Elbe's Blog: Week 3- Ron Mueck's sculpture and Humanism

1. Mueck’s sculpture is described as hyper-real. Define the meaning of this term and apply it to his work.

Hyper real is defined as involving or characterizing a particularly realistic graphic representation. Looking at Ron Mueck’s work, hyperrealism must mean to make a sculptor or painting look real, yet have a feeling of unrealism to it as well. He applies this to his work by making realism sculptors of people either bigger or smaller than in real life. For example; one of his sculptures is of a newly born baby boy, it is amazingly realistic, from the crinkles in the babies skin to its wet hair, yet the sculpture is at least seven meters long.

2. Mueck is not interested in making life size sculpture. Find out why he is more interested in working with the scale of the figure which is not life size, and mention two works which use scale that is either larger or smaller than life.

Mueck’s work is not life size sculptures. These sculptures are so convincingly live like, the only reason to think there not real people are there size and scale. All of them are either larger or smaller than real live people. Wild Man is approximately 10 feet high, while Two Women is only one foot high. I believe that Mueck wanted to make these sculptures nonlife size so that you can see all the little details: like the individual hairs on the skin. Quoting from a wed sight it says “Mueck increasingly wanted to produce realistic sculptures which looked perfect from all angles.”

3. Define Renaissance Humanism , and analyze the term in order to apply it to an example of Mueck's work. Note that the contemporary definition of Humanism is much broader than the Renaissance definition.

Humanism was a educational advance based on classical studies of Greek and Roman authors during a period from 1400 to 1650. Humanism is the term generally applied to the predominant social philosophy and intellectual and literary currents of the. It is a system of thought that considering human beings, rather than the church, as able to decide their own morals and life style, rather than following the Church. An example of Humanism In Mueck’s work can be seen in Dead dad. It shows a naked man that (by the title) is dead rather that a religious finger. It shows that we are all human and fragile.

Dead Dad

4. Research and discuss one of Mueck's sculptures that you might find challenging or exciting to experience in an art gallery. Describe the work, upload an image of the work, and explain your personal response to the work. Comment on other student blogs to develop the discussion around the variety of our own personal and individual responses to art and design.

The Sculpture that i chose is Youth. It shows an African American youth looking suppressed at a (what i assume to be) i knife wound. What excites me about this work is the amazing detail that Mueck shows in his work, from the realistic hair to the baggy jeans.

Another reason why i find this sculpture so exiting is because the youth’s expression, it is almost like he is suppressed to see the wound there. It makes me wonder how he got the wound and what will happen to him.