Modern Sculpture

Modern sculpture is generally said to begin with Rodin. After him, Brâncuși distilled his subjects to their essential shapes, Picasso combined different objects and materials into one sculpture, Duchamp's Fountain (1917) presented a ready-made object as the work, and welded steel sculpture followed in the 1960s. Sculpture's concern moved from likeness and whom it honours to material, weight, balance, and the work's relation to the space around it and to the viewer's body. The sculpture park in Seoul's Olympic Park holds works by foreign artists invited to the cultural festival of the 1988 Seoul Olympics; they stand among lawns and paths and have become part of the landscape.

Walk all the way around the work and notice the weight of its material, and how it stands, hangs, or leans.

Does this work stand on a pedestal, or straight on the floor? What difference does it make?