"Each work has its own space, which should neither be conceived as a sort of cage nor regarded as extending to infinity"
About this Quote
A sculptor warning you off two equally lazy fantasies: the artwork as a trapped animal, and the artwork as a fog bank. Marini is talking about space the way sculptors live it - not as an empty backdrop, but as a material with edges, pressure, and consequences. Every piece, he argues, generates its own field of force. That field is real, but it is not a prison; it sets limits that make perception possible. At the same time, pretending a work “extends to infinity” is a kind of romantic dodge, the museum-goer’s version of mysticism that turns craft into cosmic vibe.
The intent feels practical, almost studio-born. In the 20th century, sculpture was renegotiating its relationship to the pedestal, the gallery, the street, the body. Modernism had pushed toward autonomy (the work sealed off as a self-sufficient object), while avant-garde gestures kept reaching for the boundless (environment, monumentality, total art). Marini splits the difference: the artwork has a spatial jurisdiction, but it’s porous, relational. It meets the world, and the world meets it, without either swallowing the other.
Subtext: respect the work’s boundaries without shrinking it into décor or inflating it into metaphysics. A horse-and-rider by Marini isn’t “about” infinite space; it’s about how a mass leans, how a void bites into a torso, how a viewer’s movement completes the piece. He’s defending a humane scale of attention: art as something you can circle, confront, and feel resisted by - not something you cage with interpretation or dissolve into endless meaning.
The intent feels practical, almost studio-born. In the 20th century, sculpture was renegotiating its relationship to the pedestal, the gallery, the street, the body. Modernism had pushed toward autonomy (the work sealed off as a self-sufficient object), while avant-garde gestures kept reaching for the boundless (environment, monumentality, total art). Marini splits the difference: the artwork has a spatial jurisdiction, but it’s porous, relational. It meets the world, and the world meets it, without either swallowing the other.
Subtext: respect the work’s boundaries without shrinking it into décor or inflating it into metaphysics. A horse-and-rider by Marini isn’t “about” infinite space; it’s about how a mass leans, how a void bites into a torso, how a viewer’s movement completes the piece. He’s defending a humane scale of attention: art as something you can circle, confront, and feel resisted by - not something you cage with interpretation or dissolve into endless meaning.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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