Introduction

Plato and Aristotle deploy sculptural examples to philosophical ends but neither develops a theoretical approach to sculpture as such. Theories are social artifacts, products of the historical periods from which they originate; accordingly, theories of sculpture depend on the particulars of what sculpture is being made, at what point in history, and in which culture. The dedicated use of sculpture to fit pre-given architectural contexts receives its epitome in late-medieval Europe, during which sculpture became the textual “skin” of cathedrals, a sequenced narrative in stone. Sculpture presents any number of “views”; there is no distortion of viewership introduced by moving around the work, advancing toward it, stepping back from it, looking up or down it, etc. The attempt to surmount the pictorializing of sculpture also results in a move away from the very term “sculpture” to refer to new three-dimensional works.