Fundamentals of Three-Dimensional Art: Form, Volume, Mass, and Materiality

Defining the Fundamentals of Three-Dimensional Art

• Three-dimensional art is defined by the possession of three dimensions: height, width, and depth.
• This lecture focuses on Chapter $1.2$ of the "Gateways to Art" textbook, covering the four visual elements specific to three-dimensional work: form, volume, mass, and texture.
• Transitions from two-dimensional ($2D$) to three-dimensional ($3D$) art can be illustrated by the relationship between shapes and forms:
  • A triangle is a $2D$ shape, while a pyramid is a $3D$ form.
  • A circle is a $2D$ shape, while a sphere is a $3D$ form.
• Forms possess two fundamental attributes: volume and mass.
  • Volume: The amount of space that a form occupies.
  • Mass: The sense of solidity, denseness, or weight within a form.
• Scale: This term refers to the physical size of an object.
• Texture: The sensation of touching.
  • Actual Texture: Physical texture that can be felt (e.g., fur, foam, stone, concrete).
  • Visual Texture: The illusion of texture created through painting or drawing to look like a certain feeling, common in $2D$ art.
• Materiality: This concept refers to the specific materials used by sculptors to communicate messages and bring interest or meaning to the work. Materiality often goes beyond the basic elements of form, volume, and mass.

Geometric and Organic Forms

• Geometric Form: These are regular forms that are readily expressible in words or numbers. Examples include cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, and pyramids.
  • The Great Sphinx of Giza ($2650\,BCE$): Located in Giza, it is the largest carving in the world made from a single stone ("living rock"). Its name derives from Greek mythology rather than Egyptian. It serves as a symbol of power.
  • The Great Pyramid of Khufu: Located in Giza, it is a highly regulated and controlled geometric form that stands as a monument to ancient Egyptian engineering.
    • The base of the pyramid is level to within less than $1\,inch$.
    • It was originally encased in fine white limestone.
    • Egyptian art followed a canon, or a specific set of rules and proportions.
• Modern Geometric Sculpture:
  • David Smith: Worked in steel and stainless steel using cubes, cuboids, and thick discs. He used diagonal angles to imply movement and create dynamic relationships, while his use of vertical and horizontal lines suggests stability and strength.
  • Camilo Lowe: Contemporary artist who uses industrial materials such as concrete and painted steel. Her work investigates "architectonic concerns" including form, space, rhythm, tension, balance, and the properties of materials.
• Organic Form: Derived from living things, these forms tend to be irregular, unpredictable, and expressive.
  • Jesus and the Virgin Mary ($1330$): A wooden sculpture that uses simplified, organic qualities to depict the bodies and the folds of clothing.
  • "Batman" by Lino Tagliavietra: A work made entirely of glass that possesses organic form, appearing almost like wood or metal despite its material.

Understanding Volume and Mass

• Open Volume: This occurs when an artist encloses a space using materials that are not completely solid, allowing the viewer to see through the form.
  • "Ghostwriter" ($1994$) by Ralph Hemwick and Stuart Shechner: Uses stainless steel cables to create a volume that encompasses smaller objects.
  • Vladimir Tatlin’s "Model for the Monument to the 3rd International": A proposed (but never built) spiraling tower of glass and steel for the Russian Bolshevik revolution. It was intended to be taller than the Eiffel Tower and reflect a new social order.
  • Camilo Lowe's Sculpture: Often features a contrast where the top part is an open volume (holding space but lacking density), while the bottom is a concrete block representing dense mass.
  • Ranjani Shettar: An Indian sculptor based in Karnataka who combines natural and industrial materials including beeswax, wood, organic dyes, vegetable pastes, lacquer, steel, and cloth.
    • "Seven Ponds and a Few Raindrops" ($2017$): Features molded salvaged stainless steel covered in tamarind-stained muslin. The pieces are suspended from the ceiling, casting shadows and defying gravity to create a "surreal hidden oasis."
• Closed Volume and Mass:
  • Mass suggests that something is solid and occupies space. It implies weight and heaviness based on our previous experiences with nature and objects.
  • Olmec Colossal Head ($1500\text{--}1300\,BCE$): Carved from basalt in Mexico. Its massive scale ($monumental\,quality$) was designed to impress and overwhelm, representing the power of a ruler or ancestor.
  • Rachel Whiteread: A contemporary British sculptor and the first woman to win the Turner Prize in $1993$. She is known for casting the negative space of everyday objects.
    • "House" ($1993$): Her largest work, involving a concrete cast of the interior of a Victorian house.
    • Process: Filling every crack and door frame by hand, spraying concrete, building an armature for strength, and then removing the exterior building to leave the solid internal core.
    • The work was temporary and demolished in $1994$.
  • Doris Salcedo: A Colombian artist who explores themes of loss and violence.
    • Istanbul Installation ($2003$): Wedged thousands of chairs into the space between two buildings to evoke a sense of monumental loss.
    • "Untitled Armoire": A series where domestic furniture (chairs, chests) owned by victims of Colombia’s civil war were encased in cement to "silence" them and turn them into monuments.

Movement, Balance, and Relief

• Balance: Can be Symmetrical (balanced on both sides) or Asymmetrical (different on both sides but still visually balanced).
• Relief Sculpture: Works where forms project from a flat surface, designed to be viewed from one side.
  • High Relief: Figures are deeply carved and project significantly.
  • Ba-relief (Low Relief): Figures are carved with very shallow depth.
  • Example: "Imperial Procession" (Marble Altar, Rome): Uses varying depths of carving to create the illusion of three-dimensional space, with foreground figures in high relief and background figures in shallow relief.
• In the Round: Sculptures that can be seen from all sides.
• Hybrid Relief:
  • Getty Siboni: Pieces that utilize everyday, discarded objects (carpeting, plastic sheeting, cardboard boxes). His work sits between painting and sculpture, often leaning against walls or hanging precariously.

Texture and Subversive Texture

• Subversive Texture: This contradicts our previous tactile experience, inviting viewers to reconsider their preconceptions.
• "Object" (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon) by Meret Oppenheim ($1936$):
  • Created in Paris after a conversation with Picasso and Dora Maar regarding a fur-wrapped bracelet Oppenheim made.
  • It uses Chinese gazelle fur over porcelain.
  • Surrealist Strategy: The collision of items that do not belong together to rupture normalcy.
  • Psychoanalytic Context: Explores the conflict between the conscious mind (repelled by the idea of fur in the mouth) and the unconscious mind (attracted to it).
• Jelatin: An artist group that created a giant textural piece (a large bunny) with a textile exterior filled with hay, intended for people to walk over.
• Architecture and Texture:
  • Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Frank Gehry): Features an undulating surface made of titanium tiles, designed using aerospace software to create irregular, organic forms that suggest ship construction.
  • "Maman" by Louise Bourgeois: A bronze spider sculpture inside the Guggenheim. Despite being made of bronze ($a\,heavy\,material$), it uses open volume and spindly legs to imply movement and lightness.

Conceptual Materiality in Contemporary Art

• Materiality: When the "stuff" an artwork is made of holds primary importance and performs the "heavy lifting" for the meaning.
• Kara Walker: "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" ($2014$):
  • A site-specific, temporary installation in the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn before it was demolished.
  • Features a massive Sphinx-like figure ($80\,feet\,long$, $40\,feet\,high$) made of foam and covered in white sugar.
  • Accompanied by smaller figures made of molasses and boiled sugar ($265$ to $290^\circ\text{F}$).
  • Themes: Explores the history of sugar production, the Atlantic slave trade, and racism.
  • The term "subtlety" refers to historical medieval sugar sculptures used for royalty.
• Dario Robleto: Often called a "materialist poet."
  • "A Defeated Soldier Wishes to Walk His Daughter Down the Wedding Aisle" ($2004$): Uses materials like melted vinyl records (Soldier Boy), femur bone dust, and World War I cavalry boots.
  • Tinctures: His works include oils created from bacteria cultured from the grooves of prison song records, gun oil, and rose oil.
  • Additional Materials: Audio tape of two deceased lovers' heartbeats (stretched to look like feathers), dinosaur fossils, and meteorites.
• Teresa Margolles: A Mexican artist who works in a morgue and addresses death by murder and the social consequences in Latin America.
  • Bullet Hole Wall: Moved a concrete wall from a drive-by shooting site into a museum.
  • Water as Material: Uses the water used to wash the bodies of murder victims to create bubbles in a gallery or to have a janitor mop the floors.
  • Conceptual Tension: The visual "childlike wonder" of bubbles contrasts with the dark reality of their biological source, bringing the violence of the outside world into the gallery space.

Summary of Three-Dimensional Principles

• Dimensions: Expressed in height, width, and depth ($3D$).
• Form: Categories include geometric (regular) and organic (irregular).
• Volume: The space occupied by the form.
• Mass: The impression of solidity and the physical presence of weight.
• Texture: The physical surface quality, which can be manipulated to express ideas or subvert expectations.
• Materiality: A core element where the choice of material itself communicates the art's message.