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

Do three-dimensional works made up of assembling separate objects into one 'work' count as sculpture, or does scuplting necessarily have to be forming something from malleable materials?

A sculpture could be a pile of rocks and quite often is.

So, don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

Go to Florence and look up a gent named Michelangelo. No pile of rocks for him. To stand in the presence of David is to feel greatness.

If you have time, go to Rome, visit St. Peter's and look for the Pieta. The human form hewn from Carrara marble is awe-inspiring. This sculpture is representative of all that is great about this art form.

Michelangelo was of the opinion that artists are not creating sculptures, but that they are in fact releasing the sculptures that already lie within.

If Italy is not your syle, go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and gaze upon a Brancusi sculpture. Or, go to Chicago, and look at the Picasso sculpture in the Daley Plaza. Or go down the street towards the federal bulidings and look at the Calder.

I agree that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and that not all sculpture is of palatable form.

"Stand in the greatness of David"? I havent heard that quoted for weeks. A museum is not the only place to find art, don't scoff at your neibours creative endevors ie. garden or whirlygig. They may not be Picaso but they have art in thier lives, after all it is the process not the product. The world is filled with Artist and Critiques, some of us live in awe of beautiy while others only see flaws. You don't have to be creative to put down someone else's work, just keep your stones in your own pile.

As a sculptor myself I would like to say that all sculpture deals with form more than color. How the form is acquired is not really important, so stacking rocks, glueing bits of wood, or molding wet clay is sculpture. Hammering away bits of stone until a naked man appears is also sculpture. Dancing in the moonlight is art, but not sculpture even though it deals with forms. Stacking dancers in the moonlight is sculpture but perhaps not art.