My Science School

Auguste Rodin’s Life-like Sculptures

Sculptors often make statues of human bodies. After all, bodies have interesting shapes and different surfaces. Some of the most life-like sculptures of human bodies are those by French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

As a student, Rodin showed talent for only one thing - art. At age 16, he already wanted to be a sculptor. He applied to the best school of fine arts in Paris. In the 1800’s, only students from this school were thought to be “real” artists.

Three times Rodin turned in a sculpture to qualify for the school, and he failed each time. At age 19, Rodin made up his mind to study on his own. He supported himself by designing plaster decorations for buildings.

Rodin greatly admired Michelangelo. Like Michelangelo, Rodin sculpted figures that seemed alive. He did not use the stiff poses that most sculptors of his day were using. Instead, he captured bodies in the act of movement.

Unlike Michelangelo, however, Rodin did not work in marble. He moulded his figures in clay. Then, he made plaster casts of the clay statues. Skilled workers poured bronze into the casts to create the final work.

In 1877, a newspaper critic accused Rodin of cheating. The critic said Rodin had made a mould over a live model and then cast the mould in bronze. That is how life-like Rodin’s sculpture looked!

For years, art leaders in France had ignored Rodin’s work. But the art critic’s story suddenly made Rodin famous. People were very curious about his work. They wanted to see this special sculptor and his work. By 1900, Rodin was world famous.

Assembling a Sculpture

Some modern sculptors don’t really do much sculpting. Instead, they create assemblages. In other words, they gather materials because they like their feel, their shape, or their colour and put them together to make a sculpture. These assemblages may include odd things, such as old wheels or bits of plastic. Or they may be made of unusual but carefully chosen materials.

You, too, can turn odds and ends into a work of art with a little glue, card, and imagination. With an adult’s permission, hunt around your house. Find paper plates and cups, empty jars or cans, and bottle tops. Hunt through your toy box, too. Old puzzle pieces play jewellery, old dolls, and action figures can add interest to your work of art.

After you’ve finished hunting, start arranging the pieces. Choose how you want to assemble them, for example, according to colour or shape or theme.

You could cut a paper plate into a spiral and wrap it around a cup. Glue your pieces onto a piece of painted card. If you like, paint the pieces, too. Then coat the entire work in white glue. Let it dry. Then display it for everyone to see!

The Shape of Space

For hundreds of years, sculptors have created art in two ways. They took away parts of material like stone or wood by carving it. Or they added to material, such as clay, and moulded it.

In the 1900’s, sculptors added space to their list of sculpting materials. They realized that everything and everyone takes up space. We see space around and inside objects. Modern sculptors use space to give it new meaning. But artists who sculpt space don’t often carve or mould materials. They use materials in other ways.

An example of a twentieth-century “space” sculpture is Linear Construction No. 4 by Russian-born Naum Gabo. He wove a complicated web on a simple frame. By doing so, Gabo created many planes, or surfaces, in space.

When you look at modern sculpture, you need imagination, too. If you had to describe this sculpture, what words would you use? What would you compare it to? After all, it has as many shapes as there are ways to look at it.

Miniature Marvels

Foot soldiers march across the fields. On the hill behind the farmhouse, a hundred others advance toward the fighting. Meanwhile, the cavalry gallops in.

But this scene is not on a battlefield. It is in a museum. It was made by skilled model makers. They took great care to get the scene just right. They read maps and army reports of the battle, as well as diaries written by the soldiers and officers who were there. For instance, one soldier wrote that he had lost his boots near the farm. So the model makers made a tiny pair of boots and put them in the farmyard.

Not all model makers work for museums. Some are architects. Architects make models of the full-sized buildings they design. These models, like the ones in the museum, are true to scale. For example, if a model of a building is made in a 1/10 scale, every wall and window in the full-sized building is exactly 10 times bigger than that same wall or window in the model. Even the bricks and doorknobs are true to scale.

Wooden Wonders

The early Nootka people were Native Americans who lived on the Pacific Coast of North America near thick forests. The grandest trees in the forests were red cedars. They grew as tall as 20-story buildings and their wood outlasted most other woods. The Nootka used red cedar logs to carve their totem poles.

Totem poles stood in front of family houses. They served as a sort of address and a family history. The animal and human figures on the poles stood for great deeds in the family’s past. The height of the pole and the detail of its carvings showed how rich the family was.

To make a totem pole, the carvers laid a red cedar trunk on its side. First, they peeled off the bark and the green wood beneath. Next, they used charcoal to etch designs into the log. Then they chopped out rough forms with a tool called an elbow adz. Another type of adz is used like a chisel to smooth the rough forms.

Finally, they cut out the details with a curved knife. The Nootka artists soaked the wood in hot water to keep it soft and workable while carving.

The Master of Marble

A young artist who grew up in Florence, Italy, in the late 1400’s made statues so beautiful that century later people travel from around the world to see them. At 23 the artist, Michelangelo Buonaroti, completed his first pieta (a representation showing Mary mourning over the body of her dead son, Jesus).The tools Michelangelo used were like those of the ancient Egyptians. But the marble stone Michelangelo used for his statues was far better than limestone.

Marble is hard and long-lasting. The early Romans used marble for their temples and statues. By the 1500’s, Italian sculptors were masters at working with marble. And Michelangelo was the best of them all.

Michelangelo often chose his own blocks of marble at the quarries in Carrara, Italy. He searched for a block with even colouring and no tiny cracks. Then he planned the perfect sculpture for each block. Michelangelo often spoke of his work as freeing figures from the stone.

First, he shaped a small model in wax. Next, he “roughed out” the figure in marble. To do this, he used a heavy hammer and metal points to knock away large chunks of stone. To hack away smaller chunks, Michelangelo used a lighter bronze hammer.

To bring out the figure’s details, Michelangelo used chisels and rasps, or files. Finally, he polished the marble until it glowed. For this, he used pumice - a kind of stone people use to smooth rough skin on their feet.

The Great Sphinx

What has the body of a lion and the head of a man? A monster, No - a sphinx! A sphinx was a figure from Egyptian myth that was often represented in ancient statues. The Great Sphinx at Giza is the largest of these statues.

About 4,500 years ago, a gigantic limestone hill stood where the Great Sphinx is now. Stonecutters cut blocks from the limestone, perhaps to build the Great Pyramid of Egypt’s King Khufu, or, more likely, to build the pyramid of a later king, Khafre. But the rock in the centre of the hill was too crumbly to use for building.

On this leftover limestone, sculptors carved a rough face and body. To do this, they wedged picks in the stone and hit the picks with wooden hammers.

Next, the sculptors covered the image with a kind of plaster. They could carve the plaster in greater detail than would have been possible in coarse stone. Then artists painted the plaster to add more detail. The Sphinx still wears bits of the red paint, but most of it has worn away.

Playing with Clay

Clay is a clown with no bones.

No roll, stretch, and split - no feat of change is too great for it.

Pinch a thin nose, a chin.

Gouge two eyeholes. Chisel a grin.

Would you then pummel him flat, thumb him again?

No! He’s become someone.

Terracotta Statues

Today, the emperor’s terracotta army is kept in a large museum. Museum artists have a workshop where they make copies of the soldiers. As much as possible, these artists follow the steps the emperor’s sculptors used more than 2,200 years ago.

First, an artist forms long ropes from clay. To build a soldier’s body, the artist coils these ropes around and around. Next, the artist places one hand inside the body to steady it. With the other hand, he or she beats the coils together with a paddle.

The artists make the hands, ears, and basic head shapes in moulds. They cover each moulded head with a layer of clay. In this clay, they model the features of each soldier by hand. They use clay modelling tools to add details on the armour.

Workers then put the body parts in a kiln with a low fire. When the parts dry, the kiln’s temperature rises to 1000 °C. The statues are baked until they glow red.

China’s Terracotta Army

China’s first emperor lies in a tomb outside the city of Xian in eastern China. The emperor is not alone. Buried nearby are thousands of terracotta soldiers and their horses. They were created more than 2,200 years ago.

Terracotta is clay that has been fired, or hardened, in an oven called a kiln. Large solid pieces of terracotta would shrink and crack. So figures like the bodies of the Chinese soldiers are usually hollow.

The figures represent all branches of the early Chinese army - archers, cavalry, charioteers, and foot soldiers. And, out of 7,000 statues, no two faces look the same. Each is a life-sized portrait of a real person. The heads must have been sculpted one by one.

Statues and Sculptures

Sculpture is art you can walk around and view from many sides. People have been making sculptures for thousands of years.

Long ago, sculptors carved many figures from stone, bone, and wood. They modelled others in metal and clay. Sculptors today still work with these materials. But they may also use wax, paper, fabric, string, or plastic. Any material you can think of has probably been used for sculpture.

Pictures Good Enough to Eat

The French artist Nicolas Poussin thought that in a painting, details were more important than colour. So did many other artists of the 1600’s. Poussin also believed that a painting should show only serious subjects. So Poussin based many of his pictures on legends and the Bible. The painting Holy Family on the Steps shows the family with a basket of apples. In the 1600’s, apples were a symbol of life. The apples may also make us think of a story from the Bible. The fruit eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is often shown in paintings as an apple.

In 1877, the French artist Paul Cezanne painted the apples and oranges. Unlike Poussin’s work, Cezanne’s work was not popular during his lifetime. Cezanne learned from the Impressionists, but he used perspective in his paintings very differently than they did. His style inspired modern artists, including Pablo Picasso of Spain.

The Tale of Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter spent most of her childhood in a tall, stone house in London. In the late 1800’s, young women called governesses taught girls from rich families at home. So Beatrix did not go to school and meet other children her age.

The Potters’ servants were Beatrix’s friends. Her nurse told her fairy tales, and her governess taught her about flowers and plants. Cox, the butler, brought her animals that she kept in her third-floor schoolroom.

Two of Beatrix’s dearest pets were mice that Cox caught in the kitchen. Beatrix named them Hunca Munca and Appley Dappley. She also kept a rabbit named Benjamin Bunny and fed him off a china plate. Her most unusual pet was probably Tiggy, a hedgehog, who drank milk from a teacup.

Beatrix loved to watch her animals. She drew lots of sketches showing Hunca Munca, Tiggy, and Benjamin Bunny in their favourite poses. For each drawing, Beatrix made up a story. She shared her stories with her governess after each day’s lessons.

Beatrix’s favourite season was summer, when the Potter family visited the Scottish countryside. There Beatrix admired fields full of plants and animals. She drew the many wildflowers and animals that she saw and painted her drawings with water-colours.

When Beatrix grew up, she remained good friends with her last governess. Beatrix visited her and wrote letters to her governess’s children. One of the earliest letters was actually a story about a rabbit called Peter. It included drawings of the rabbit and his three sisters.

A publishing house offered to print the story as a book if Beatrix would colour the pictures. So she brightened the drawings with delicate water-colours. The Tale of Peter Rabbit became a huge success. In time, children all around the world were enjoying stories and water-colours of Peter, Hunca Munca, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and a host of other animals that flowed from Beatrix Potter’s brush.

Mary Cassatt’s Impressions of Women

Why don’t we see more paintings from long ago done by women? Before the middle 1800’s, art schools did not accept women students. One of the first women to go to art school was the American painter Mary Cassatt.

When Mary was 16, in 1861, she entered the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, U.S.A. Many considered the academy daringly modern because it admitted women. But Mary thought its classes were boring, even though she studied there for four years.

In the mid-1800’s, most Americans considered art unimportant. Cassatt wanted people to take her paintings seriously. So in 1866, she moved to Paris.

Cassatt’s first paintings showed people in dark colours. Then she saw the work of Edgar Degas, an Impressionist. Degas’s pictures were a turning point in her life as an artist.

Cassatt started painting with light, bright colours. She used dabs of paint to create the “impression” of a scene rather than an exact copy. Like the other Impressionists, she showed only what the eye saw at a glance and how light changed the colour.

The people in Cassatt’s new paintings looked natural. Her most popular works show mothers and children. Other paintings picture women at peaceful activities like sewing and reading.

When Mary Cassatt died in 1926, Americans admired her paintings as much as Europeans did. Within two years after her death, four exhibits, or showings, of her work were put on in the U.S.A. The largest exhibit was in Philadelphia, where Cassatt first studied art.

Picture Credit : Google

Putting it in Perspective

How do artists do it? They paint their pictures on flat surfaces, but we seem to see deep into the pictures. Why? Because the artists use what is called perspective.

In real life, street lights down the road look as if they are smaller than street lights that are nearby. Artists try to get this effect in their painting using perspective. This means they paint some things small and short to show that they are supposed to be far away.

In the same picture, the artist paints everything at the front of the picture larger. These larger things make up the foreground. Everything in between the background and the foreground makes up the middle ground. Having a foreground, a middle ground, and a background gives a painting depth, or perspective.

Artists use even more tricks to give their paintings depth. Sometimes they paint the background pale and misty. This makes the background look far away. Other times, they draw the straight lines in a street or road so they meet in the background. This makes the road seem to disappear in the distance just as a real road appears to do.

Picture Credit : Google