Real Artists Sculpt

I told Your Holiness that painting is not my art – Michelangelo

Real artists sculpt, at least that’s what Michelangelo thought and he told Pope Leo so repeatedly.

So why then do we see so few sculptors? There are watercolorists by the flock, more oil guys than BP and print makers lurk behind every press, but sculpting? You could shoot a cannon across the South Coast without hitting a single one.

And the shame of it is that we have so many tolls that the artists of yester year never dreamt of, modeling clay which does not harden even if left exposed for weeks, plastics which can be mixed in the studio and poured into a mold on the spot giving a living sculpture in minutes instead of months. We have armatures of every size and for every creature, man or beast, we have specialized waxes made for both casting and working, we have tools which will cut marble like butter instead of the chisel and hammer and sweat equity.

Why then are there so few sculptors? Could the demand have passed along with towering cathedrals and the Black Death? If there is no more fear of hell have we lost the love of art? Has the image of the human body in our jaded age become just so much three dimensional pornography? Have we turned away from our very selves to things less threatening so that our art can be soothing and safe?

But art isn’t safe and shouldn’t be, art asks the questions we hide behind the drapes and only bring out when the dark of night protects our fears. And art embraces all of its forms. Print making, collage, watercolor, oil, pastel and yes, even sculpture.

And the kids know it. We see more sculpture every other year in the Visions show at the Coos Art museum. That’s because the lids don’t know that sculpture is scary, they dive right in, go for the throat, shoot the wad, they do nudes.

Oh I know there’s that work again and maybe that is at the heart of the vanishing sculpture, we don’t do sculpture because it’s naked. It tells more about the artist than about the subject. Take a look at a Michelangelo and then at Rodin, Michelangelo caresses the marble with a lover’s touch coaxing the image for cold stone and turning it into flesh so real you turn away because it is too intimate. Rodin attacks the bronze like his sculpture; Large Torso of a Man, the muscles twist, the tendons strain, the body arched begging for release forced into the metal, frozen for all time. One is love the other force and all of it is sculpture, spilling the secrets of its creator for the world and time.

Maybe the day of sculpture has passed, the great, grand cathedrals of Europe are all built, The Donald cares more about his wives than about sculpture, images fill our every hour with flickering, fluttering butterflies of mist and smoke, and temples do not rise nor Gods walk when men forget their art.