the cubic element in my sculpture

Leonardo

The Cubic Element in My SculptureAuthor(s): Jacques SchnierSource: Leonardo, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr., 1969), pp. 135-145Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1572019 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 2, pp. 135-145. Pergamon Press 1969. Printed in Great Britain

THE CUBIC ELEMENT IN MY

SCULPTURE

Jacques Schnier*

Abstract-The use of commonly familiar representational subject matter in the exploration and invention of new sculpture has been practically if not entirely exhausted. In first making the change from figurative to non-figurative pre- sentations in his sculpture, the artist limits himself to the use of cubic-like geometric volumes. This not only helps him to completely relinquish any figurative suggestions in his work but aids him to concentrate on the problem of simple forms.

Influenced by his previous engineering-architectural training and experience, he organizes the cubic volumes of his initial compositions on a horizontal-vertical format. From this format he moves to one in which the axes of all volumes are at angles with the vertical and the horizontal and, further, explores the inverted pyramid type image. Through all these compositions he integrates the volumes by means of an interlocking and overlapping treatment. In this way he avoids the mere juxtaposition or piling of shapes one on top of the other like children's building blocks.

Cubic-like shapes are ideally suitedfor exploring new sculpture arrangements. In the first place, they afford an artist a ready means for establishing volume or mass in his compositions. Secondly, the planes and edges of these geometrical masses, through their infinite positioning possibilities, enable him to readily achieve variety and feeling of movement in his sculpturalforms.

Like many contemporary sculptors trained during the years between World War I and World War II, I was schooled in the representational tradition of figurative art. My style, however, was not realistic in the literal sense of the word; rather, it was one in which a personal interpretation predominated. Nevertheless, it was characterized by a single type of mass-the rounded, sensuous shape, so common to pre-twentieth century sculpture. During the war, while stationed overseas, I found time to quietly contemplate this narrow, limited approach.

I was aware of the decided break that had already occurred in the sculptor's dependence on figurative subjects and treatment. The first tentative attempts at escape from familiar recognizable objects consisted merely of exaggerated distortions. Then the Futurists, although they continued to rely on these subjects, revised them to convey the idea of movement in time. Others, like Brancusi and Arp, distilled reality to a lower common denominator, while still others like Lipchitz and Laurens applied the principles of cubism to natural objects. And finally, I saw the tie with nature completely re- linquished as sculptors commenced producing so-called abstract art [1].

*Artist living at 4081 Happy Valley Road, Lafayette, Calif. 94549, U.S.A. (Received 16 November 1968.)

But the fact that most sculptors were thus freeing themselves was insufficient reason for me to change. The time I had spent mastering the figure, even to the extent of dissecting it in the anatomy laboratory, made me seek some rational and fundamental explanation.

What probably helped me most in finally making my own break was the observation that from the point of view of composition the inventive use of figurative subjects had practically been exhausted. I concluded that for fidelity to anatomical detail it was difficult to improve on Renaissance sculpture; that for impressionistic treatment of the figure and the play of light and shade, Rodin's sculpture could not be excelled; and that the purity of line and mass of ancient Egyptian and Oriental sculpture could not be surpassed. Thus, I could achieve little that was new by limiting myself to figurative subject matter. By so doing, I would only be repeating, perhaps with personal variations, what others had already so successfully achieved in the past.

Since the volume treatment of all my previous sculpture was characterized by the rounded, convex shape, I now purposefully choose its antipode, the cube or, more precisely, the cube-like shape. This not only helped me completely relinquish any figurative suggestion, but aided me considerably in concentrating on form.

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Jacques Schnier

Fig. 1. 'The City', alabaster, height 10 in., 1958.

For several years a small block of alabaster rested on my studio shelf. Its precise squarish shape promoted me to develop it into a composition that echoed its original mass. The fact that alabaster can be cut with a saw and chiseled with carving tools aided materially in achieving this effect (cf. Fig. 1). While organizing the component parts, I became engrossed in tightly integrating the shapes by means of an interlocking and overlapping treatment. This is a feature I have retained in almost all my work to date. The joining of shapes by mere juxtaposition or piling them one on top of the other like children's building blocks does not seem to me a profound or challenging aesthetic approach. Recalling the original faces of the alabaster block, the faces of the component elements were limited to the horizontal and vertical, which resulted in an

overall compact architectonic quality. My sensitivity to this quality was probably related to my early training, first as an engineer and later as an architect. But I also recall having seen at one time the illustra- tion of a work by Vantongerloo in which a somewhat similar approach was used and which appealed to me very much.

While finishing 'The City' (cf. Fig. 1), I felt thwarted by the limitations imposed by the original planes of the stone. I felt impelled to extend the composition beyond the confines of the material. To accomplish this, I repeated a somewhat similar theme in clay. The plasticity of this material enabled me more freely to develop elements and to exploit openings completely through the mass. The resulting composition was as deep as it was wide and high, and was set upon four legs instead

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The Cubic Element in My Sculpture

Fig. 2. 'Holy Citadel No. 2', bronze ed. 1/3, height 16-5 in., 1958. (Collection of the Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco, California.)

of two (cf. Fig. 2). 'Holy Citadel', although con- ceived in clay and later cast in bronze, retained some of the glyptic quality of its predecessor, and thus revealed its genesis.

The inherent quality of precise geometrical shapes began to intrigue me more and more. Freed now from figurative subject matter I could more readily concentrate on the organization of the sculpture elements. I strove to achieve variety not only by means of contrasting sizes, but also by manipulation of the overall image itself. Unlike 'Holy Citadel', which complied to some degree with Michelangelo's sculpture idea of the sphere- like mass capable of rolling down hill without damage to its extremities, 'Eternal Sanctuary' (cf. Fig. 3), my next composition, consisted of two

10

horizontal groups of shapes, joined by a somewhat narrower central section. In addition, all four sides were penetrated on two levels, thus opening the mass even more than in my preceding work. Again the composition was designed with legs to help produce a feeling of lightness. Since it was carved in a block of wood, it reflected the compactness and monolithic quality of its origin. But again, as with 'The City', I felt the limitations of the confining faces. In compensation, I took the clay maquette and freely extended outward and upward a number of the dominant elements. This latter version was cast in bronze (now in the sculpture collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art) and a comparison of the two versions clearly illustrates one of the differences between carved and modeled sculpture.

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Jacques Schnier

Fig. 3. 'Eternal Sanctuary No. 1', koa wood, height 20.5 in., 1960.

The compositions described so far were all studio pieces of modest dimensions. As I had earlier completed a number of extremely large architectural commissions, I now undertook a studio work of a larger scale. To overcome the problem of weight, it was constructed of sheet copper and was hollow. Originally, I planned to use welding throughout for joining the elements but the rapid diffusion of heat through the copper caused excessive warping of the sheets. Small self-tapping screws were, therefore, used with only limited welding for securing the metal. The finished composition, 'Cubical Varia- tions within a Vertical Column' (cf. Fig. 4), can be analyzed, as to form and in the context of my previous sculptures, as an attenuated version of 'Eternal Sanctuary' but without interpenetrating openings.

My renunciation of figurative subject matter was now complete and irrevocable. Consciously I not only avoided these subjects, but also rejected any oblique suggestion to them. In this regard the observation of music helped strengthen my convic- tion. A number of references can be found in the literature of art comparing form in music with form in painting and sculpture [2]. But the analogy is important enough to warrant further comments. Although we have no records of music form from prehistoric times, it seems safe to conjecture on the basis of what we know about prehistoric visual art, that as far as realism, the development of early music paralleled that of sculpture. At least the ancient and primitive music of which we do have knowledge, owed a great deal to natural or representational sounds-to the songs of birds, howls

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Fig. 4. 'Cubical Variations within Vertical Column', sheet copper, height 6 ft 1 in., 1960.

of wild animals, rustling of leaves in the wind and the sounds of running water. It also relied heavily on the use of various human sounds, which re- presented then, as today, one of the principal means by which we express and excite emotions. History relates that even during the height of Greek culture, Plato felt compelled to chide the Greek musicians for degrading themselves by imitating the roaring of lions and whistling of wind [3].

In spite of Plato's criticism, however, the Greeks are credited with inventing the diatonic scale based on the tetrachord. The tetrachord in turn was super- seded in early church music by the hexachord which led to the use of counterpoint. The establishment of major and minor scales with the octave as unit, which made modulation possible in any key, then led to the development of harmony and poly-

phonic music about the fifteenth to sixteenth century. Thus, it appears to me that non-representational or abstract musical form antedated by several hundred years the abstract plastic form approach in sculpture. But why this lag occurred in the visual arts, I am unable to explain. Suffice to say, there is definite artistic precedent for non-figurative sculpture and that this appraoach is unquestionably here to stay. By this I do not mean to imply that further invention in sculpture is closed. To the contrary, contemporary interest in kinetics [4], light [5] and color already foretells continuing discoveries, and suggests that sculpture, like the other arts, is an endless quest for new horizons.

My sheet copper composition, 'Cubical Variations Within a Vertical Column', because of its verticallity, suggests a totem pole. Following its completion, I

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Jacques Schnier

Fig. 5. 'Sanctum Sanctorum', bronze ed. 1/3, height 17.5 in., 1960-1962. (Collection of the Art Museum, Oakland, California.)

became engrossed in exploring the ambient space of sculpture and the opening of its mass. For this purpose 1 turned once more to clay. Using some earlier compositions as points of departure, I strove for a freer image than I formerly used, and extended a number of elements in an attempt to probe surrounding space. In addition, I employed a larger number of smaller elements and strove to orchestrate them, figuratively speaking, into a design akin to an arrangement in music. For variety, I varied the size of these elements and opposed vertical with horizontal directions. 'Sanctum Sanctorum' (cf. Fig. 5) is open in its interior and the penetrations from the outside are now on three levels instead of two.

Much traditional sculpture of the early Egyptian,

Greek, Oriental, and even Renaissance periods was composed on a strong vertical axis. This is especially apparent in stone statues where the composition was adapted to the format of the original block. In contrast with this approach, a number of sculptors in recent times, when composing upright sculpture, have projected masses outwardly and asymmetrically from a main supporting stem. This arrangement helps overcome the static quality inherent in an otherwise strong vertical format and results, instead, in a freer type of composition. It is this approach I used in composing 'The Fortress' (cf. Fig. 6). With a stubby heavy mass placed eccentric- ally to the axis of the supporting stem, I cantilevered a longer counterpart on the opposite side. The result is a varied asymmetrical composition and a

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*

a. ,

. ii

Fig. 6. 'The Fortress',

decided departure from the vertical totemic format of my earlier copper piece.

The method I employed in developing 'The Fortress' is a variation of the polystyrene foam plastic vaporization technique of metal casting. Briefly, this procedure consists of first making a sculpture in combustible polystyrene foam plastic, after which it is gated and packed in foundry sand. Molten metal poured on the foam completely vaporizes it, then fills the resulting cavity, thus exactly replacing and duplicating the pattern. The feasibility of this technique stems from the fact that since the foam is 98 per cent air and 2 per cent polystyrene, it vaporizes rapidly in contact with molten metal. The 2 per cent polystyrene, however, provides sufficient firmness to make the pattern

cast iron, height 20 in., 1962.

self-supporting while being packed in the sand for casting.

The variation of this technique which I devised was prompted by my desire to make a hollow casting. It consisted of first developing the composition in blocks of foundry core sand held together with a core adhesive. The faces of the blocks were covered with a one-quarter inch veneer of foam polystyrene. In this particular instance, the veneer was built of small squares and rectangles of the foam attached more or less as a mosaic. In order to prevent the core from shifting under the weight of the molten metal after the foam had been vaporized, small blocks of the core sand were inserted through the veneer and allowed to project beyond its face. After the pattern was packed in sand, these blocks,

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Jacques Schnier

Fig. 7. 'House of the Four Tablets', bronze, height 29 in., 1963.

which function exactly like core pins in lost-wax casting, anchored the core to the surrounding sand mold. After casting, the sand core, which now had lost its firmness, was shaken out from the cast's interior but no attempt was made to eliminate by plugging, the 'core windows' in the finished statue [6].

Since I now had a crucible furnace of my own with a capacity of 180 lb bronze, I limited myself for some time to cast metal sculpture. As I had no burnout kiln in the beginning for invested wax patterns, I continued designing for the foam vaporization method. 'House of the Four Tablets' (cf. Fig. 7), like the preceding sculpture, was composed on a core made of compressed sand blocks, covered with one-quarter inch sheets of polystyrene foam. Again, an eccentric and asymmetrical arrangement

of masses was employed, with a horizontal component on one side opposing a vertical one on the other. To enrich the surface, an allover pattern or texture was incised on the face of the foam before packing the composition in sand. The core windows were consciously designed and located so as to become an integral part of the composition.

Up to this time almost all my sculpture in the 'cubic' style was composed with predominantly horizontal and vertical component. At this point, I set out to explore other arrangements. 'Watch Tower' (cf. Fig. 8) is an intermediate work between my earlier 'horizontal-vertical' compositions and those later works which depart from this appraoch. The horizontals have been retained in most of the masses (except the strongly inclining one at the apex of the structure) but their faces have been

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Fig. 8. 'Watch Tower', bronze, height 26-5 in., 1963.

tipped outward from the vertical. The entire composition is supported on three buttress-like legs. I made some further experiments with the core windows as designs elements.

By now my experience with the foam vaporization technique enabled me to cast hollow compositions as thin as three-sixteenths of an inch. This is about as thin or perhaps thinner than the shells of bronze castings of comparable size cast by the traditional lost-wax technique in long established statuary foundries. Although the foam vaporization technique (also referred to as the Full Mold Process) is now commonly used in industrial foundries to make prototype or unique castings (and thus avoid expensive draw patterns) up to 10 tons and more, I am unacquainted with its commercial application for hollow castings of the thinness described above.

My work with 'cubic' sculpture is a manifestation of my search for form made of simple geometrical shapes. My approach can further be understood by considering the problem of order in science. In this connection, I consider the termsform and order as being synonymous. Science is steadily expanding our understanding of nature as scientists search for new order. The creative scientist is never content with merely repeating discoveries or the creative engineer in repeating the application of scientific knowledge for human use. In fact, their only claim to being considered creative rests on their ability to cross established frontiers and discover new order [7].

The basic psychology of the creative scientist in search for order appears to be similar to that of the artist in search for form. Like the artist, he is not

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Jacques Schnier

motivated primarily by the urge to solve practical and utilitarian problems. Also like the artist, his main concern is to trace in the chaos and flux of phenomena a structure with order and meaning. Both are seekers of harmonies and order in what appears to man as a jungle of experiences. Basically, there is no difference between the statement of the physicist Nils Bohr that, 'The task of science is both to extend the range of our experience and to reduce it to order', [8] and the poet T. S. Eliot's claim that, 'It is the function of art to give us some perception of an order in life by imposing order upon it' [9]. A synthesis of these two statements is made by the scientist, Gerald Holton, when he says, 'In science as in art our most persistent intellectual efforts are directed towards the discovery of patterns, order, system and structure' [10].

Another point, regarding the comparison I have pointed out above, is the underlying interest of the scientist in the subjective qualifying terms 'beauty' and 'elegance' so commonly used by artists. The mathematician, Henri Poincare, who was deeply concerned with the motivation of science, wrote, 'The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course, I do not here speak of that beauty which strikes the senses; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts [author's italics] and which a pure intelligence can grasp. This it is which gives body, a structure so to speak, to the iridescent appearances which flatter our senses, and without this support the beauty of these fugitive dreams would be only imperfect, because it would be vague and always fleeting. On the contrary, intellectual beauty is sufficient unto itself, and it is for its sake, more perhaps than for the future good of humanity, that the scientist devotes himself to long and difficult labors'. [11].

So far, I have made no mention of art content, that ingredient of art so highly extolled by poets and writers intent on finding the underlying meaning of a work of art. I do not discredit the importance of content nor the value of these writers' efforts, especially if they are directed toward broadening our understanding of art. But content is not a unique feature of art, since it also exists in a multi- tude of human experiences, actions and institutions which have no artistic significance. The dreamer's nocturnal visions, the delinquent's asocial behavior, the revolutionist's acts of violence, as well as the child's manipulation of his blocks on the nursery floor, all fall in this category [12].

Perhaps all people at one time or other experience the entire range of human emotions so frequently

associated with content in art-happiness and des- pair, love and hate, tenderness and cruelty, and all those others lying between the heights of ecstacy and the depths of depression. Yet none of these experiences or acts in themselves constitute works or art. It is only when such experiences are trans- lated into form that we can speak of art as such. What differentiates creative work from mere expression of emotions is this form quality, this organic unity, this harmony like that of a living organism whose parts are in vital and structural relationship to the whole [13]. On the other hand, we know that a work of art may evoke the spectator's emotions. But how much this emotional response is due to its contents and how much is sheer visual delight in its form is far beyond the scope of this little essay on the cube in my sculpture. However, I would be amongst the first to agree to the possibility of content-i.e. unconscious, emotional meaning- in the cube used as a symbol or the cube used as an aesthetically satisfying geometrical volume.

'Triologue' (cf. Fig. 9), one of my latest compositions, is, except for the supporting rectangular plinth, a complete emancipation from the horizontal and vertical component that characterized my earlier work. In addition, it is composed within an inverted pyramid format, a type of sculpture format that possesses the potential for suggesting a forceful quality of growth and vitality. Broad at the top and resting on a point (here flattened), the inverted pyramid can suggest the condition of floating-the overcoming of the pull of gravity-like that of a space object.

The material of which 'Triologue' is constructed is fibreglass reinforced polyester plastic. Because of its extreme lightness, this material is well adapted to the inverted pyramid format in sculpture. But notwithstanding its light weight, it is exceptionally strong. Its strength to weight ratio is probably stronger than any commonly used commercial materials. For finishing its surface I turned for the first time to color. This was achieved by spraying the plastic shell with coats of transparent acrylic colored lacquer over an opaque colored base, and then polishing with fine cutting compounds. Since sunlight or rain does not affect the transparency or dimensional stability of acrylic, it is an ideal sur- facing and color medium for outdoor sculpture. Aside from ceramic glazes and fired enamels on metal, it is probably the most permanent, although not the hardest, coloring medium available today.

For the Greeks, an ode was a lyric song poem, rhymed or unrhymed, usually addressed to a person or thing. It was characterized by lofty and dignified feelings, but simple in form and style. Borrowing the license of the poet and the metaphor of the writer, I like to call my sculpture odes. And of all my 'cubic style' compositions, 'Triologue' best exemplifies my various odes to the cube.

REFERENCES

1. H. Read, A Concise History of Modern Sculpture (New York: Praeger, 1964). 2. L. Alcopley, Edgar Varese on Music and Art, Leonardo 1, 187 (1968).

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J. -

.X.

'

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.. .-i

Fig. 9. 'Triologue', reinforced polyester with acrylic lacquer, height 52 in., 1967.

[facing p. 144]

E:-




3. Music, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago, 1946) Vol. 16, p. 5. 4. P. Selz, Directions in Kinetic Sculpture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). 5. A. T. Spear, Sculptured Light, Art International 11, 29 (1967). 6. H. M. Gadberry, Proc. Third Nat. Sculptural Casting Conf. (Lawrence, Kansas: Univ.

of Kansas, 1964) p. 5. 7. C. Schneer, The Search for Order (New York: Harper, 1960). 8. G. Holton, Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science (Reading, Mass.:

Addison-Wesley, 1952) p. 216. 9. G. Holton, Introduction to Concepts and Theories in Physical Science (Reading, Mass.:



Addison-Wesley, 1952) p. 243. 12. J. Schnier, Free Association and Ego Function in Creativity: A Study of Content and

Form, American Imago 17, No. 1, (1960). 13. J. Schnier, The Function and Origin of Form, J. Aesthetics Art Criticism 16, 66 (1957).

L'utilisation du cube dans mes sculpture

Resume-L'utilisation de la representation figurative dans de nouvelles formes de sculpture est une source d'inspiration tarie, car les possibilites qu'elle offre sont pratique- ment epuisees. Quand, dans ses compositions sculpturales, l'auteur passe d'une representation figurative a une representation abstraite, il se limite a l'utilisation de volumes geometriques de forme cubique. Cela lui permet d'ecarter completement toute suggestion d'ordre figuratif, et, de plus, de se concentrer plus fortement sur le probleme de la forme pure.

Subissant l'influence de son experience d'ingenieur et d'architecte, il organisa les volumes cubiques de ses premieres ceuvres sur un double plan horizontal et vertical. Puis, il evolua vers un schema dans lequel les axes de tous les volumes forment des angles avec la verticale et l'horizontale, et enfin il explora le schema de la pyramide inversee. Quel que soit le modele suivi, il reunit les volumes en les emboitant les uns aux autres ou en les faisant chevaucher. II evite ainsi de simplement les juxtaposer ou de les empiler comme les jeux de cubes des enfants.

Les formes cubiques conviennent parfaitement pour la decouverte de nouvelles structures sculpturales. Tout d'abord, elles fournissent a l'artiste des moyens faciles d'etablir les volumes ou les masses de ses compositions. De plus, grace aux innom- brables varietes de positions qu'ils offrent, les plans et les angles formes par ces masses geometriques lui permettent d'atteindre aisement une grande diversite et une sensation de mouvement dans ses ceuvres.

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the cubic element in my sculpture

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