MASTERS OF 20TH CENTURY FIGURE SCULPTURE

MASTERS OF
20th CENTURY
FIGURE
SCULPTURE

It's difficult for those growing up within contemporary institutions of culture (museums, universities, art schools, etc) to appreciate the vitality and scope of 20th Century figure sculpture. The major museums and surveys of art history only feature those sculptors who have found a place in the canonical historical narrative of Modernism (like Maillol, Lehmbruck, or Nadelman). The rest lie buried in the dust of neglect - as often happens when the present defines itself in oppositon to the recent past.

The first half of the last Century was a golden age - as the European Beaux Arts tradition encountered the earlier traditions of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central America. Great statuary flourished in the U.S., Italy, France, and the totalitarian regimes of Germany and the Soviet Union --- and given enough time --- websites as large as this one could be assembled for the figure sculpture of each of those countries. But with the defeat of Hitler and beginning of the cold war, an anti-aesthetic became the official, academic style of the Free World, and the representational (unless pathological) was banished from what could be displayed as contemporary art.

Today, in our post-modern world, sculpture can be anything from a jar of peanuts to an exquisite marble nude; the discipline is not yet served by educational institutions; and most contemporary figure sculpture is better suited for the wax museum, curio cabinet, or amusement park, rather than for aesthetic or moral contemplation.

This display attempts to bring the best work of the 20th Century back into the light, and hopefully even discover a few for whom catalogs have never been made. It does not attempt to be a comprehensive survey of what has been recognized (so some very famous figure sculptors, like Botero, will be omitted).

This is a collection of objects at which one viewer likes to look and hopes to share with others who have a taste for them.

Regarding Americans, I've left out the dream-like classicism of the Beaux Arts school (Daniel Chester French etc) and the gritty journalism of the Naturalists(Solon Borglum etc) as belonging to the previous era; but this is not to deny that best of them were so much better than those, like Frederick Hart or the cowboy sculptors who followed their steps late into the 20th Century.

I've also left out many of the prolific monumental sculptors of the 30's who did not rise above illustration; and I've ignored contemporary art-dolls and Western sculpture as they do not rise above entertainment - but am still hoping to find examples that show that higher level of inner vitality that historically has represented the divine.

On the other hand, I have included some European things that would usually be classified as decorative (like ivory figurines) if their quality seems to demand it -- or if I just find them interesting for no good reason.

....Chris Miller

This website last updated 26 February 2005.

MASTERS OF 20th CENTURY FIGURE SCULPTURE

MASTERS OF
20th CENTURY
FIGURE
SCULPTURE