A、The relationship between painting and sculpture. B、The ideas behind an artist’s work. C、The practical value of a work of art.

Today I’d like to talk about the sculptor Henry Moore, in particular the ideas his work is based on, and also how he viewed the medium of sculpture. Moore said that to appreciate sculpture a person needs to respond to form in all of it’s 3 dimensions. He believed that this is more difficult than responding to art that is done on a flat surface, a surface such as canvas that has only 2 dimension. For example, when you’re looking at a painting you don’t have to walk around it. You don’t relate to form and shape in the same way you do when to shapes in nature such as that of bones and shells and stones. He thought that if you could appreciate the shape of something simple, like a stone that you could go on to appreciate more complex forms. He noticed that many of the stones he picked up had holes in them. One distinctive feature of Moore’s sculpture is his use of holes or opening to emphasize that he is indeed working in a 3 dimensional medium. He believed that the shape of a solid mass, and could even help create a sense of mass or volume. Moore was also interested m representing the human figure, which he sculpted in such materials as bronze, stone, and wood. His sculptures of humans contained one person as in the work reclining figure or several people as in the sculpture family group.