I was at a gallery opening this week where the speaker talked about art therapy and the value of creativity. The need to manipulate materials was innate in her opinion and she spoke with almost religious enthusiasm about the visceral nature of pushing your hands into wet clay. I have no doubt that she is right about humankind needing to make something and tapping into what seems to be written into our DNA whether the maker is called an artist or not. Creativity is what has got us to where we are in the evolutionary chain even if all of that creative progress has ironically consumed vast quantities of raw materials and threatened the planet on which we live. How very odd that the aspect of being human that we value so much may well prove to be the fatal blow to life on earth. Nevertheless, we keep on creating.

What struck me from this speech though was the ambivalent nature of the response to art. While wanting to make something is innate, the need to apply reason to the product stands outside the process. ‘What does it mean?’ is a common enough question when faced by painting or sculpture. David Smith the American sculptor said that his work wasn’t about anything, it just was, and he wouldn’t be alone in describing his output in this way. However, while the very act of adding paint to canvas or any other support, may well be therapeutic and cathartic, the need to justify the result intellectually would seem to be contradictory and this is particularly true of sculpture which you would have thought was the most logical in being a three-dimensional object which, when small enough can be held in the hand. Ancient man carried talisman around in the form of found objects such as shells and pebbles and attributed powers to them. In part it must have been both the look and feel that was so appealing to hunter gatherers that they valued possession in this way.

Sculpture is described as ‘an artistic form in which hard or plastic materials are worked into three-dimensional art objects. The designs may be embodied in freestanding objects, in reliefs on surfaces, or in environments ranging from tableaux to contexts that envelop the spectator’ [Encyclopedia Britannica].

However, the act of making is not enough to turn process into sculpture in that to make a sculpture, ‘you need to use formal elements such as space, shape, form, tone, texture, and color. The way you use these elements to make sculpture is to make shapes, patterns, and lines whether it be through carving, modelling, casting or constructing’. Ibid. But in many people’s minds this simply isn’t enough.

So-called Classical sculpture is based upon the balance of vertical and horizontal, with occasional small diagonals and arabesques. The Classical piece is strongly rooted to the ground without being heavy which is what makes it classical apart from the need to turn marble or cast bronze into simulated human flesh. The term itself always bothers me in that it implies a high point wherein everything after it is retrograde. Certainly, there is a mystique about a hammer and chisel being used. Canova’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa is typical.

Unlike most modernism, there had to be an accompanying narrative which draws upon myth and legend. The need to imbue sculptural form with something other than just the manipulation of materials is not restricted to the past either. South Australian sculptor Greg Johns talks about the philosophical and scientific underpinning to his vast output of public works. While they may appear to be just shapes, patterns, and lines the intellectual part requires thought.

The point though is how can you tell the difference from just looking at it between material manipulation for the sake of, as part of a DNA response to the world and work based upon concept. A visit to the Brighton Sculpture exhibit on the South Australian coast probably proved the point. In amongst the eagles, kangaroos and depictions of steampunk people were works that were shapes, patterns, and lines. Two that I looked at were composed of laser cut steel shapes and the sculptor has obviously enjoyed the process. Later I read that they had been exhibited to advertise his garden ornament business. No intellectual or philosophical content at all.

Art is often described as an unstructured and open-ended form of work that may express emotions and feelings. Craft on the other hand describes the creation of physical objects by the use of ‘hands and brain’, essentially feeling as a sensory approach and an emotional response at the result. Art, however, relies on ‘artistic merit.’ That certainly makes it all crystal clear.

So how do people respond to sculpture given that the creation of physical objects is so innate? In paintings terms it has to go ‘with the furniture’. In sculptural terms it is what a visitor to my studio proclaimed as a reason to buy sculptural work. As she said, she wouldn’t be parting with any money unless she could hang her car keys on it. Fair enough.