Soft sculpture in contemporary art

Abstract

                 Art reflects the truth of life in each period. Pop art is an art movement that celebrates popular culture and low art, the opposite of high art. High art is praised to be high quality, highly valuable and original. The concept and work process of earlier period inspires art developed in its aftermath, Postmodernism which uses popular and familiar objects to create art. Pop art is so popular that it becomes “populism”. In the age of advances in techniques and ideas, there is a plenty of marble and bronze sculptures, mostly realistic forms or monuments, but Claes Oldenburg’s works are not among them. He created sculptures that represent unexpected objects such as clothespin, button, water tap, garden hose, and pie, called as soft sculpture. This type of sculpture presents a small object as a gigantic sculpture and uses materials that are not rigid. Also, it is found that female artists, Kusuma Yayoi and Joana Vasconcelos, use soft sculpture to address gender issues. The research aims to study the concept, inspiration, and material of an art creation that encourages viewers to respond with feelings, the soft sculpture.