Mindy Rose Schwartz

Now, more than ever, sculpture is the most inclusive category of artmaking. Yet even at the height of this expanded field, a residual hierarchy remains when it comes to means associated with craft. In this course students examine traditional sculpture and craft processes in relation to notions of taste, class, gender, age. Students consider skill or craftsmanship; utility and decoration; commercial pressures vs. aesthetics standards and are encouraged to examine their own relationship to specific materials, processes, and techniques as a source of meaning and foundation for sculptural practice.

The figure in contemporary art has long been debated, but just as painting never died as forecasted so, too, the figure. It has morphed, become cyber, stayed representational, been found in the world and fashioned of any medium, while dissolving the line between it and abstraction, making it permeable and evocative. In this course students will be challenged to redefine the boundaries of traditional sculptural representation using the figure as a catalyst for evoking a range of content. We will consider human and animal bodies broadly, as cultural, historical, and constantly changing entities. Through an examination of diverse approaches related to figurative sculpture, students will be encouraged to engage with a variety of sculptural processes and media (such as assemblage, mold making, modeling, carving, welding, mixed media, fund object) to configure forms, as well as and conceptual frameworks in order to articulate personal and social narratives, and cultural critiques.
Addressing a range of cultures and historical periods, our inquiry will focus on: To what ends has the figure been employed (portraiture, faith, identity, gesture, embodiment, fragment, ritual, allegory, affect)? How does a work refer to without fully representing the figure? Why has it been an enduring subject/form? What are challenges and opportunities does it offer us today? Our inquiry will be guided by readings (Gordon Hall, Elizabeth Grosz, Katarzyna Trzeciak, Elaine Scarry, Sara Ahmed, and others) and viewing/museum visits of such artists as Jaime Isenstein, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Simone Fattal, Sarah Peters, Hew Locke, Rachel Harrison, Nicole Eisenman, Anna Mendieta, Yinka Shonibare, Simone Leigh, Kiki Smith, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Bourgeois, Thomas Houseago, Kimsooja, David Altmejd, Lee Bul and Cajsa von Zeipel.
Course work includes assignments, readings and in class activities that support the development of three finished projects for critique.