Sculpture and the Sculptural Author(s): Erik Koed Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art

Criticism, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Spring, 2005), pp. 147-154 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3700468 . Accessed: 05/11/2011 18:26
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ERIK KOED

Sculptureand the Sculptural

Pictures and the pictorial are the subjects of a burgeoning philosophical literature. Sculpture and the sculptural,by contrast, have received little attention. What recent philosophical thought there has been has focused almost exclusively on the nature of sculpture, rather than the sculptural, and has sought to understand the art form primarily in terms of the physical characteristicsof art materialsand the role of our perceptualand cognitive faculties in I will arguethat these theories fail appreciation. to provide an adequateconception of sculpture, or its differences from painting and pictures. Instead, I develop a theory of the sculpturalin terms of a distinctive way of using materialsas an artisticmedium. Such an account enables us to understand the sculpturalfeaturesof artworks whether or not they are sculptures,painting, or other kinds of work. I build on this account of the sculptural to suggest that the category of sculpturecan best be understoodin terms of the relationshipof works to a traditionof art practice in which the sculpturaluse of materials is standard.This conception of sculptureand the sculptural,I suggest, has explanatoryutility and is evaluatively relevant without being overly prescriptive.
I. THEORIESOF THE NATURE OF SCULPTURE

Physical three-dimensionality In its most basic form, this idea holds simply that sculptures are those art objects that are three-dimensional. The contrast here may be with a conception of the pictorial arts as being two-dimensional. Whereas painters and photographers and the like produce flat objects,

sculptors produce objects in the round. This typical commonsensethoughtis widely assumed HerbertRead, for in the philosophicalliterature. "the that asserts peculiarityof sculpture example, as an art is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space," whereas painting "may strive to give, on a two-dimensionalplane, the illusion of space."' Similarly,F. David Martinmaintains the traditionalview that sculpture is basically and paintingtwo-dimensional.2 three-dimensional Naum Gabo ("sculpture is three-dimensional eo ipso") and L. R. Rogers ("whatbasically distinguishes sculpture from painting is...the mundane and marvelous fact that it extends ratherthan two-dimensionthree-dimensionally those are sculptors who have among ally") made similartheoreticalclaims.3 The problem with this idea considered in its most basic form is that all instantiated or embodied artworks,including pictorial works, in theirmaterialconstrucare three-dimensional tion. It follows that the distinctive nature of the sculpturalcannot lie in its physical threedimensionality. Of course, sculptures may typically be less "flat"than paintings, but this neither grounds a distinctive sculpturalnature, nor offers us the resources for explaining why sculptural works may generally be "rounder" than paintings. RobertVance gives this idea a more sophisticated form. Vance claims that "sculpturesare objects designed in three dimensions" and that "whatcounts for sculptureis real occupancy of space."4But while the notion of design gives access to a way of distinguishingsculpted from naturalobjects, it cannot distinguishthem from other kinds of artworksthat are also designed materials and fashionedout of three-dimensional and for which the "real occupancy of space"

63:2 Spring2005 of AestheticsandArtCriticism TheJournal

148 matter.A similar approachwould be to suggest thatalthoughpictorialworksmay be constructed from three-dimensional materials, only their two-dimensional surface properties are artistically relevant, whereas three-dimensional properties are artistically relevant to our appreciationof sculptural works. But we have to be careful here, for there are a number of ways three-dimensional properties might be artistically relevant, and at least some of these ways seem standard to pictorial arts such as painting. As will be discussed further in Section II, paintings take their appearanceand embody their two-dimensional properties in virtue of their three-dimensional construction, and this relationship often plays a role in our appreciationof them. An appeal to differences in the artistic relevance of the two- and threedimensional in the pictorial and the sculptural cannot be explained simply by an appeal to the dimensional qualities of material. Perceptual modes A second approachto the question is to argue thatthe natureof the sculpture can be understood in terms of the essential role in appreciation of one or more modes of sensory perception,such as touch. Read, for example,holds thatsculpture is "an art of palpation"that gives preferenceto tactile sensations.5But touch does not have a necessary role in our appreciationof sculptural works,for therearemany instancesof sculptures thatcannotor arenot intendedto be touched,and also for which touch has no role in appreciation. Think, for example, of most monumental statuary,Dan Flavin's Neon sculptures,Naum Gabo's flimsy and convoluted forms, or even Damien Hirst's animals preservedbehind glass in formaldehyde,all of which are clearly intended to operate and be appreciatedprimarilyin terms of their visual effects. Further,a strong case has been made by Dominic Lopes for the possibility of "tactile pictures,"on the basis of the abilityof the blindto both createandinterpret complex raised-lineperspectivaldrawings(more on this in Section II).6 Perceptualphenomena A third general approach appeals to the distinctive phenomenal content of our perceptual

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism experience. Read, for example, claims that our experience of sculpture has "nothing in common with visual perception,i.e., with the visual impression of a three-dimensionalform on a two-dimensionalplane,"since sculptures(unlike pictures) utilize actual rather than illusory space.7 F. David Martin claims that the nature of the sculpture lies in the distinctive way it manifests itself in our perceptions,in particular a phenomenon he calls "enlivened space" or between"thatmakesthe space around "impacting sculpturea perceptiblepartof the work in virtue of a sculpture's location in a space continuous with our own.8 Similarly, Susanne K. Langer argues that sculptureis characterizedby a distinctive variety of virtual space, understoodin terms of the way our experience of space is or organizedin our experience of the structured work. According to Langer, as distinct from painting, "a piece of sculpture is a center of three-dimensionalspace. It is a virtual kinetic volume, which dominatesthe surrounding space, and this environment derives all proportions and relationsfrom it, as the actual environment does from oneself."9 The space of sculpturalworks is often continuous with our own space, but this is neither always nor exclusively the case, for it seems that the space of the work may be relatedto our space in a variety of ways in both painting and sculpture.The apparentspace of either kind of work can seem continuous or discontinuous with our own; and the space representedin a work can be representedas located in or dislocated from our own space. Familiar arguments underminethe notion that picturingis a matter of illusion, although some kinds of pictures do give the illusion of space (for example, trompe-l'oeil paintings).10 Read's distinction between sculpture and painting in terms of actual and illusory space is underminedby the fact that spatial illusion may also be an important feature of sculptural works. In George Rickey's Two Lines sculptures,for example, it is hardto judge from any perspectivethe length and angle of projection of the twin offset blades. Nor need spatialillusions be confined to vision-things may, for example, sound further away than they really are. With respect to Martin's and Lange's theses, it should be noted that large abstractcolor-field paintings and trompel'oeil paintingare examples of types of pictorial

Koed Sculptureand the Sculptural works that create an apparent space that imposes itself on us in perceptionin this manner, or that forms a kinetic center aroundwhich our experience of the space of the work and its location is structured.Conversely, some very frontal sculpturalworks, such as statuaryhigh on buildings, do not seem to fill or energize space, or form an experiential kinetic spatial center. Even if there are some general differences in the typical content of our experiences of sculpturesand pictorialworks, these generalizations themselves require an explanation and do not in themselves seem sufficient to ground an account of these as works of essentially differentkinds. Sensibility A fourth, more promising, approach seeks to ground an account in the involvement of a distinctive sensibility in productionand appreciation. Read, for example, suggests that sculpture requiresthe involvement of a specifically plastic sensibility ("morecomplex than the specifically visual sensibility")."l Central to this sensibility is a sensation of volume as denoted by plane surfaces (perceiving from depth to surface), a notion that Read illustratesby quoting Rodin: "Insteadof imagining the different parts of a body as surfaces more or less flat, I represented them as projectors of interior volumes. I forced myself to express in each swelling of the torso or of the limbs the efflorescence of a muscle or of a bone which lay deep beneath the skin. And so the truth of my figures, instead of being merely superficial, seems to blossom from within to the outside, like life itself."l2 Also held centralto this sensibility is a synthetic realization of the mass and ponderability of the object (visualization of a complete form as if held within the hand). Here Read appeals to Henry Moore's view that the sculptor"gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head-he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if he were holding it completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand. He mentally visualizes a complete formfrom all round itself; he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like; he identifies himself with its centre of gravity, it mass, its weight; he realizes its volume, as the space that the shape displaces in the air."l3

149 But while perception "fromdepth to surface or from surface to depth"may well be characteristic of our experience of Rodinesque works, it does not seem necessary to our appreciation of all sculpture. Think again of Dan Flavin's neon sculptures, or Alexander Calder's "mobiles," such as his Red Polygons, which simply consist of articulatedsurfaces that seem to lack interior volumes almost entirely. Furthermore, it seems true of some paintings that the thickness or depthof the paint, and not simply our experience of surface qualities, enters into our appreciationto the extent that our feeling for it is integral to our experience of the work-this seems true at least of some works of van Gogh, Auerbach, or even Rembrandt. Further, palpability on the metaphor of the enclosed hollow of a hand, even if true of the production and apperication of Moore's sculpture, seems antithetical to works such as Anthony Caro's Early One Morning, which are principally concerned with the arrangementof abstractline and form. Works such as Michael Heizer's Double Negative, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, LotharBaumgarten'sTerraIncognita, or Hans Haacke's Condensation Cube seem even furtherremoved from this conception. But as the quote from Moore illustrates, the process of realizing the mass and pondersability of the object will sometimes be an imaginative process of visualization, which sits uneasily with Read's claim that the plastic sensibility has nothing in common with the visual. Indeed, we may sometimes imagine the mass and ponderabilityof a painting's materialconstruction (and certainly of its represented object) in ways that seem consistent with Moore's notion of visualization. In a similar vein, RobertVance builds on his view of sculptureto claim that being designed to occupy three-dimensionalspaces related to the spaces we ourselves occupy makes them dependant on the appreciator's bodily selfawareness in a way that differs significantly from the pictorial.Ourobservationsof sculpture evoke "nonpropositional" tactile, haptic, and kinaesthetic imaginings involving somatic sensations, engendering identification with the sculpture "tantamountto my imagining my being (the part of) the sculpture, identifying with it as if its sculpturallyarticulatedmaterial were my own body in which I feel its apparent

150 weight and degree of equilibrium."14 AlthoughI think it doubtfulthat to imagine feeling the surface or weightiness of the sculptureis itself to imagine being the sculpture or to imagine the sculpture as one's own body, we can imagine in the way Vance describes and doing so may be appropriate to the appreciation of some sculptural works. But such imagination does not seem to be involved in our appreciationof all sculpturalworks. Furthermore, nonpropositional imaginings do sometimes play a role in our appreciation of other kinds of art-we might also imagine the thickness and resistance of the paint in its applicationto the canvas, or the mass and density of its final hardenedstate, or in viewing a picture imagine its represented featuresas being experiencedby ourselves. In a related approach,L. R. Rogers proposes that "sculpturalthinking" differs qualitatively from the kind of thinking involved in other kinds of artistic production or appreciation.15 Rogers holds that complex spatial thinking in terms of three-dimensional form or spatial concepts is found most thoroughly and with less restriction in sculpture than in the other arts. This variety of thinking involves both "analynaturalforms," zing complex forms, particularly and "manipulating, combining, and performing operationsupon easily conceived spatial forms in orderto develop more complex forms that are not directly derived from objects."16 Spatial forms, on this account,aretakento involve both "structure in space" (mass and the displacement or occupation of space), and "structure of space" (voids or the spatial relations between material elements).17 Sculptors (and, presumably, appreciators) need on this view to be schooled in general principles of the construction of three-dimensional form, or the "logic of form,"which makes the articulationof forms in sculptureintelligible. Rogers may be right to hold that thinking with or through three-dimensionalspatial concepts or forms plays a centralrole in the production and appreciationof sculpturalworks, but it also seems to play a role in other kinds of art.18 It is certainlynot unusualin the pictorialartsfor artists to think and work with spatial concepts and articulateforms in just this kind of way, not only in conceiving but also in executing their works. For it is not just representedforms that might be thoughtof and articulatedin this way,

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism but also the material constructionof the work such that the three-dimensionalformal properties of the paint on the canvas might be of special practical interest to the painter. Roger's claim, however, was not that this kind of thinking was the exclusive preserveof the sculptural, but that it is found most clearly expressed and realized in the production of sculpture. But if there is a difference between the pictorial and the sculpturalin the relationship between this kind of thinking and the realizationor appreciation of a work, then it is not obvious just from the notion of complex spatialthinkingin threedimensions what this differencemight be. More needs to be said if something is to be made of this conception.
II. THE SCULPTURALMEDIUM

In appreciatingan artwork as an artwork, we attend to the medium of the work. That is to say, we attend to the way materials are used towardthe end of content and, at the same time, to the content as realized through that use of materials, rather than solely to the material construction or the content of the work. One reason the examined theories fail to identify characteristicsessential to sculptureis that they focus on the psychological mechanisms or physical materials(and their effects) employed in the production and appreciation of works, ratherthan on the ways these materialsare used to function as an artisticmedium.19 My suggestion is that the sculptural, and how it differs from the pictorial, can be understood in terms of a distinctive way of using the physical and perceptual properties of materials as an art medium. What separates the pictorial and the sculptural is not, for example, whether threedimensional materials are used or whether three-dimensionalspace is represented.Rather, is achieved, and the it is the way representation way it is interpreted,through distinctive ways of using materialsas a medium for representation. An account of the sculpturalin terms of medium enables us to understand general physical and perceptual differences between sculptures and paintings as contingent rather than essential. At the same time, such an account of the sculpturalprovides the basis for an alternativeaccount of sculptureas an art.

Koed Sculptureand the Sculptural I suggested in relationto the "physicalthreedimensionality"view thatthere are a numberof ways three-dimensional properties might be artistically relevant. Differences in the artistic relevance of physical and perceptual features are determined in large part by differences in the ways such features are used to function as an artisticmedium.Independentof such considerationsof use, thereis nothingthat can account for a propertyor kind of propertyhaving this or that relevance in appreciation.If we now consider the role of materials in their use as a medium, there are at least three obvious ways the three-dimensional properties of material might be artistically relevant. There is the simple idea that any two-dimensionalsurfaceof a work only appears to us the way it does because, among other things, of the way the materials used in its production have been shaped. In the pictorial arts, for example, a painted or printed surface appears the way it does because of the way paint or other substances have been applied in three dimensions to some part of a three-dimensionalbody. The same might be said of the relationshipof twodimensional surface properties in sculpture to their three-dimensionalunderpinnings.But in such an instance, it is the two-dimensional surface propertiesof the material(for example, the planararrangement of line and color), rather than the three-dimensional properties themselves, which function as the medium of representation or expression. Those threedimensional properties are artistically relevant only in so far as they are a material condition for the two-dimensional surface propertiesthat function as the artistic medium. The focus of appreciationof the work in such a case rests at the level of the relationshipbetween the twodimensional surface properties and the work content. Extendingthis point, we can think of cases in which work content is realized via the functioning of two-dimensional surface properties of material as a medium (for which the threedimensional properties of the material are a base) but for which the relationshipof texture with two-dimensional surface properties and representedcontent is itself a matterof interest in appreciatingthe work. For example, in some of the portrait works of Auerbach, such as several of his versions of Head of E. O. Wilson,

151 it seems thathad the paint not been appliedwith the those very three-dimensional characteristics, face could not appearto us as it does. Nevertheless, the characteristicprotrudingthickness of the paint does not itself representthe protruding thickness of a jaw or a brow so much as underpin its representationthrough the supervening two-dimensional surface properties in such a way that we cannot ignore the connection in appreciatingthe work. I take these two ways in which threedimensional properties can be artistically relevant to be distinct from a third kind of relationshipwherein the thickness or weight of the material itself plays the role of artistic medium. In this third case, we do, for example, take the protrusionsand ridges of the material art-objectthemselves to representthe protrusion of brow and cheekbones. Although both depiction and sculpting involve the use or construction of materials in three-dimensions, my suggestion is that only for sculpturalworks are the three-dimensional propertiesof the material art-objectartisticallyrelevant in this third way of functioning as an artistic medium. A work will be sculptural,on this account, just to the extent that the use of the three-dimensional propertiesof materialsfunctionsas a mediumin this way. For the pictorial, on the other hand, three-dimensional properties need only be artistically relevant in the minimal first sense and may also be relevant in the second, althoughI do not proposeeither as sufficientfor the pictorial.Three-dimensional propertiesmay also feature in the first and second ways in sculpturalworks, but this is incidental to their natureas sculptural. An advantage of conceiving of works as sculptural in so far as the use of the threedimensionalpropertiesof materialsfunctions as an artisticmedium for the work is that it is able to account for the kinds of featuresto which the earlier four theories appealed but failed to explain. For, on this conception, if sculptural works tend to be bulkier objects than pictorial works, if it generallymakes more sense to touch or to walk around sculptural than pictorial works, or if there are differences in the perceptual effects and phenomenatypically associated with sculpturalworks, then this will be because of differences in the ways the physical and perceptualpropertiesof materialsare used as a

152 medium. It should not be surprising that the sculptural use of materials has tended contingently to result in the productionof works more massive than those in which two-dimensional ratherthan three-dimensionalfeatures function as a medium. To the extent that it makes more sense to touch or move around sculptural than pictorial works, this can be explained in terms of generaldifferencesin the configuration of materials that are likely to result from the different ways materials and propertiesessentially function artisticallywhen they are used as sculpturalor pictorial media, and the resultant to contingent variations in the appropriateness appreciationof touch and shifting perspectives. Likewise, the sculpturalrole of particularways of thinking or imagining in terms of threedimensional form, spatial concepts, visual, tactile, somatic, and haptic sensations can be made sense of in terms of their relationshipto sculpturaluse of materials as a medium in the productionand appreciationof works. It is not that we could not or do not think and imagine in these ways in producing and appreciating pictorialworks, but that these activities are differentlyrelatedto the ways the propertiesof the materialart-objectare used as an artmedium. It may be objected that this account of the sculptural fails for reasons identified by Dominic Lopes in his account of tactile pictures. For while my account shares Lopes's rejectionof a distinctionbetween the sculptural and the pictorial grounded in the role of the sense modes, would not tactile pictures as Lopes conceives them nevertheless count as sculpturalworks on my account?I do not think they would, because on Lopes's account the use of three-dimensional propertiesof materialdoes not function as a medium of representation, but ratherfunctions in the first (and possibly in the second) sense of artistic relevance I identified above. Certainly,if the three-dimensionalityof the raised lines in Lopes's tactile pictures itself were to function as a medium for representation, then those works would be sculpturalon my account.But on Lopes's account,as I understand it, the three-dimensionalityof the raised lines serves only to convey to the appreciator the two-dimensional configuration of line and field, and it is that two-dimensionalconfiguration that in turn functions as the medium for representation.This is not quite the same as

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism RobertHopkins's point that althoughtouch can inform us about perspectival outline shape, it does not present it to us but only enables us to form othermentalstates thatrepresentit to us.20 Hopkins does not take this claim about the role of touch to prove the impossibility of tactile pictures,but ratherthatvisual and tactile experience play different kinds of roles in picturing, such that tactile pictures fail to exhibit those aesthetic features that are distinctively pictorial.21The difference is that on my account it is not the role of touch or vision thatis essential to the distinction between the pictorial and the sculptural, but rather the way in which the dimensional properties of material, however perceived, function as a representational medium. A further objection might hold that my account cannot possibly succeed given we find this same use of materialsnot just in sculpture but also in architecture,jewelry, or, indeed, painting. But it is worth noting that to give an is not quite accountof the natureof the sculptural the same as giving an account of what makes somethinga sculpture,any more thanan account of the pictorialgives us a full accountof painting. Indeed,just as paintingis but one of severalpictorial arts, such as photography,film, or video, so, too, when we considerjewelry, architecture, and installationworks we find that sculptureis of not the only sculpturalart. An understanding with their differences or or sculpture painting, or pictorialworks, can hardlybe other sculptural of the natureof exhaustedby our understanding or the pictorial. the sculptural In this regard it can be helpful to recall Kendall Walton's notion of standard,variable, and contra-standard features of artworks, with respect to whereby a feature is "standard" a category just if it is one of those in virtue of which works in that category belong to that category; "variable"in so far as the feature is irrelevant to a work's belonging to that catein so far as the gory; and "contra-standard" tends to disqualify feature that of presence works as belonging to that category.22On this model we might conceive of the category of "sculpture" as a tradition of art practice in which the sculpturaluse of materials is standard.This is not to say thatthe categoryof sculpture is to be equatedwith a singulartraditionof art practice and, of course, traditionscan shift

Koed Sculptureand the Sculptural and change over time and across cultures. Works that do not belong to this category may well nevertheless involve a sculptural use of materialswhere this use is variable(as in architecture)or contra-standard (as in painting). The more or less exclusive association of the sculptural with sculpture, and of the pictorial with painting and drawing, that may have existed in the past (at least if we consider the mainstreamof the Western art tradition)seems largely an historical accident that certainly came to an end with the modem and postmodem periods. Indeed, as Rosalind Krauss has observed, recent shifts in the conventions and logic of art practice are such that "the category [of sculpture] has now been forced to cover such a heterogeneitythat it is, itself, in danger of collapsing."23 Consider, for example, Michael Heizer's Double Negative, Eva Hesse's Aught, Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Rachel Whiteread's casts of building interiors,Joseph Beuys's "social sculpture," Richard Long's workof Ben Nichol"walks,"the "mixed-media" son, Robert Rauschenberg's Canyon, or even Anselm Kiefer's Isis and Osiris. One might, of course, have supposedthat the diversity of works and practices in the modemrn and postmodernperiods, and between cultures and across time, makes implausibleany account of the natureof sculptureor the sculptural.The diversity characteristicof the contemporaryart world might well undermine theories of the nature of sculpture that appeal to particular physical properties of materials, or to the involvement of specific perceptual modes, phenomena,or sensibilities, as criteria.But the conception I propose of sculpture in terms of the sculpturalis compatible with this kind of diversitywithin sculpture,and also with the fact that we can and do speak of the sculpturalelements of mixed-media works that we would not, perhaps, classify as "sculptures."All the preceding examples are sculptural works, or have significant sculptural elements, but are they sculptures?The answer, on the proposed account, will depend on the facts of the works' relationshipto the traditionsof art practice out of which they emerge. Whether works are sculptures may, of course, be relevant to our appreciationof them. But whereas the value of a concern with works belonging to the category of sculpture decreases as the diversity of art

153 practices increases, an interest in the ways that materials have been used sculpturallyremains of interesteven if the works have little relationship to a given traditionof sculpture. Such diversity may also undermineaccounts of sculpture and the sculpturalthat equate the value of works with theirdegree of fidelity to an ideal nature.Mine is not such an account.There is a middle groundbetween an essentialismthat is overly prescriptivewith respect to evaluative issues, and an essentialism that is of little relevance to them. The account I have sketched does not help much in knowing or deciding which sculpturesare good, typical, or paradigmatic, but it remainsevaluatively relevantwithIt identifies out being evaluativelyprescriptive.24 the ground of sculpturalvalue at its most basic level without predetermining the appropriate content of any evaluativejudgments concerning the value of any given kind or piece of sculptural work. Distinctively sculpturalvalues, on this account, will be those values tied to the sculpturaluse of materials.What those values kinds of thinkingand are, andthe ways particular the production and related to are imagining of works throughthe sculptural use appreciation of materials,will be among the concerns of a broaderaestheticsof the sculptural.An account can providea founof the natureof the sculptural for the largerand complex dationand orientation such an aesthetics.25 projectof constructing
ERIK KOED

NewZealand Wellington, @mch.govt.nz Erik.Koed INTERNET:

1. Herbert Read, The Art of Sculpture (London: Faber and FaberLtd, 1956), p. 46. 2. F. David Martin,Sculptureand EnlivenedSpace (The University Press of Kentucky,1981). 3. Naum Gabo, as quoted in Donald Brook, "Perception and the Appraisalof Sculpture,"The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 27 (1969): 323; and L. R. Rogers in "Sculpture,Space, and Being Within Things," The British Journal ofAesthetics 23 (1983): 166. 4. Robert Vance, "Sculpture,"The British Journal of Aesthetics 35 (1995): 224, 217. 5. Read, TheArt of Sculpture,p. 49. 6. Dominic M. Lopes, "ArtMedia and the Sense Modalities: Tactile Pictures,"Philosophical Quarterly47 (1997): 425-440. 7. Read, TheArt of Sculpture,p. 71. 8. Martin,Sculptureand EnlivenedSpace, p. 14.

154
9. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 91. 10. See, for example, Richard Wollheim's arguments in Painting as an Art (London:Thames & Hudson, 1987), pp. 37-39. 11. Read, TheArt of Sculpture,p. 71. 12. Read, TheArt of Sculpture,p. 73, quotingRodin. 13. Herbert Read, "Notes on Sculpture" in Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings, 2nd ed. (London: Percy Lund, 1946), p. xl. 14. Vance, "Sculpture," pp. 224-225. 15. L. R. Rogers, "SculpturalThinking," The British Journal of Aesthetics 2 (1962): 291-300; and L. R. Rogers, "Sculptural Thinking-2: A Reply," The British Journal of Aesthetics 3 (1963): 357-362. 16. Rogers, "Sculptural Thinking,"p. 293. 17. Rogers, "Sculptural Thinking,"p. 297. 18. Here I differ from Donald Brook ("Sculptural Thinking-I: Rogers on SculpturalThinking,"The British JournalofAesthetics3 [1963]:352-357), who holds thatRogers's conceptionof "sculptural seems characteristic thinking" of some kinds of sculptureonly. Althoughsome of Rogers's attemptsto clarify his idea do seem in dangerof falling into the trapBrookpointsout, his basic conceptiondoes not. 19. By 'psychological mechanisms' I mean the perceptual and cognitive faculties, capacities, and abilities that make possible the use of materials in productive and appreciative art practices. By 'physical materials' I mean the "stuff"used in making artworks,including substances and theirvariousphysical and basic perceptualproperties. 20. Robert Hopkins, "Touching Pictures," The British Journal of Aesthetics40 (2000): 156.

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

21. Hopkins,"TouchingPictures,"p. 167. 22. See KendallWalton, "Categoriesof Art"as reprinted in Philosophy Looksat the Arts: Contemporary Readings in Aesthetics, ed. Joseph Margolis (Temple University Press, 1987), p. 57. 23. Rosalind E. Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" in The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (MIT Press, 1987), p. 278. Krauss discusses sculpture in more detail in her Passages in ModernSculpture(MIT Press, 1998). 24. I am in agreement, this far, with Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science (CambridgeUniversityPress, 1995), p. 1. 25. Researchfor this article was made possible by grants from the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals, St. Leonard's College of St. Andrews University, the EU Socrates/ErasmusProgramme, and the Danish Research Academy, and this assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Versions of this paper were presented at St. Andrews University Moral Philosophy Research Seminar;the Henry Moore Institute,Leeds, 2000; the AustralasianAssociation for Philosophy (New Zealand Division) Conference at Victoria University Wellington, 2000; the Bilkent University Philosophy Research Seminar; and in absentia in summary at the American Society for Aesthetics Annual thanksare due Conference in Minneapolis,2001. Particular to this journal's editor and referees whose thoroughreview of draftsled to many improvements,and also to Berys Gaut, John Haldane, Paisley Livingston, Alex Neill, Derek Matravers,Peter Lamarque,and Julie van Camp for their feedback on earlier versions of the paper and related material.