Rhizome | Blog Posts tagged "greco-roman"

Frank Benson’s “Human Statue (Jessie)” at Taxter & Spengemann

Orit Gat | Tue Oct 4th, 2011 2:35 p.m.

Frank Benson, Human Statue (Jessie), 2011, bronze.

All this is the product of digital photography and 3-D reproduction. But while it is a wonder of contemporary technology, it also harks back to the art of the Ancient Greeks, who, in their bronze sculptures of divine beings, began a tradition of subordinating metaphysics to empiricism to which we still are beholden. Once we might have prayed to such a goddess. Now we meditate on time and timelessness; the ideal and the real; the quick and the dead.

— Ken Johnson review at the New York Times.

Human Statue (Jessie) is a new work by New York–based artist Frank Benson. The life-size bronze figure of a woman was first designed digitally using photographic scans of the model, which were then used to construct a virtual model that was fabricated in bronze.

More discussions on relationships between Greek art and new media here:

Put a Corinthian Column on It

and

It's Only Humanist

LINK »

Review: Oliver Laric's Kopienkritik at Skulpturhalle Basel

Karen Archey | Tue Jul 5th, 2011 1:25 p.m.

Kopienkritik, German artist Oliver Laric's summer solo project at the Skulpturhalle Basel, waxes upon the politics of the reproduction of images while drawing upon the Swiss museum's collection of plaster cast copies of sculptures from classical antiquity. Laric collaborated with the museum's staff to reinstall and arrange their collection of casts, interspersing his own sculptures and video works shown on monitors and projectors throughout the museum. That Kopienkritik largely comprises works of art not created by but rearranged by Laric calls into question the functionality of the artist as not a maker of things, but a producer of ideas.

Kopienkritik (“copy criticism”) is the process of analyzing copies of classic sculptures —typically Roman reproductions of lost Greek versions — to arrive at a greater understanding of the originals. Within the art history community, the practice is seen as a last-ditch way to study ancient Greek sculpture — and one bearing many discontents. For example, ancient Greek sculptor Polykleitos, active in the 5th and early 4th century BCE, made major contributions to sculptural practice with his “invention” of contrapposto, but as his works are all lost they may only be studied and understood through lesser-quality Roman copies. To illustrate this principle, Laric grouped sculptures together similar in appearance and posture, creating visible aesthetic lineages between each work. These groupings are put into a theoretical framework by Laric's essay-video Versions, projected onto two similar plaster casts in the Skulpturhalle installation, the video attempting to fast forward discussions surrounding the authenticity and proliferation of images to an internet-sensitive context...

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