Shaping duration: Bergson and modern sculpture
Journal Article (Journal Article)
In this article, I consider the relevance of Bergson's theory of durée for an understanding of sculpture by focusing on the work of three canonical artists in the history of twentieth-century modernism: the French Cubist Raymond Duchamp-Villon, the Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni, and the London-based Vorticist Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. While these sculptors produced widely divergent aesthetic forms, I argue that they all endorsed Bergson's notion of durée as a spontaneous process of qualitative differentiation. These artists reconfigured their medium in terms of Bergson's process philosophy, whether in the guise of an artists generative imagination (Duchamp-Villon), representations of the human body as a living center of indetermination (Boccioni), or the act of direct carving as an intuitive response to a sculptor's chosen material (Gaudier-Brzeska). These Bergsonian paradigms enable us to reassess Jack Burnham's evaluation of Bergson's impact in his seminal text Beyond Modern Sculpture: The Effects of Science and Technology on the Sculpture of this Century (1968). Finally, by drawing on recent discussions of cybernetic and new media art, I will highlight the limitations of Burnham's categorical dismissal of Bergsonism as an outmoded metaphysics, irrelevant to newer conceptions of sculpture as system. © 2011 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Antliff, M
Published Date
- December 1, 2011
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 16 / 7
Start / End Page
- 899 - 918
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1470-1316
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 1084-8770
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1080/10848770.2011.626194
Citation Source
- Scopus