I have confined my attention to matters relevant to all sculpture: the question of
how sculpture may be defined, the nature of sculptural content, and the
appreciation and ontology of sculpture. These do not exhaust sculptural trends and
topics that merit philosophical attention. Much public art, especially in outdoor
settings, is sculptural; sculpture thus supplies fertile ground for considering how art
does and should (or should not) serve political ideologies and public needs. The way
sculpture occupies space seems to give it special potential to shape the experience
of those who interact with it; there may, then, be an ethics of sculpture that is
distinct from the ethics of other art forms. Finally, much sculpture throughout
history has been designed for specific environments, and relocation of the work may
have more significant effects on the appreciation of sculpture than of painting. It is
sometimes claimed of contemporary sculptural works that they are site specific, and
thus cannot be relocated without undermining their aesthetic effect or even
destroying them. The special relationship sculptures seem to have to their display
environments, and the possibility that the site is sometimes integral to the ontology
of a sculpture, warrant philosophical inquiry to match the extensive attention they
have received from art critics and historians.
Philosophy often takes a while to catch up with its subject matter, and this is
certainly true when it comes to art. As philosophy comes increasingly to accept and
celebrate the relevance of embodied experience, and as aesthetics inches toward the
twenty‐first century, we can expect sculpture to occupy an increasingly central
rather than marginal place in philosophical theorizing about art.
REFERENCES
Carpenter, R. (1960) Greek Sculpture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goodman, N. (1976) Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, 2nd
edition, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Herder, J. G. (2002/1778) Sculpture: Some Observations on Shape and Form from
Pygmalion’s Creative Dream, trans. J. Gaiger, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hildebrand, A. von (1907/1893) The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture, ed.
and trans. M. Meyer and R. M. Ogden, New York: G. E. Stechert & Co.
Hopkins, R. (1994) “Resemblance and Misrepresentation,” Mind 103: 421‐438