Sculpture

Sculpture is the art of working hard or plastic materials into three dimensional objects, whether freestanding, in relief on a surface, or as an environment surrounding the viewer. Four core techniques define the craft: carving, a subtractive process cutting material away from a solid mass such as stone, wood, ivory or bone; modeling, an additive process building up a shape from a soft plastic material such as clay, wax or plaster; casting, in which a mold is made and a liquid material such as molten metal is poured into it; and, as a twentieth century addition, constructing or assembling, in which artists bend, weld, bolt or otherwise join a variety of materials and found objects, a technique that grew out of Pablo Picasso's Cubist constructions made from scrap materials and fed into later movements such as Constructivism. The earliest carved forms are thought to have been simple figures scratched into rock surfaces, and clay has been shaped into sculptural and ceramic form since the earliest periods of human craft. Across its long history sculpture has moved from small portable figures and relief carving toward monumental freestanding works in stone and bronze, and in the modern era toward constructed and assembled forms using industrial and found materials.