Abstract:
Repressive masculinity is understood as the nature of sculpture, while sculpture’s fundamental states — molded, carved, constructed, surfaced and hard —are then thrown back upon maleness. It was amongst apotheosis of Modernism when amorphousness started to trespass the circuit of masculinity. Right after Salvador Dali signalled the start of the soft genre with his portraiture of the melting watch in The Persistence of Memory, 1931. Soon, the soft object appeared in three-dimensional forms — ‘Soft Sculpture’. Soft sculpture is the type of sculpture made using soft materials like fabric, rope, foam, rubber, plastic, latex, vinyl, fur, felt, paper, fibre and similar material that are supple and nonrigid. This kind of materials consists little of the freedom from the terror of the formless. It dangles, flops and piles up. It does not resist gravity. It is the direct confrontation of natural forces. Soft sculptors must deal with its softness. Soft material evokes certain sensation — forms that are persistent rather than rigid or permanent, and objects that are soft to touch which contains the visceral qualities of the body, that somehow all retains the “memory” of form. In the 1960s the industrialisation and mass production propelled artists to use these nontraditional art materials and often instills with craft and textile skills. Because the material itself has the significant history associated with women and women’s role, it had to endure gendered (feminine) bias. This study investigates the general materialism of soft sculpture — how the style transfigured from 20th century’s image of rationality; its anti-form quality; and the hierarchy of the ‘low’ craft and ‘high’ art world which derive from the gendered bias. I challenged myself to confront the obstinate material with things and bodies that it must regulate or exclude: in particular, bodies in the transition form one state to the next, from male to female, hard to soft.