Tag: Sculpture and Photography

News, Publications

Sculptural Materiality in the Age of Conceptualism

I am thrilled to announce that my first monograph, Sculptural Materiality in the Age of Conceptualism, will be published in December by Routledge. The book, based on my doctoral dissertation, is structured around four distinct but interrelated projects initially realized in Italy between 1966 and 1972: Yayoi Kusama’s Narcissus Garden, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s Newspaper Sphere (Sfera di giornali), Robert Smithson’s Asphalt Rundown, and Joseph Beuys’s Arena. These works all utilized … Continue reading Sculptural Materiality in the Age of Conceptualism

Marin R. Sullivan1 Comment
exhibitions, public things

Photography as (Public) Sculpture: Amanda Ross-Ho at MCA Chicago

IMG_0848As far as public sculpture goes, the notion of an opening date seems a little odd. Unless done under total secrecy or very quickly, such large scale projects reveal themselves over time, after periods of long installation, and yet one day they are fully realized, completed and ready for public consumption. This past Tuesday, 23 July, marked such a day for The Character and Shape of Illuminated Things.

IMG_0857The third commissioned work in the Plaza Project series at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the occasion was marked with an outdoor talk with the Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based artist Amanda Ross-Ho and MCA curator Julie Rodrigues Widholm; speaking at the height of rush hour, on a beautiful, if blustery Chicago summer afternoon, the receding sunlight streaming through the skyscrapers surrounding the MCA. I mention the artist talk, not only because the idea was both insane (honking cabs! emergency sirens! random tourists wandering around!) and a perfect, surprisingly successful venue for discussion of a work that by its placement alone is meant to engage and implicate the public, but also because it threw into sharp focus some of the stronger formal and conceptual aspects of the work on view. Continue reading “Photography as (Public) Sculpture: Amanda Ross-Ho at MCA Chicago”

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thinking about the sculptural

Sculpture and Photography – AAH 2013

Edward Steichen, Rodin—The Thinker, 1902, Gum bichromate print 15 9/16 x 19 in., Gilman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Edward Steichen, Rodin—The Thinker, 1902,
Gum bichromate print
15 9/16 x 19 in.,
Gilman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The past week involved another Atlantic crossing for me and as such, a proper post won’t appear until later this week, but I wanted to comment briefly on a fantastic session organized by Lisa Le Feuvre and Jon Wood of the Henry Moore Institute for this year’s Association of Art Associations Annual Conference – held 11-13 April in Reading. The session was titled, “Photography and the Histories of Sculpture: What role has photography played in forming sculpture’s place in art history?” This is a topic that plays a large role in my own research and it was wonderful to see (and hear) it explored at an event like AAH; not only in the HMI panel but also in other sessions, including one organized by Alice Correia and Robert Sutton from Tate on Henry Moore (and do check out their larger, excellent research project at Tate).

The HMI session brought together international scholars speaking on a very diverse range of subjects within the broader category of sculpture and photography’s intermedial intersections. Continue reading “Sculpture and Photography – AAH 2013”

Marin R. Sullivan2 Comments