Author's Note
When revising this paper from my original rough draft to the final product I looked into adding onto what was already in my paper. I knew the ideas I already had where the one's I wanted to keep but I just had to go into more detail getting across the argument and the historic context of the sculpture. I first started by adding "Sunken-relief, also known as intaglio or hollow-relief, is where the image is made by carving into a flat surface - usually the images are mostly linear in nature. It is most notably associated with the Art of Ancient Egypt, where the strong sunlight usually needed to make the technique successful for images is present most of the time." This information helped me to create a better paper because I went into more detail on the history of the sculpture and the technique in which Schmidt used in creating his work. I then started talking about lighting and how it had a great impact on this sculpture and the way it is viewed. This shadowing makes the pathos for the sculpture. I also noticed I had grammar errors which needed to be fixed so I went through and fixed all of them.
I then went into more detail on the viewing of the sculpture and how it is changed by the environment and the time that it is viewed at "This artwork needs to be seen in full light to best see the intended contours and details. That is why depending on the time of year and time of day the viewing of the sculpture can be relatively different. This ever changing movement of the sun creates the pathos in which a person feels for the object at any given time. "I felt that this paragraph strengthened my argument and overall paper. I also made some minor changes from the peer reviews done on Thursday; this helped me because it gave me a different outlook on my sculpture. I changed the the conclusion so as to better answer the so what "Schmidt creates an array of ever changing looks by just using the material he did and placing it in the environment, letting nature to forever finish the sculpting longer than he ever could. Schmidt created this sculpture to be a sunken relief to again aid in changing the viewing of the sculpture depending on the season and time of day, because light is needed to bring out the sculptures details." Changing this I feel will help my audience better understand my paper as a whole and what I want them to take away from it.
Some other minor changes I made around my paper included sentence structure and incorporating my links-so on. Some of my pictures in the rough draft I felt did not look very good when posted onto the blog page so I changed those up a little bit. This paper I feel turned out very well and I feel is my best work so far. I have begun to understand how these projects are formed through argument and rhetoric.
I then went into more detail on the viewing of the sculpture and how it is changed by the environment and the time that it is viewed at "This artwork needs to be seen in full light to best see the intended contours and details. That is why depending on the time of year and time of day the viewing of the sculpture can be relatively different. This ever changing movement of the sun creates the pathos in which a person feels for the object at any given time. "I felt that this paragraph strengthened my argument and overall paper. I also made some minor changes from the peer reviews done on Thursday; this helped me because it gave me a different outlook on my sculpture. I changed the the conclusion so as to better answer the so what "Schmidt creates an array of ever changing looks by just using the material he did and placing it in the environment, letting nature to forever finish the sculpting longer than he ever could. Schmidt created this sculpture to be a sunken relief to again aid in changing the viewing of the sculpture depending on the season and time of day, because light is needed to bring out the sculptures details." Changing this I feel will help my audience better understand my paper as a whole and what I want them to take away from it.
Some other minor changes I made around my paper included sentence structure and incorporating my links-so on. Some of my pictures in the rough draft I felt did not look very good when posted onto the blog page so I changed those up a little bit. This paper I feel turned out very well and I feel is my best work so far. I have begun to understand how these projects are formed through argument and rhetoric.
This Sculpture which was created by Julius Schmidt and was given the name "Untitled Relief”. Schmidt who is an American sculptor born in 1923 creates many pieces like this one with used industrial material. This sculpture which was made in 1961 depicts an iron relief sculpture. A relief is a sculptured artwork where a modeled form is raised, or, in a sunken-relief, lowered, from a plane from which the main elements of the composition project; reliefs are common throughout the world, for example on the walls of monumental buildings. This sculpture depicts "Sunken-relief, also known as intaglio or hollow-relief, is where the image is made by carving into a flat surface - usually the images are mostly linear in nature. It is most notably associated with the Art of Ancient Egypt, where the strong sunlight usually needed to make the technique successful for images is present most of the time."(wiki) As said above sunlight plays a very important role in projection of sunken Relief sculptures. Schmidt had to take this into account when creating the sculpture. When viewing this sculpture there are many different aspects to consider like the context, environmental weathering, and intended audience. Since this sculpture's name is "Untitled" it leaves much room for the audience to infer about the sculptures meaning. Schmidt left this sculpture untitled so the audience could bring their own meaning to the sculpture instead of drawing the meaning from the title. A lot of how this sculpture is viewed is determined by its location on the busy university campus.
In this sculpture there are many types of context; one type of context that is very abundant is aesthetical context. It can be seen everywhere in this piece, mainly from its many shapes and dim colors. The common shapes seen in this sculpture are square or rectangles and circular/dome shapes. These shapes have almost no pattern but you are drawn into a visual hierarchy in three separate spots throughout the piece. These spots all depict a larger boxed in dome or circle that add to the sculptures abstract look. The overall aesthetical look of the sculpture depicts what looks to be a circuit board or futuristic city. I think Schmidt depicts the sculpture to look futuristic because iron is the building block of the future. "Iron is the most widely used of all the metals, accounting for 95% of worldwide metal production. Its low cost and high strength make it indispensable in engineering applications such as the construction of machinery and machine tools, automobiles, the hulls of large ships, and structural components for buildings"(Wiki). Knowing that iron is used in so much industrial buildings is probably why Schmidt created his futuristic landscape out of iron. This might also be the reasoning behind Schmidt making this a relief sculpture. He takes what a normal relief sculpture is made of, which happens to be clay or stone and is generally seen on ancient buildings or churches/cathedrals. He then modernizes the typical relief sculpture by using the now common building material iron, and in this case it is iron scraps from industrial buildings. This creates his argument, which is changing the fundamental way of creating a relief sculpture into his modernized version.
The fact that this sculpture is made out of iron and rest in the environment where it is exposed to the elements plays a key role in this sculpture. "Pure iron is a metal but is rarely found in this form on the surface of the earth because it oxidizes readily in the presence of oxygen and moisture"(Wiki). Well when this sculpture was presented to nature it was exposed to moisture which caused it to oxidize and create its rusted appearance we see before us today. This was not the way it looked astatically when first created by Schmidt. With this said it is apparent that the sculpting process is still at work. Schmidt who originally created this piece knew it was going to be exposed to the elements and change from its original look. There is a medium in this sculpture between it being sculpted by Schmidt, then again by nature. With this weathering occurring daily and the aesthetic changes it’s receiving I think ties into why the sculpture is "Untitled". This because at any given time its look can change being exposed to the elements, making no reason to title it for it was not just created by Schmidt but also nature. Sculptures that rest in the outdoors can be perceived so differently from time to time, for instance if the sun faces your back as you look at this your body cast a shadow over the sculpture making it hard to see the details in the shadowed area. This artwork needs to be seen in full light to best see the intended contours and details. That is why depending on the time of year and time of day the viewing of the sculpture can be relatively different. This ever changing movement of the sun creates the pathos in which a person feels for the object at any given time.
When I first saw this object I felt as if it was somewhat secluded from a lot of the other art. It sits in a corner under a tree hanging on a wall. This sculpture adds character to the relatively blank concrete wall. This is what relief sculptures are made to do, they add texture, and emotion to structures that normally do not. It’s this pathos created in the corner by this relief sculpture that makes the area so much more interesting. The sculptures audience is limited because the only people who would ever see it are people passing by on their way to class or a visitor to the museum. I feel that this object being here in Nebraska in this cold winter climate would disrupt its audience because people would be less likely to view it in the cold winter. I feel though that Schmidt wanted to connect to an audience that likes abstract art work or art that likes to interpret things that do not have a set purpose. With this sculpture being on campus it is susceptible to a younger audience being that the general college student is fairly young.
When looking into this art piece it is apparent that Schmidt wanted to create a complex art sculpture that could be titled by anyone. This sculpture was made to depict iron and its use as a building tool along with its ever changing look. From the looks of it the sculpture was created to look futuristic and I think this is another reason Schmidt choose to use iron in the sculpture. Iron is the building block of the future as Schmidt correctly predicted, because as stated above 95% of metal used today is iron. Schmidt effectively used the context of the sculpture, the environment, and his intended audience to make "Untitled Relief", which creates pathos by enhancing a dull wall in the corner. Schmidt creates an array of ever changing looks by just using the material he did and placing it in the environment, letting nature to forever finish the sculpting longer than he ever could. Schmidt created this sculpture to be a sunken relief to again aid in changing the viewing of the sculpture depending on the season and time of day, because light is needed to bring out the sculptures details. Works Cited
Wikipedia. (29 Nov 2009). Iron. Dec 7, 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron
Sculpture Brochure. Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2009. http://www.sheldonartgallery.org/photos/graphics/sculpturebrochure.pdf
