From:
Walter Arnold <sculptor@xxxxxxx>
Date:
Fri, 05 Mar 1999 12:40:04 -0600
Subject:
sculptor/carver collaboration (WAS Introducing myself)
At 01:02 PM 3/4/99 -0500, Peter Tavernise wrote:
Quoted text begins.can see and learn more. I was crushed to learn, recently, that most of the
sculptors that I held in high regard, such as Fredrick Hart and Rodin, did
not carve their own pieces but delegated that work to others. This struck
me as scandalous--I mean that part is the most fun for me--but I suppose I
End of quote.
I need to kick in to Rick Hart's defense on this one,
since I was one of the carvers who executed Ex Nihilo,
the tympana for the Washington Cathedral. Unlike Rodin
and others, Rick had a stong enough background in actual
carving, and spent enough time with master carvers like
Palumbo and Morigi to be able to design for stone. Stone
takes light and shadow in a very different way than
"liquid" media like clay and bronze, and so stone
sculpture needs to be designed differently. One of the
weaknesses in Rodin's work was that he'd have the same
model reproduced exactly in stone and bronze with no
adjustment for the differences. Hart's work is not that
way- it is designed for the final media, be it stone,
bronze, or plastic. (I just wish he'd do the
transparent/transluscent pieces in glass instead of
plastic, but that's another issue).
When the sculptor/carver collaboration is done properly,
as I feel it was on Hart's work for the Nat'l Cathedral,
it is a very strong method. We used the analogy of the
composer and the musician. He was the composer, we were
the musicians. Each is an art that takes a lifetime to
develop; most composers are just adequate as performing
musicians, and most performing musicians are not
composers. The combination can take advantage of the
strengths of each. Hart understood this; in my opinion
Rodin, Miro, Noguchi, Moore and most others did not, but
rather, they just exploited the situation.
I've known carvers who carved 3 to 4 meter tall Moore
pieces, working by eye from rough 6 or 8 cm. maquettes;
Moore never visited the carving studio during the
process. The carver would make all the aesthetic
decisions about curves, angles, and proportion, during
the enlarging process. I've worked alongside carvers
executing Noguchi pieces, working just from simple 2
dimensional blueprints. However, Rick Hart worked with
us in a very hands-on way to create sculptures that
could not have come about any other way. He used the
system in a legitimate and very useful fashion.
Walter S. Arnold * walter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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