Bronze Casting among the Ruins

Throughout the history of art, the human body and figure has captivated both artisans and their audiences. This can be said especially of the Greeks and their sculptures. Even from the earliest periods, Greeks motivation for the search of the ideal human body can be seen through the sculpture Metropolitan Kouros (c 120-50 BCE), created in the Archaic period and said to be found in Attica, Ancient Greece (Richter 1931, p. 220). However, it is not until High Classical period that they truly achieve their goal with Polykleitos’ The Spear Bearer (c. 120-50 BCE) or the Doryphoros (its Greek name). The sculpture, found in a Palestra in Pompeii, Italy is said to be the epitome of perfection during its period. Although there is exquisite rendering and beauty in both sculptures, there are also a vast number of differences that make each work unique.

First of all, the sculpture will fill our lives with the beauty of art as citizens. For example, “the History of Public Art” article gives a background on ancient greek statues and temples, and it states that the “structures helped unite the citizens of the communities of which they stood by providing a concrete focus for national identity and pride” (The History of Public Art). For

When contemplating the art forms of sculpture and painting, in ancient Rome, one has to consider not only how they differ in form but also how they differed in use. Although both art forms were used for a sense of status, one is deeply rooted in realism and the other in fantasy. In order to compare these two distinct art forms, I will first look at them individually and discuss their uses in Roman life, then I will draw conclusions based on my findings.

Auguste Rodin was born in Paris in on November 12, 1840. He was born into a poor family and his father was a policeman. Although he was a talented artist as a teenager, he lacked encouragement which made him choose a different career. Rodin worked as a bricklayer for 20 years. Then he went to Italy and during his stay he found inspiration there. On his return to Paris, he sculpted his first major piece, “The Age of Bronze”, originally named “The Vanquished”. Rodin said that, “Much as I love the Greeks, there is one thing I love more and that is nature.” (AMA 130). This is very true of his sculptures. Although there is the presence of a body you can see the true nature of emotion through it.

1. How does art from Classical Greece compare with art from Mesopotamia, Egypt and Bronze Age Greece? Why are they different or similar? The art of perfection is very important to the Greece classical period tribute to the classical search for order; compare to Mesopotamia, Egypt and Bronze Age Greece.

What we viewed in the Portland Art museum is the Chinese archaeological find called bronze Hu and Jue. Hu and Jue was produce in the Shang Dynasty. It excavated in Anyang, Henan province in China.Hu was made of bronze. Hu with taotie, and dragon and bird designs. And it looks very huge. Jue is much smaller than Hu. It used to drink wine at Shang dynasty. Jue and Hu, refers to human society have invented and produced a bronze , used in the production and living areas , so that the whole society have undergone great changes at that times . All material culture and spiritual culture of the Bronze Age can be called bronze culture.

Latium was taken from a Latin word “latus, meaning “wide” or “flat land” located in the south of Rome (Rome Travels, 2015). Historically, Latium was populated by Etruscans, who exercised a strong cultural and political influence in the early Bronze Age. To defend itself from the Etruscan expansion, a coalition of city-states was formed, called the “Latin League”.

The two artworks I have chosen to discuss in this paper are 3-D sculptures of two renowned artists. These surrealists of two amazing sculptures are Rene Magritte and Victor Brauner. Both of their artworks are located at The Menil Collection, Houston TX. These in the round sculptures are entitled Megalomania (La folie des grandeurs) and Sign (Signe). First, Rene Magritte’s medium on his Megalomania masterpiece is bronze. It was sculpted in 1967, and the size of this artwork is 61 x 48 x 32 3/8 inches (Menil). Similarly, Victor Brauner’s medium on his Sign artwork is gilded bronze. The artwork was beautifully crafted as well in 1945 and casted in 1961. The size of this artwork is 12 1/2 x 5 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches (Menil). As I go on, I will

According to Oxford Dictionary (2013) a sculpture is defined as the art of making two- or three-dimensional representative or abstract forms, especially by carving stone or wood or by casting metal or plaster. Sculptures help to tell the history of how people thought and the practices they conducted. This way of expressing oneself was more important in ancient times as oppose to recent times where we have the benefit of writing books, blogs and much more are readily available. This essay will seek to compare two sculptures of ancient times, the Egyptian statue of Memi and Sabu and the statue of Gudea from the Neo –Sumerian culture.2

Almost seven feet tall, a life-like sculpture stands, broad and muscular, in the middle of the National Archeological Museum, Naples, Italy. Made of bronze yet so full of life, the Spear Bearer is one of many ancient Greek sculptures surviving, as good as new, till this day. On the other side of the world stands the New York Kouros at the Metropolitan Museum, rigid and awkward, and all together unrealistic. However, Greek art, especially Greek sculpture and vase painting has not always portrayed the human body in such a perfect and idealistic way. Up until 500 BCE, Greek sculpture and statuary specifically were completely different to what is seen and defined as ‘Greek sculpture’ today while Greek vase painting and other representations of the human body maintained their less realistic style. The Greeks not only developed but also improved their artwork of the human figure throughout Early Greece only to present a better and more idealistic image of sculpture using naturalism and realism towards the Classical period.

While this sculpture is not depicting a figure in a position that can be seen in Roman sculptures, this piece is relevant to the topics and themes of Art of the Roman World due to it being both a duplicate as well as it being a bronze sculpture. This duplicate was

Metal artefacts have always played the key role in discussions of the Bronze Age as an international capital market. In early archaeology, much focus was placed on artefacts in terms of typology and cross-dating in order to estimate their period of affiliation. It was the study of their fragmentation that led early scholars to divide depositions into ritual sacrifices and rational-economic scrap findings. In recent archaeology, instead, focus has been placed on their landscape context, relating different categories of objects to certain settings and assumed practices in the landscape. Although the importance of emphasizing regional variations is often stressed, similar patterns of deposition practices are nonetheless often stressed.

Casting art can be used with a medium which is clay, they use clay as a foundation and then they will use bronze as a permanent material which people will usually see during casting works. You don't always have to use bronze as a casting material but they are recommended because of ancient China, Greece, Rome, and also some parts of Africa, this is because these place developed bronze to work well with casting. For the mold of the sculpture is using “clay diluted with water, molten

Auguste Rodin is a famous French sculptor whose talent made his clay sculptors become famous in the modern style. His talent allowed him to produce several sculptures with unique and complex styles. Although he was very talented, he received a lot of criticism from people around him because he didn’t use the traditional, decorative styles of the time. He was very good at modeling the human body using realism and gave character to his sculptures by adding great physical features. The Burghers of Calais is one of Rodin’s most famous sculptures which he completed in the 1889. Its material is Bronze and it represents an important story from the Hundred Years war. The story is about Calais, which was an important French port that was under constant

Stone Age (50,000–3000 BCE) The Stone Age refers to the broad range of ‘pre-history’ which lasted from approx 30,000 BC to 6,000BC where the first metals started to be used. In the stone age, use of metals was scarce and the most common building materials and weapons were wood and stone. Much of this history is undocumented, though some archaeological evidence persists.