Overview of and topical guide to sculpture
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to sculpture:
A sculpture – human-made three-dimensional art object.
Sculpture or sculpting – activity of creating sculptures. A person who creates sculptures is called a sculptor.
What type of thing is sculpture?
Sculpture can be described as all of the following:
- Art – aesthetic expression for presentation or performance, and the work produced from this activity. The word "art" is therefore both a verb and a noun, as is the term "sculpture".
- Work of art – aesthetic physical item or artistic creation.
- One of the arts – as an art form, sculpture is an outlet of human expression, that is usually influenced by culture and which in turn helps to change culture. Sculpture is a physical manifestation of the internal human creative impulse.
- A branch of the visual arts – visual arts is a class of art forms, including painting, sculpture, photography, architecture and others, that focus on the creation of works which are primarily visual in nature.
- Fine art – in Western European academic traditions, fine art is art developed primarily for aesthetics, distinguishing it from applied art that also has to serve some practical function. The word "fine" here does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question, but the purity of the discipline according to traditional Western European canons.
