the University of Minnesota.

"Among all the arts, I know of none more hazadrous, none less certain or the outcome and consequently more noble, than those which call for the use of fire. By their nature they exclude or punish any negligence; allow no relaxation or respite, no fluxuations of thought, courage or temper. They emphasize, in it's most dramatic aspect, the close combat between man and form. Fire, Their essentail agent, is also their greatist enemy.... All the fire worker's admirable vigilance and all the forersight learned from experience... stilll leave immense scope for the noble element of uncertainty.
They can never abolish chance. Risk remains the dominating and, as it were, the sanctifying element of this great art."

Valery, On the Preeminent Dignity of the Arts of Fire 1556

[Andrew Werby]

Here's one I just came across:

"If we could all live a thousand years, says G., we would each, at least once during that period, be considered a genius. Not because of our great age, but because one of our gifts or aptitudes, however slight in itself, would coincide with what people at that particular moment thought to be the mark of genius."

John Berger, in "G."

Andrew Werby
Juxtamorph.com

[evaldart]

"I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension." Marc Chagall

Pardon my recent dallying with flatters. Such things have crept into my studio (hopefully not in latent anticipation of some onset of frailty that would have me reduced to only a brush pusher, a hue splasher and a paste smearer). Besides, though I know it cannot ever be, my attention still perks and piques at the mentioning of a 4th dimension.

[Aaron Schroeder]

The 4th dimension depends on the documentation of the 3rd dimension. I think about that....but don't know if or how true that is......

[evaldart]

.

“Everyone always wanted to know what it meant, you know: ‘What does it mean, jellybean?' Even if I knew, I could only know what I thought it meant.” -John Chamberlain

Awesome. "‘What does it mean, jellybean?", Yes, this is indeed the best answer to give to those lazy lookers...who want you to ruin the experience by feeding it to them in mere language.

[evaldart]

"These elements, like the museum they are part of, convey the belief that art, like music and literature, is not a recreational luxury or the purview of the rich. Rather, it is an essential tool for living to which everyone must have access, because it helps awaken and direct the individual talent whose development is essential to society, especially a democratic one. Art, after all, is one of the places where the pursuit of happiness gains focus and purpose and starts expanding outward, to aid and abet that thing called the greater good. " R. Smith

I would only dis-agree that it mightn't be "an essential tool for living" - but then, that would depend-upon how you view "living".