The utilitarian nature of Western copper sculpture

Mondo Education Updated on 2024-01-29

Over the years, a wide variety of sculptures have emerged around us, and the materials available are also diverse. It can be metal stainless steel sculpture, copper sculpture, iron sculpture, or non-metallic resin sculpture, glass fiber reinforced plastic sculpture, etc., among which copper sculpture is the most representative in the development of the West.

People need sculpture not to decorate or display in galleries, but to be useful and for various utilitarian purposes. The statue of the "Mother Goddess" from the prehistoric period seems to represent only the female figure. But for primitive people, it was an alternative to women full of strong fertility. For the Egyptians, different sculptures were also such things, taking the place of the human body and playing a mummy-like role. The image becomes a "substitute" for the actual concrete person or object. It seems that someone's statue does not "represent" someone, but rather "replaces" or "exactly" someone. Perhaps for this reason, Gombrich declared in The Story of Art: "Actually, there is no art, only artists."

Realistic reproduction can be said to be the main goal pursued by traditional Western sculpture. Generations of sculptors have worked tirelessly to achieve this goal. Perhaps it was precisely because of this goal that the early Greek sculptors chose the Egyptian Oriental style. The reason why the Greeks resolutely abandoned the Egyptian style and gradually developed their own classical style was precisely because of this pursuit of authentic reproduction. On the basis of careful observation and study of nature, sculptors unremittingly study various artistic laws and sculpture techniques. Thanks to their efforts, the problem that had plagued sculptors for thousands of years, namely how to bring figures to life, was finally solved. The Greeks and Romans took the realism and figurative expression of Western sculpture to the extreme, setting a model for later generations of sculptors.

Whether it is utilitarian Western sculpture or truly reproduced Western sculpture, different eras have created different cultures, and it is precisely in this way that we can see the progress and development of history in Western sculpture.

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