2. Types of Sculptures
Relief or relievo rilievo,
- is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the
Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the
impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the
background plane.
- According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's
Heilbrunn Time line of Art History, Relief sculpture is "sculpture that
projects in vary degrees from a two-dimensional background." Relief
sculpture is among the oldest forms of sculpted art.
3. Different Degrees of Relief
Bas-relief or low relief
- has a very low degree of relief from the base.
- is a type of sculpture that has less depth to the faces
and figures than they actually have, when measured proportionately (to
scale). This technique retains the natural contours of the figures, and
allows the work to be viewed from many angles without distortion of
the figures themselves.
5. High Relief
- is where in general more than half the mass of the
sculpted figure projects from the background, indeed the most
prominent elements of the composition, especially heads and limbs,
are often completely undercut, detaching them from the field. The
parts of the subject that are seen are normally depicted at their
full depth, unlike low relief where the elements seen are
"squashed" flatter. High-relief thus uses essentially the same style
and techniques as free-standing sculpture, and in the case of a
single figure gives largely the same view as a person standing
directly in front of a free-standing statue would have. All cultures
and periods in which large sculptures were created used this
technique in monumental sculpture and architecture.
7. Sunk Relief
- Sunk or sunken relief is largely restricted to the art
of Ancient Egypt where it is very common, becoming after the
Amarna period of Ahkenaten the dominant type used, as opposed to
low relief. It had been used earlier, but mainly for large reliefs on
external walls, and for hieroglyphs and cartouches. The image is
made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface. In a
simpler form the images are usually mostly linear in nature, like
hieroglyphs, but in most cases the figure itself is in low relief, but
set within a sunken area shaped round the image, so that the relief
never rises beyond the original flat surface.
9. Counter Relief
- Sunk relief technique is not to be confused with
"counter-relief" or intaglio as seen on engraved gem seals — where
an image is fully modeled in a "negative" manner. The image goes
into the surface, so that when impressed on wax it gives an
impression in normal relief.
11. Small objects
- Small-scale reliefs have been carved in various
materials, notably ivory, wood, and wax. Reliefs are often found in
decorative arts such as ceramics and metalwork; these are less
often described as "reliefs" than as "in relief".
14. Types of Sculptures
Free Standing Sculpture
- also known as sculpture in-the-round, likely represents
the form of sculpture most recognizable to modern people.
- is any work of sculpture which can be viewed from any
angle around the pedestal. This kind of sculpture includes some of the
most famous works of sculpture throughout time: the statuary works
of the Greek, Roman, Medieval and Classical eras, including
Michaelangelo's David.
16. Types of Sculptures
Kinetic Sculpture
- is free-standing sculpture that moves, either by
mechanical power or under the power of wind or water. Fountains are
a form of kinetic sculpture, although in that special case the
sculpture is not powered by the water but lives within the shapes and
forms of the water as it arcs over and through the air.
19. Types of Sculptures
Assemblage Sculpture
- Another more modern form of sculpture is known as
Assemblage sculpture, which is sculpture pieced together from found
or scavenged items that have little or no relationship to one another.
Contemporary Art Dialogue's website defines assemblage art as "non-
traditional sculpture, made from re-combining found objects. Some of
these objects are junk from the streets." These pieced-together bits
of castoff debris are arranged in an aesthetically pleasing shape to
the artist and then presented to its audiences to provoke thought and
reaction. Collages are a sort of two-dimensional representation of
assemblage sculpture.
