/lit/ - Literature

Post any books related to sculpture. Alexander Stoddart hasn't written any books AFAIK, but his lectures and interviews align most closely with my own views:

>When you look at the influences, don't look at Donatello, look at Desiderio da Dettignano. He was an artist of the most immense sensitivity and culture, whereas Donatello was his own man. Of course you've heard of Donatello, you haven't heard of Desiderio, and that in itself is significant. The herd goes for that. Don't admire Michelangelo for his sculpture, so much as for his architecture, and go and look at the stairs of the Laurentian Library. The most beautiful mannerist staircase ever designed. That's Michelangelo at his most sublime. The Medici Tombs in the Chapel are superb as well, largely because of Michelangelo's highly developed and very cultured architectural sense. I would say to a young person, look at Giambologna, he's the pinnacle of Mannerism, ten times the sculptor Michelangelo was, and just a sculptor, he sticks to it. With no pretensions of divinity, no ghastly poetry written, and no tragic heir, the most un-platonic artist you ever saw. Also for totality of design, second to none. Don't look at Rodin, the French sculptor, you look at him because it's easy to do. You learn to like Rodin, and I'm speaking from my own experience, because you think you can manage that, because it's rough, shoddy, distorted and if you can't manage to model an arm, doesn't matter, just cut it off. You know, it's truncationalism. So don't look at Rodin, look at Adolf von Hildebrand, who died in 1922. He was just as famous as Rodin in his time, but modernism decided that it was Rodin who was going to be brought forward and decided that Adolf von Hildebrand should be put away to the side. You've never heard of him, you know, you've heard of Rodin. German sculptor, Munich, and in Italy, a great architectural designer as well. So of the two look at Hildebrand, clever, clever artist and again modest. Unfortunately his name was Adolf so that didn't do much help in the future. And also many of his students actually went on to get big commissions from another Adolf that we don't like, so that was a problem. In terms of culture, go to Copenhagen. For taste, and sensibility, and also for sculpture. It's the sculpture capital of the Northern world, as far as I'm concerned, because it's got Thorvaldsen's museum. And I think Thorvaldsen was one of the very greatest, if not the very greatest of the modern sculptors. So I've followed him, I've followed Thorvaldsen more than any other sculptor. He had a pupil named H.E. Freund, who is very, very important to take account of. Now, these are all obscure names that aren't properly given. In terms of modernism, by all means look hard at it. I mean, I'm very interested in it, as an oncologist is interested in cancer, so I'm interested in modernism.

https://youtu.be/lGOpw8nr_es?t=2727

>>19684158
>And yet, after having said all this about Modernism, I consider myself a Modernist – but in the context of a vast application of the term extending miles beyond the pokey wee official area to which usually it is confined. For in truth there are really two kinds of Modernism to be uncovered in the space of the last two and a half centuries, and it is to the first and largest of these that I belong and to which, in my small way, I contribute. This is the Modernism that was born in neo-classicism and has, as its great central titan, the mighty Richard Wagner.
- Alexander Stoddart

>>18896671
This is a Schopenhauerian interpretation of modern art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FPdrLlshRA