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3-D sculpture on a screen
When it comes to presenting a sculpture, all the performances of photos, films and 3-D images will only result in image-effects. 3-D images are useful, as are volumes in architecture, for the study of how sculpture “works”, for a better understanding of it. What is more, the digitizing of a sculpture in 3-D allows its storing on a disc, or its travelling to the other end of the world through the Internet; its allows it to be reproduced at pleasure, either identically, or down to a smaller scale or enlarged. Nevertheless, it all takes place on this side of the sculpture itself (which would not be the case with the digital recording of a piece of music to be played back on our CD systems) : the sculpture, the grainy touch of marble, the action of light on it, its reflecting power, the engraving of a bronze, its finishing touch, the impression it conveys under the hand, its smell, its volume as seized by our eyes and confirmed by our hands, its corporeality, all that is radically different from the 3-D image, which, after all, is but an image. Three thousand years ago, the temptation of illusion or the danger of being mistaken lay in sculpted images for the Hebrews in the desert; well, I think today the risk lies in images, whether figurative or abstract, for they cultivate delusion, as opposed to sculptures that can be walked round -as the burning bush, his god’s seat, was by barefooted Moses- so as to know exactly “what it is all about”.
(Translated by Michèle Bustros)