What is a Sculpture?

What is 3-Dimensional Design?


Please read the following story:

In the distance, Susan saw something flashy and very colorful standing outside a large gray building. Walking closer, she saw what appeared to be a man riding a blue horse, wearing a white had, a red shirt, and pointing a pistol to the sky. She walked around this thing and looked at it from different angles -- side, back, front, and worm's-eye-view. Between the horse's forelegs there's a cactus. Looking still closer, she noticed how shiny its surface was. She thought that this sculpture looked realistic and yet exaggerated -- almost like a cartoon. From one angle, it looked like a painting, but seen from other angles, it looked different from each one, and it clearly stood by itself. Susan finally read the label which said: Vaquero by Jiménez.

 Luis Jiménez (Mexican-American, 1940-, El Paso, Texas), Vaquero, modeled 1980, cast 1990, cast fiberglass and epoxy with acrylic urethane finish, 16 1/2 ft. high, National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC. © Luis Jiménez.

Another work by Luis Jiménez is the lithograph Southwestern Pieta, 1983, 30 x 44 inches, Collection of Gary D. Keller Cárdenas.

If you'd like to know more about Chicana and Chicano culture click on this like to see a site from ASU about it.

Play a sculpture art history game!


Please write answers to the following questions:

1. What is a sculpture, and why? (What is not a sculpture, and why?)


2. Does a sculpture have to be big? (What are reasons a sculptor could have for decisions about size?)


3. Can a sculpture be flat on one side? (Why?)


4. What is a sculpture's function, and why?




Be a detective and discuss the qualities of this piece, Vaquero by Luis Jiménez.

5. What technical qualities do you notice? (In other words, what do you notice about how it was made-- about the artist's craftmanship?)


6. What expressive qualities do you notice? (In other words, what does it say to you? or, what is its meaning?)


7. What formal characteristics are present? (Discuss the artist's use of line, shape, form, color, value, and texture, along with how he arranged these elements. What are the sculpture's major shapes [e.g. squares, triangles, etc.?])


8. What social value does this piece possess? (In society, what function or purpose, what does it communicate? What does it say about this cowboy, what cowboys do?)


9. What culture do you think this work reflects?


10. Is this setting appropriate? Where would you put it?


-- This method of inquiry is called aesthetic scanning.


11. Vaquero is made of cast fiberglass and epoxy. What is that? (How do you know what that is? [or] How did you find out what that is?)


12. This sculpture was made by casting. Look up the definition in ArtLex.. Then explain it yourself in the space below.




Discuss the following aesthetic issues:


13. How can a building be considered a sculpture?


14. When is an architect an artist?


15. What is the art work? Is it the plans? Is it the finished piece? Is it the landscape? Is it the stained glass windows? Please present your ideas in response to these questions.






General Resources:

where you'll find information on these art terms:

See the Chicano Arte site from Arizona State University.


Sculpture Unit Introductory Page.