A indefinição de Escultura

Abstract

Being convinced that in the end and in the beginning, Sculpture is an undefined art, what we tried to understand in this theoretical-practical work was the space that lies between those two undefined timespans. After the absolute practical openness brought about by the first vanguards of the 20th century, it became increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to mean "sculpture". Faced with this complexity, the theory of the sixties and seventies struggles to establish a definition of Sculpture that allows it to think the indefiniteness of Sculpture, eventually finding the necessary stability on Statuary and the logic of the monument. But the scope of this definition is limited - we all know countless sculptures from antiquity which are neither statues nor monuments. We have therefore proposed to recover the linguistic definition of Sculpture as a widened possibility of meaning - 'sculpture' etymologically means carving. This definition, which does not include bronze statuary but on the other hand is infinitely open, is the definition of Sculpture in Antiquity. Carving begins in prehistoric times and reaches classical antiquity as a techné, an art-technique. Poetically it is characterized by a type of specific proximity with Matter, which implies dealing with the irreversibility of the cut and with the unpredictability of the process. In the transition to the Renaissance, a new definition of Sculpture emerges, which is comparable to Statuary, whose main process is Modelling in clay. The definition of Sculpture as an art of carving disappears and sculptors stop working on the final material of their works in order to produce three-dimensional models. In other words, with this change, rationality took the place of unpredictability; absence took the place of presence; Form took the place of Matter. Only the rekindling of sculptor’s interest for the directness at the beginning of Modernism would overturn these opposing directions