Art And Sculptures

There are two broad categories of visual art, two dimensional art and sculptures otherwise referred to as three dimensional art. Traditionally painting and drawing were the main forms of two dimensional art while sculpture included works fashioned from metal or stone. In recent times these definitions have broadened considerably though, due to Industrial, technological and philosophical advances.

The acceptance of photography as a valid art form can be seen as both a technological and philosophical addition. The philosophical, or to be more precise the aesthetic, consideration was the resolution of the argument based on whether something captured such as a photograph could be the equivalent of something created such as a painting. The technological consideration was the reduction of cost caused by the advent of digital and the general ongoing reduction in real cost of any technology. This, put simply, meant that many more people were now becoming involved in photography including people with an arts background as opposed to a technical. In other words people were entering the field who did not define beauty simply by how well reality could be reproduced but who thought that there was another, altogether more abstract, aesthetic consideration.

In the case of the three dimensional something a little different has come into play. The classic view of sculpture is of permanence, of something carved from stone or cast in metal that would survive, largely unchanged for hundreds and possibly even thousands of years. Recently though, all that has changed. Contemporary sculpture can be transient, composed of soft materials such as paper, fabric and foam that may last a couple of decades without active attempts at preservation. This so called soft sculpture seems positively eternal though when compared to things such as light sculptures which literally cease to exist when the power source is turned off.

Despite these recent changes it is worth bearing in mind that the earliest paleolithic cave paintings of around thirty two thousand years ago are recognized as being every bit as much art as are the twenty first century light sculptures of Manfred Kielnhofer. The thought processes behind both the prehistoric and the modern appears very similar. Will it be possible, at some point in our future, to capture a passing thought and, depending upon some yet to be decided criteria, call it art? By this time any differences between two dimensional art and sculptures will be truly academic.