{"id":34004,"date":"2019-09-17T11:37:18","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T11:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artzealous.com\/?p=34004"},"modified":"2019-09-17T11:37:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T11:37:18","slug":"ask-the-collector-with-holly-hager-collecting-101-living-with-sculpture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/ask-the-collector-with-holly-hager-collecting-101-living-with-sculpture\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask the Collector With Holly Hager Collecting 101\u2014Living with Sculpture"},"content":{"rendered":"

top image \/\/ Kloudy with his older brothers\u2014two <\/span>Green Dog<\/span><\/em> sculptures by Zhou Chunya.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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This is my new son, Kloudy, with his elder brothers\u2014two <\/span>Green Dog<\/span><\/em> sculptures by Zhou Chunya. Kloudy is an 11-week-old Great Dane. He weighed 41 lbs. when this photo was taken last week and already towers over one of them. By this time next year, he\u2019ll be closing in on 175 lbs. and will be bigger than both of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

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How can an adorably clumsy, Clifford-sized dog coexist with a sculpture that\u2019s down on the floor with him? You just have to get creative. You might never be as obsessed as I am with the three-dimensional, but here are some of my tricks for bringing the supersized emotional impact of sculpture into your life.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In a wonderful article in <\/span>Hyperallergic, Sarah E. Bond<\/span><\/a> summed up the source of my obsession as \u201can inherent sensuality\u201d in the ability to \u201cvisually consume a sculpture from every angle.\u201d That inherent sensuality is what\u2019s so yummy about sculpture in the round (the kind you can appreciate from every side). Its physicality is more likely to produce a visceral response. Think about how you feel when you stand in the shadow of a monumental sculpture at a museum. It engulfs you. Like the <\/span>Urs Fischer <\/span>Rain<\/span><\/em> I wrote about in my last column<\/span><\/a>, it takes your breath away. More of that for me, please!<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re still not convinced, here\u2019s a newsflash: sculpture is usually a bargain. If you love an artist who makes both 2D and 3D works, chances are that you can collect their sculpture at a much more reasonable price than their other works. My gorgeous <\/span>Green Dog<\/span><\/em> sculptures by Zhou Chunya cost a fraction of his <\/span>Green Dog<\/span><\/em> paintings, so does most sculpture. It\u2019s counter-intuitive, but it\u2019s true.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Bill<\/span><\/em>, by Mark Harris, braving a nor\u2019easter.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s why. Sculpture takes up valuable living space, and it can be really heavy\u2014which adds up to inconvenience and expense. <\/span>Bill <\/span><\/em>is a 1,000-pound Carrera marble sculpture of a bison who now lives on my terrace. I\u2019m not gonna lie, <\/span>Bill <\/span><\/em>is a bitch to move. Once he\u2019s put in place by the art handlers, he\u2019s there for good. There\u2019s no nudging him into another position. Worse, we once had to keep him in storage for two years because the beams in our floor weren\u2019t strong enough to keep him from crashing through it into our downstairs neighbor\u2019s living room. So, yes, sculpture can be difficult, but you can\u2019t hang a painting outside. Sculpture is the only art durable enough to withstand the elements over the long term. Long after the cold has killed off all my plants, <\/span>Bill <\/span><\/em>still makes our view incredibly special.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Materialist Man<\/span><\/em> by Wang Guangyi with <\/span>Bait <\/span><\/em>by Wei Dong and an <\/span>AK-47<\/span><\/em> by Zhang Dali.<\/span><\/p>\n

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As does the oversized resin sculpture <\/span>Materialist<\/span> Man<\/span><\/em> by Wang Guangyi who greets everyone in our foyer. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I adore the paintings. The Wei Dong is my current favorite, but imagine the two paintings without the sculpture. While they\u2019d still be lovely, the conversation between them would be a lot less interesting. The visual presence of <\/span>Materialist Man<\/span><\/em> has a dynamism that intensifies all three works. All of them are by Contemporary Chinese artists. The vulnerability of the portrait contrasts with the strength and determination of the sculpture, which leads you to the abundance of the allegoric oil. And, bonus, I can move this sculpture by myself. He might look like he weighs a ton, but he\u2019s made of hollow resin that\u2019s light as a feather.<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Day of the Dead sculpture by Ricardo Linares shares our dining room with Zhang Dali\u2019s <\/span>Chinese Offspring<\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Most people are unwilling to give up their valuable space for sculpture. I get that. I\u2019ve lived my entire adult life in apartments. Large sculpture is a lot like a Great Dane: it\u2019s a huge commitment, but the emotional payback is equally enormous. More importantly, you don\u2019t necessarily have to give up floor space. You can seat them at your table or hang them on the ceiling. We rarely have more than a couple of people over for dinner. So a life-sized Day of the Dead sculpture that I\u2019ve nicknamed Corpsey sits at our dining room table. On the rare occasion when his seat is needed, he obligingly moves into the living room.<\/span><\/p>\n

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There\u2019s sculpture in every room in my house. Smaller works perch on windowsills, shelves, tabletops, and dressers. Occasionally I go traditional, like the cheerful bronze sun we wake up to every morning. It\u2019s not an important work, but I love it nonetheless. Instead of a white plinth, like you\u2019d see in a gallery, we put it on an agate-like wood and resin block by <\/span>Andrianna Shamaris<\/span><\/a>. In our living room, sculptural Mexican folk art masks by Juan Orta hang on walls above the <\/span>Green Dogs<\/span><\/em> and a fantastical folk-art dragon slithers up the ceiling with a warning hiss down at the others. The real art of collecting is to create a good conversation between diverse works.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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I\u2019m also fond of perching sculptures in unusual places\u2014like on the floor next to a French door or in the bathroom. Most art can\u2019t take humidity, but ceramics, glass, and resin are perfect for it. Liu Bolin\u2019s <\/span>Red Hand 10<\/span><\/em> has mainly lived in a succession of our bathrooms. Right now, I\u2019m chancing having him in conversation with a traditional Himalayan painting of the Tara\u2014a work on paper that\u2019s not nearly as suited to the environment as he is.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Think of that the next time you\u2019re considering buying a print, and go for some sculpture instead. More importantly, factor in sculpture\u2019s ability to deliver a higher emotional impact than any other kind of work and treat yourself to some inherent sensuality of your own.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Holly<\/span>\u00a0Hager<\/span>\u00a0is an art collector and the founder of\u00a0Curatious<\/a>. Previously an author and a professor, she now dedicates herself full-time to help artists make a living from their art by making the joys of art more accessible to everyone.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dog coexist with a sculpture that\u2019s down on the floor with him?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":34009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,24,23,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}