Modern Sculpture

Modern Sculpture encompasses changing approaches to the figure, materials and sculptural space from the later nineteenth century onwards. Artists reconsidered the polished surfaces and ideal proportions inherited from earlier traditions, exploring how modelling, texture and incomplete forms could carry expression. Auguste Rodin's figures provide one important point of departure: their gestures and worked surfaces make physical presence and emotional tension central to the subject. The production of clay models, plaster versions and bronze casts also reveals sculpture as a process of revision. Modern practice includes different responses to the human body, portraiture and public commemoration, rather than a single uniform style.