Material of Sculpture: Between Technique and Semantics

In sculpture, the material is often a powerful voice. Yet although it is such a central element of the complex structure that is the work of art, throughout the centuries of dominance of the idealistic system of aesthetics it was treated as a necessary evil, the medium through which the essence of art could materialise. The artist was worthy of praise if he succeeded in fully mastering his raw material, subordinating it to the form, perfecting it, finishing the process that Nature had begun. Postulates of the "truth of the material", and the release at the beginning of the 20th century of an unlimited range of new materials into art, drew more attention to issues connected with the materials used in contemporary sculpture. Yet this revolution seems largely to have stopped short of affecting the literature on early sculpture. [...] The aim of the conference that produced this volume was to set up a situation in which representatives of various scientific disciplines who shared a professional interest in some aspect of sculpture could come together for discussion. Thus, cheek by jowl with papers by art historians you will find others by conservators, a petrographer and a literary historian; not only Poland is represented among the scholars, but also Germany, the UK, Italy and France; the effect is a kaleidoscope of research perspectives. The 31 articles here address a variety of issues and by no means exhaust the potential body of subject matter. This multiplicity does, however, offer an indication of the breadth of the spectrum of problems and questions thrown up by analysis of what might seem to be such a narrow area of sculpture material.