On the occasion of a “Sculpture”–themed issue published in September 2022, the editors of Art in America asked four curators to consider different definitions of an art form that continues to evolve after thousands of years.

Karen Lemmey
Curator of sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

For a long time, sculpture was simply defined as an artwork that occupies three dimensions. On a basic level, this remains true. But since the beginning of the 20th century, sculptors have made serious play of problematizing sculpture’s third dimension, deftly manipulating it to be ever more elusive and illusionary, as if to draw attention to the instability of what had been, for millennia, the defining characteristic of their art form. A sculpture’s third dimension can be barely measurable or even just implied; purely optical; kinetic, and thus variable; or only fully realized once the work is installed.

Η συνέχεια εδώ.