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This course explores the radical shifts that have taken place in sculptural practice since the end of the nineteenth century. We begin with Rodin and his contemporaries, for whom sculpture was as much about processes of making as it was about the finished work, but who still took as their starting point a realistic representation of the human figure. We go on to explore practices developed by artists working in the earlier twentieth century who thought of sculpture more as an object or as an architectural construct than as a figure - these include Brancusi, the Russian Constructivists who sought to invent a revolutionary new art, and the Surrealists and Dadaists who pioneered the idea of sculpture as found object or ready made. Exploring developments during the mid- and latter part of the twentieth century involves us in discussing work that was conceived less as a self-sufficient object than as an intervention in the environment or as an installation in an interior setting. We look at the Minimalists, as well as artists who took a different, often very unminimal approach, including land artists such as Robert Smithson, and artists who experimented with complex displays of images and objects and even junk in a gallery setting, such as Claes Oldenburg and Louise Bourgeois. We shall discuss the role played by photography and video in shaping recent understandings of sculptural practice, as well as the impact of consumerism on artists who wanted to make work that would not be seen as precious objects. Do such changes represent the end of sculpture, or the emergence of new forms of sculpture? However we view it, art concerned with things and environments continues to play a key role in a world of virtual images.

Teaching is by way of lectures and discussion, and assessment takes the form of a mid-term and an end of term test and a short essay. In addition to the course reader, there is one set text, Rosalind Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture (MIT Press, 1981). (Potts)

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