h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hmm, being an artists myself, I found the article lacked a few of the more interesting sculptoral developments. Think, for instance, of Rebecca Horn's bizarre things that lined the Tate's hallway for a few months - hardly "human", certainly not banged together, and very very funny.

Bill Woodrow also screws with the idea of traditional sculpture in an interesting and contemporary way.

Not all sculptures need to be of some naked person with no arms.

It wasn't meant as an exhaustive article. If you're so hot on this then write one yourself. And who said anything about people with no arms? If you must know, it was originally "Many sculptures are figurative..." but I think it was judged to be too advanced for the limited intellect of some of its less informed readers who I won't degrade and embarass for their miscomprehension of my article by mentioning their name. Or nickname.

If I came over facetious, I certainly didn't intend to. I was merely suggesting that one could show how typical sculpture (which I have to admit if bloody dull) has been, in some cases, replaced by more interesting, dynamic "things".

I was moaning generally about people's perception of art as being traditional rather than attacking your article. At least, that's what it was meant to be.

Devil's advocate anyone?

An observation: Tradition vs Modernity? When does one become the other? Much of what is considered 'modern' (and decried by those who don't know much about art but know what they like) is rather old. Are Picasso, Miro, Pollack modern artists or traditional? They are certainly artists of the 'modern age', but their work is old enough to be considered 'part of the tradition', if not actually traditional. And the ground rules for 'modern' art were established well over a century ago.

As for actual modern artists ie those artists currently alive and producing work, don't they draw on the work of 'traditional' artists?

But that aside, you quite right in stating that much of society has a mindset that to be art a painting or scuplture must look like something. Unfortunately this mindset is based on the assumption that traditional artists weren't trying to express anything more than what takes place in the work. The mindset also fails to take into account the impact that cameras, cinema, mass media, etc have had on traditional art. Why spend many hours laboriously painting someone's portrait when with the press of a button a perfect image of that person can be created?

Things to consider...