Böcker av Dr. Penelope Curtis

Best-known for her ambitious sculptural works, this volume explores how Alison Wilding's compelling drawing and extensive use of collage have been integral to her development for five decades.

By taking simple ways of looking at sculpture, this book uncovers unexpected affinities between works of very different periods and types. From sundials to mirrors, from graves to way-markers, from fountains to contemporary art, a wide range of illustrated examples expands the definitions of sculpture and proposes that we understand this art as something more fundamental to the way we experience and construct our rites of passage. Penelope Curtis argues that there are some basic functions shared by many kinds of three-dimensional objects, be they more or less obviously sculptural. Even contemporary sculpture, with no apparent purpose, makes use of this deeply embedded vocabulary. Together, the qualities of vertical, horizontal, closed and open are consolidated in the ensemble, which places the viewer at its heart, on the threshold of sculpture and on the threshold of change. This book elides the usual notions of figurative and abstract to think instead about how sculpture works. >Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Art historian Penelope Curtis examines the relationship between sculpture and architecture in the mid-twentieth century to explore how modernist architecture affects the display of sculpture, as well as how sculpture enhances those spaces.