Sculpture as a Collective Practice in the Long Nineteenth Century

Collaborative practices, shared authorship and the labor of art are gaining recognition in contemporary art research, yet remain under-acknowledged in nineteenth-century art history. Taking inspiration from Howard Becker’s ‘art worlds’ [1982], this session explicitly considers sculpture as the collective practice it has traditionally been, and zooms in on the sculpture studio as a creative ecosystem, in which ‘the sculptor’ is but one of the actors involved.

Most successful sculptors hired collaborators to help with the making of their works. However, this did not mean that collaborative work was valued as such: the (male) sculptor was generally considered as the only ‘real’ creator, while the specialists who helped with the various mechanical aspects of art making (such as the production of plaster moulds, the bronze casting and/or the rough cutting) were perceived as “mere assistants”, and their use was sometimes criticized.

Beyond specialist practitioners, this panel also wishes to highlight other forms of hidden labor. We invite papers that draw attention to the domestic, creative and/or technical work of pointers, carvers, moulders, students, models, domestic servants and family members in the sculptor’s studio and household. We will consider questions such as: who made the time-consuming labor of sculpture possible? Who cleaned up all the dust? How should we value the artistic contribution of sculptors’ collaborators? We aim to provoke discussion around the notion of individual authorship, the rethinking of the studio as a space of hybrid (class, gender and race) relations, and the importance of care work within artistic creation.