Have you ever visited Pere-Lachaise in France? The Cimitero monumentale di Staglieno in Genoa? Or even your local cemetery? These are the art galleries of some of the greatest sculptors who have ever lived — sculptors with skills rivaling those of Bernini, Michelangelo, and Donatello (easily!).

It’s impossible to say which sculptors are the best, because many of our planet’s greatest sculptors lived lives of simple tradesmen — the figurative and ornamental carvers who worked on the many beautiful monuments you see in your cities — in cemeteries, parks, museums, etc. If you are lucky to live in an area that hasn’t been completely taken over by simple concrete buildings, you will be privileged to see the beautiful architectural carvings surrounding you! Many of the “Greatest Sculptors of All Time” are completely anonymous.

I say this coming from a family of figurative carvers, and having known and worked myself with many carvers who I can say were as gifted — as virtuostic — as a Bernini, or a Michelangelo, or any one of the great masters.

Within this list you have now, Bernini and Michelangelo indubitably deserve to be there (although their positions on the list are not set in stone). They were both unique geniuses and left behind them works that are timeless & must certainly be regarded as among the best. There have also been countless sculptors whose work rivaled theres, however — Giuseppe Sammartino, for instance — in terms of precision,virtuosity, etc… so I don’t think it’s possible to make a list of this nature accurately.

By the way, Picasso also did sculptures, but was wary of displaying them to the public. These sculptures actually helped him with his ideas on painting.

Your choice is based on “Sculptors” not “Sculptures” i.e. a person who has consistently produced best sculpture? I don’t feel from the small number of examples you have shown us you have been able to convince me. Could you throw in a few more to help!
Are you going to have a second best 5?

I have found that I like a very wide range of sculpture and find 5 to be an impossibly low limit! Hence my top 100+ which will be in excess of 300 at present reckoning. I will be doing a separate list to include Brancusi and his Ilk.

Keep up the good work Alex.

indeed!

Anyway, great post, i stumble upon it today.

I think of Picasso and Dali, who were capable of realistic work but chose another style, or the Impressionists before they invented Impressionism. They still used their technical skills, just in a different way. These days, you don’t need a lot of skill, just “inspiration”.

Michelangelo took years to paint the Sistine Chapel, years to create David. And Donatello’s David looks a lot more homo-erotic to me, by the way. It’s the helmet that accentuates his nakedness. Or maybe the way he’s holding that sword.

A lot of sculpture was only designed by these greats, and completed by their apprentices. Sometimes, they can actually tell who sculpted what part.

An artist would starve today taking the attention and care required to create a piece on the scale of a Michelangelo.

And Brancusi sucks.

While I fully agree with the krap is krap statement, art appreciation is still too subjective to be rateable into a list like this.

I get a little depressed when everyone argues (albeit eloquently) over who is number one and numner two when in fact IT IS NOT A #*@$# SPORT!

I know fans of abstract art will characterize the phenomenal attention to detail as a throwback to the patriarchal tribal society rife with violent inequality while the purveyors of classical art will cry foul at the blatantly sheer simplicity of such a pornographic creation. But you’re both wrong. It was, is, and will be the best ever. I fart in your general direction.

THE greatest sculptor of all time, as recognized by many scholars (I trust you won’t take their word for it, as this is art and noone’s opinion is absolute) was Phidias of Athens. He was responsible for the Elgin marbles, the seated Zeus of Olympia, and most importantly, the chrys-elephantine state of Athena in the Parthenon.

P.S. Sid is a moron.

Why are places like the NY Met Museum filled to bursting all year long, whereas most regular commercial art galleries are populated only by otherwise useless art history grads? (Where else would get our unreadable art criticism?) As the brilliant David Hockney says – people like pretty pictures. I don’t want modern art to go away – I just don’t want it to be the only item on the menu.

No, it’s not “krap” or “trash” (that kind of dismissive language disqualifies your argument from any serious consideration — which boils down to ‘I know what I understand, and I don’t understand this, so it isn’t art’). Based on your posts, you simply relate to pieces you can see representations of yourself in (obvious human figure; your interest in certain type of methodology). There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion of what you like or dislike. What is wrong is the hubris you demonstrate in thinking that you’ve figured out that “the emperor is naked” and you can conclusively dismiss a product of hundreds (if not thousands) of years of art history and tradition as “krap”. You are just really showing how little you actually know.

If you had bothered to try to educate yourself on the pieces you linked you, you’d realize they are part of a great tradition of pushing the methods, concepts and materials ahead and away from their traditional origins. That they are part of a tradition and not removed from it. The methods that went into the examples you point out would require many of the same processes that the past masters’ would have utilized. The Malevich painting was meant to be seen up close. The subtly of the white shifts and intricate, delicate building of the pigments was a continuation of what medieval monks were creating with their painstaking illuminated gospels — Malevich was getting closer to God through the details. I wouldn’t want to wager how long he spent hunched over that piece, methodically building it.

Look at this way: Bernini would never have conceived of creating anything like that Brancusi piece. His time and place wouldn’t have allowed it. He would never have known it could be done. That’s the point: modernism happened as a reaction to it’s time.

Picasso was a child prodigy who could paint as well as many of the great masters. But he kicked that direction to the curb because he was bored and adventurous. He was a man of his time. He was influenced by moving pictures and photography. He had a massive visual vocabulary of the art past to build on. Producing another historical or biblical based rendering of the human body is done and done to death even by his time. Why bother beating that horse when there fresher avenues to explore?

I wonder what Bernini would have produced if born in the 20th century. Probably not “Apollo and Daphne”.

Becki: Nail-head? Because a half-baked post utilizing the word ‘krap’ repeatedly is the final word. Gimme a break.

I’ll give the excuse makers a little latitude when they say “art can’t be compared” and “it is all subjective”. That’s true to a point, but eventually krap is krap. There are krappy books, krappy movies, krappy TV shows, krappy car designs, krappy architecture, and YES, krappy art. Don’t be afraid to call a spade a spade.

Here’s another winner: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/art/20th/painting/malevich1.jpg
To be fair, much of Malevich’s stuff isn’t quite so awful. But it is a good example of “you just don’t understand it” trash that litters the MoMA and another such museums, gifts of the wealthy and gullible. Lots of people are afraid to say the emperor is naked, but I am not.

Sorry, but there is krap and this is krap.

Here’s a bit about an upcoming retrospective of one of my favorite 20th century sculptors, Antony Gormley: http://www.thenewsroom.com/details/304344/Entertainment?c_id=kc
His work is amazing, but does it compare apples-to-apples with Bernini? Of course not!

There’s no “better”, no “worse”, no “more”, no “less”. There’s only art and opinion, the two most subjective things I can think of.

–TwoDragons

–TwoDragons

I would argue that technical skill is not an absolute requirement for great art. By saying that, you discount most of our modern culture, including other mediums such as music (rock and roll & blues for example, which I think are forms of GREAT art. As great as anything Botticelli ever produced).

And to make a further point about technical skill, abstraction doesn’t mean easy or necessarily technically simple. What you see Brancusi or Wharhol doing is a damn spot harder to pull off than you are saying. The statement that any community college student could reproduce “The Kiss” is disingenuous (besides reproducing is not the same as creating).

I would compare Warhol to Vermeer for any day of the week. I would go as far as saying Warhol is a more important influence on art and culture at this point in history.

Realism took a high level of technical skill. Any community college sculpting class could provide me with a dozen “sculptors” capable of reproducing “The Kiss”. Granted, they might not have the artistic inspiration that Brancusi had to make it in the first place, but the level of technical skill in the piece is very low.

Great art should require BOTH artistic inspiration and a high level of technical skill. Donatello had both. At most, Brancusi had the former alone. It’s as laughable as comparing Warhol & Banksy to Vermeer & Botticelli.

Anyway, this list is more like the 5 greatest classical sculptors. This 20th century art link at wikipedia is a good link for a springboard to discover modern sculptors and their related movements:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_century_art

It includes links to the main art movements that encompass modern sculpture. Historical events that dictated a move away from classical realism and into abstraction are essential to understand why Brancusi appears as ‘krap’ to some (hi Sid!).