Main entry:

Wells, Rachel.

Title & Author:

Scale in contemporary sculpture : enlargement, miniaturisation and the life-size / Rachel Wells.

Publication:

Farnham, Surrey ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate Publishing, 2013, ©2013.

Description:

xv, 203 pages, [60] pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Preface; Part 1 Defining Scale: The distinction between size and scale; Measuring scale: recent approaches; The role of the body in the perception of scale. Part 2 Miniaturisation and Enlargement: Scale, exaggeration and postmodernism; Precedents; Scale and 'young British artists'; Global scale: distance and perspective; Continuing exaggerations of scale. Par 3 The Life Size: To scale: the life-size as an address of the qualitative; Measuring the life size; The life size and mapping the real. Part 4 Photograph Sculpture and Scale: Photography of the life-size; Photography as a disguise of scale; Scale and digitisation. Part 5 Conclusion: Scale and metaphor; The sculptural trend as allegory; Bibliography; Index.

Summary:

The first book to devote serious attention to questions of scale in contemporary sculpture, this study considers the phenomenon within the interlinked cultural and socio-historical framework of the legacies of postmodern theory and the growth of global capitalism. In particular, the book traces the impact of postmodern theory on concepts of measurement and exaggeration, and analyses the relationship between this philosophy and the sculptural trend that has developed since the early 1990s. Rachel Wells examines the arresting international trend of sculpture exploring scale, including American precedents from the 1970s to the 1980s and work by the 'Young British Artists'. Noting that the emergence of this sculptural trend coincides with the end of the Cold War, Wells suggests a similarity between the quantitative ratio of scale and the growth of global capitalism that has replaced the former status quo of qualitatively opposed systems. This study also claims the allegorical nature of scale in contemporary sculpture, outlining its potential for critique or complicity in a system dominated by quantitative criteria of value. In a period characterised by uncertainty and incommensurability, Wells demonstrates that scale in contemporary sculpture can suggest the possibility of, and even an unashamed reliance upon, comparison and external difference in the construction of meaning.

ISBN:

9781409431947 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1409431940 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subject:

Sculpture, Modern Philosophy.
Proportion (Art)
Composition (Art)
Young British Artists (Group of artists)
Proportions (Art)
Young British Artists (Groupe d'artistes)
composition (artistic arrangement)
Art Political aspects.
Sculpture, British.
Symbolism in art.

Form/genre:

History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 288663
Call No.: NB1135 .W45 2013
Status: Available