In many anthologies of art, sculpture is given short shrift in relation to other media, if it is treated at all. Modern Sculpture Reader aims to rectify this situation by presenting a collection of important texts that have defined sculpture’s radically changing status and role since the end of the nineteenth century, a time marked by a general reappraisal of the forms and functions of art. From the rigorously theoretical to the experimental and poetic, Modern Sculpture Reader offers a lively discourse on the medium by a range of artists, writers, critics, and poets—Marcel Duchamp, Louise Bourgeois, Claes Oldenberg, André Breton, Ezra Pound, and Clement Greenberg—in a variety of genres: poems, lectures, transcribed interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, and artists’ statements. These diverse text selections offer valuable insight into the development of the critical language of sculpture and its connections to other media in an era of increasingly conceptual artistic practice. Many of the essays highlight key ongoing concerns such as sculpture’s physical properties and conditions of display, both of which have important implications for the viewer’s tactile and emotional interaction with sculptural works.

Studies major works by important sculptors since Rodin in the light of different approaches to general sculptural issues to reveal the logical progressions from nineteenth-century figurative works to the conceptual work of the present.

A veteran art critic helps us make sense of modern and contemporary art The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years: from Malevich's 1915 painting of a single black square and Duchamp's 1917 signed porcelain urinal to Jackson Pollock's midcentury "drip" paintings; Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle; Urs Fischer's "You" (2007), a giant hole dug in the floor of a New York gallery; and the conceptual and performance art of today's Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. The shifts have left the art-viewing public (understandably) perplexed. In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund demonstrates that works of modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem. With patience, insight, and wit, Esplund guides us through the last century of art and empowers us to approach and appreciate it with new eyes. Eager to democratize genres that can feel inaccessible, Esplund encourages viewers to trust their own taste, guts, and common sense. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that recent art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who believe that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.

Two bestselling pop-up book authors provide an overview of sculpture from prehistory until the late 19th century, then give readers a look at several 20th-century artists who helped define modern sculpture. Includes die-cut pieces that can be assembled (and reassembled) in any way the reader chooses. Full color. Consumable.

This publication focuses on a number of works that have recently received conservation treatment at the Tate Gallery in London. They were selected for their technical, as well as their art historical importance, and both these aspects are discussed.