Sculpture

1. Sculpture involves the use of materials that can be moulded or modulated that is why it is considered one of the plastic arts. The majority of public art is sculpture.

Sculptors have generally sought to produce works of art that are as permanent as possible, working in durable and frequently expensive materials such as bronze and stone. More rarely, precious materials such as gold, silver, jade, and ivory were used.

2. Casting is a manufacturing process by which a liquid material is poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. It is most often used for making complex shapes that would be otherwise difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods. Casting is a 6000 year old process. The oldest surviving casting is a copper frog from 3200 BC.

 Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures. Common bronze alloys have the unusual and desirable property of expanding slightly just before they set, thus filling the finest details of a mold. Their strength and lack of brittleness is an advantage when figures in action are to be created, especially when compared to various ceramic or stone materials.

3. More common and less expensive materials were used for sculpture for wider consumption, including hardwoods, terra cotta and other ceramics, and cast metals. Wood carving is a form of working wood by means of a cutting tool held in the hand, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object.

4. Many sculptors seek new ways and materials to make art. Jim Gary used stained glass and automobile parts, tools, machine parts, and hardware. One of Pablo Picasso's most famous sculptures included bicycle parts. Modernists made spectacular use of painted steel. Since the 1960s, acrylics and other plastics have been used as well. Andy Goldsworthy makes his unusually ephemeral sculptures from almost entirely natural materials in natural settings. Some sculpture, such as ice sculpture, sand sculpture, and gas sculpture, is deliberately short-lived.

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Sculpture is the most popular public art.

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‘Madame tussauds’ wax museum

1. Marie Tussaud was born in Strasbourg, France. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for Dr. Philippe Curtius, who was a physician skilled in wax modelling. Curtius taught Tussaud the art of wax modelling. The first exhibition of Curtius' waxworks was shown in 1770, and attracted a large audience. The exhibition moved to the Palais Royal in Paris in 1776.

2. Tussaud created her first wax figure, of Voltaire, in 1777. Other famous people she modelled at that time include Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Franklin. During the French Revolution she modelled many prominent victims. In her memoirs she claims that she would search through corpses to find the decapitated heads of executed citizens, from which she would make death masks. When Curtius died in 1794, he left his collection of waxworks to Marie. In 1802, she went to London. As a result of the Franco-English war, she was unable to return to France, so she travelled throughout Great Britain and Ireland exhibiting her collection. She established her first permanent exhibition on Baker Street in London in 1835.

3. One of the main attractions of her museum was the Chamber of Horrors. This part of the exhibition included victims of the French Revolution and newly created figures of murderers and other criminals. Other famous people were added to the exhibition, including Horatio Nelson, and Sir Walter Scott. Some of the sculptures done by Tussaud herself still exist. In 1842, she made a self portrait which is now on display at the entrance of her museum.

4. The museum moved to its current location on Marylebone Road in 1884. In 1925 a fire destroyed many of the figures, but the moulds survived, allowing the historical waxworks to be remade.

Madame Tussaud's wax museum has now grown to become a major tourist attraction in London. It has expanded with branches in Amsterdam, Berlin, Las Vegas, New York City, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Washington DC. They are owned by a leisure company called Merlin Entertainments, following the acquisition of The Tussauds Group in May 2007.

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Marie Tussaud made some wax figures herself.