Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Why buy Sculpture?


That is a reasonable question – Why Buy Sculpture. Sculpture is a demanding lover and housemate. It demands to have its own plinth or pedestal to be seated on. With “sculpture in the round”, it demands to be placed so that all the visitors can see how beautiful it is, on all sides. It also demands a space of its own – not sharing wall space with those…those..paintings… For all that, sculpture does hold a wonderful place in the heart of a home or business.

Sculpture can bring a missing element to the interior or exterior of your home or business. Sometimes this missing element is physical: like a central point of interest to a room or garden, or maybe a tangible symbol of one or more of your values or special causes. Sculpture can also bring a room into a sharper focus by introducing tranquility, thoughtfulness, a general feeling of apprehension, etc. A lot of the time both a physical element and a sharper focus or feeling can both be accommodated by a sculpture.

Sculpture versus Painting:
Sculpture is just like a painting but better in several respects. With a painting, there is just one viewing point – the frontal one. With sculpture there are multiple viewing points and all sides have to be tied together visually to give the sculpture a feeling of completeness. Even as a child, I wanted to see behind paintings to see if the artwork was continued n the back. I was sorely disappointed to find out that painting was only for the front, frames for the edges, and the back left blank.

As with all artwork if you live with the sculpture or painting for a while, there will always be some new item or detail that will pop out at you. Difference will be that with a painting, the detail will be on the front. With sculpture that delightful detail could be on the back, on the sides, or slyly sitting on the top of your sculpture.

Sculpture has an advantage over painting. When you bring in a sculpture to your home or office, you don’t have to necessarily rearrange all of your artwork to accommodate it. When you buy a painting, many times all the artwork has to come down and the new painting had to find its home by displacing other paintings. Sculpture does not demand that. Since sculpture is its own island (on a pedestal or on the floor, it takes up floor space not wall space. This involves at the very most moving the sculpture around the room to find the penultimate placement. Contrast that to taking down every painting and reshuffling their order and placement in the room.

Sculpture & You
Sculpture as a symbol, can stand for the multi-dimensional person that either you want to be or are – just like sculpture is multi-dimensional. Painting has color and design to its credit. Sculpture has color, design and true depth or dimension. It brings a new dimension to the art-viewing experience and also your enjoyment of it.

There are two final reasons for “Why Buy Sculpture”. Your reaction to the sculpture and also the artist. Sometimes just like in love, there is that steamroller that flattens you when you walk into a space with sculpture. It is a bad case of love at first sight. This is not a bad thing. It shows that the artist is communicating to you on a deep level – ergo the visceral reaction.

Sometimes, you really want to buy a piece of the artist and the sculpture is the only tangible/feasible way to do it. The artist talked to you and you hit it off, made a new friend and wanted a symbol of that new friendship. This is not a bad thing.

A lot of the time, “love at first site” and the artist relationship overlap and create an irresistible desire for the art. This makes for a very long-lasting intense satisfying artwork relationship. This is a wonderful place to be at.

So no matter what the reason, go look at and buy some art. It will be a long-lasting relationship that brings you much joy. Art refreshes the soul, is a delight to the eye, and shows clients, visitors and friends some of what you value. If you are not sure about what would be right, get an interior designer friend or artist friend to go with you. It can be a real treat.



copyright 2009 Carl Wright

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