American culture

Sculpture of the United States

The history of sculpture in the United States reflects the country's 18th century foundation in Roman republican civic values as well as Protestant Christianity -- both of which sought truth in the spoken word of orator or minister --and neither requiring the visualizaton of magnificence, power, solemnity, or profundity that characterized the sculptural traditions of European (as well as Asian) civilizations.

There is always going to be folk art, decorative art, and a commercial art of well-made toys, tombstones, furniture, tools, and one of these specific applications,the wooden figure-heads for ships -- launched the career the country's first famous sculptor, William Rush of Philadelphia.

Monumental American sculpture mostly lay dormant until the Civil War when that extraordinary national effort summoned sculpture to memorialize it using the Beaux Arts style of the French Republic. This academic tradition cherished the high level of symphonic naturalism achieved in the Renaissance perhaps more than the archictectonic unity characteristic of earlier periods. Outstanding among those sculptors were John Quincy Adams Ward and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

American women also became active sculptors in that period despite the sexism of the trades. Famous among them were Harriet Hosmer and Emma Stebbins (the Bethesda fountain in New York's Central Park)

American sculpture of the mid to late 19th century was often classical, often romantic, but showed a special bent for a dramatic, narrative, almost journalistic realism -- especially appropriate for nationalistic themes -- like frontier life depicted by Frederick Remington, and this was the beginning of the style of "western art" that continued with Alexander Phimister Proctor and others through the 20th into the 21st century.

As the century closed, the pace of monument building quickened in the great cities of the east -- and several outstanding sculptors emerged - most of them trained in the Beaux arts academies of Paris. Daniel Chester French stands out -- as does Frederick William Macmonnies and Laredo Taft. This tradition continued right up to the 1940's with charles Keck , Alexander Stirling Calder and others.

As the new century began, many young European sculptors migrated to the free, booming economy of across the Atlantic -- and European-born sculptors account for much of the great work done before 1950 (C. Paul Jennewein, Maldarelli, Ruotolo, Elie Nadelman, Polasek,Gaston Lachaise, Carl Milles,Karl Bitter etc)

Public buildings of the first half of the century often provided an architectural setting for sculpture, especially in relief. Lee Lawrie, Adolph Alexander Weinman, C. Paul Jennewein, and many others worked in the simple, often narrative style that fit these spaces.

Several notable American sculptors joined in the revitalization of the classical tradition at this time -- most notably Paul Manship, who discovered archaic Greek sculpture while studying on a scholarship in Rome. Edward Mccartan was another leader in this direction - that fit easily with the art-deco tastes of the twenties.

Into the 30's and 40's, the ideologies that rent European politics began to be reflected in associations of American sculptors. On the right was the group, mostly native born, mostly old-school classical, mostly modelers of clay, that would found the National Sculpture Society, led by the heiress/sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and preserved to this day in the great sculpture park that she endowed: Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina. On the left, often immigrant, often expressionistic, was the New York based Sculptor's Guild, with an emphasis on more current themes and direct carving in wood or stone. It's most famous member was William Zorach.

Some Americans, like Isamu Noguchi had already moved from figurative to non-figurative design, but after 1950, the entire American artworld took a dramatic turn away from the figurative traditions, especially as exemplified by its application by the totalitarian and genocidal regimes of Nazi German and the Soviet Union, and America led the free world into a more iconoclastic and theoretical approach to modernism.

Within the next ten years, traditional sculpture education would almost be completely replaced by a Bauhaus influenced concern for abstract design. To accompany the triumph of abstract expressionist painting, heroes of abstract sculpture, like David Smith, emerged, and many new materials were explored for sculptural expression.

The figure returned in the 1960's, but without the beaux-arts figurative tradition, sometimes even as plaster life-casts (George Segal (artist))Concerns for the qualities of forms and design continued -- but usually without representing a human figure. Minimalist sculpture (Richard Serra) often replaced the figure in public settings.

Artworld and university sculpture of the late 20th century was mostly a playful exploration on the boundaries of what could be called art.

But other kinds of sculpture continued throughout the century and grew in importance. Leaders in ironwork included Samuel Yellin A center for the western style of American sculpture was developed at Loveland, Colorado, and many studios, magazines, and even a museum (the National Cowboy and Western Heritage museum in Oklahoma City) pursued this interest.

The art-doll and ceramic sculpture communities also grew in numbers and importance -- while the entertainment industry required large scale, spectacular (sometimes monstrous or cartoon-like ) sculpture for movie sets , theme parks, casinos, and athletic stadiums.

Industrial product design, especially automobiles, should not be ignored. A neo-Victorian style emerged --pioneered by the sculptor of the National Cathedral, Frederick Hart. Meanwhile, American sculptors who persisted in their pre-war, modern/classical style training didn't get sent to a Gulag, they just got ignored. Some of these include Milton Horn, Charles Umlauf, John Waddell , and Joseph Erhardy.

Whether American sculpture was harmed or enhanced by its dramatic turn to iconoclasm has yet to be determined -- but American society is uniquely tolerant of diversity. Older sculpture was never destroyed -- even if sometimes it was put in the museum basement.

American sculptors can continue to learn from the entire world history of sculpture as well as from a variety of schools and commercial studios, as they realize their new dreams (or nightmares) in form and space.