Hybrid Figurations of the 1960s

This panel addresses the figurative sculpture of the 1960s and its focus on corporeality, materiality and affect. The social and ideological changes of the time, but also the increasingly spectacular display of bodies and their mutability, contributed to a substantial shift and hybridization of body images. These were negotiated in sculpture—often employing new materials and techniques. In the works presented, the body becomes visible as a psychological space and a site of physical manipulation: between mimesis and monstrosity, synthetics and fragmentation, surface and animism. In this way, a critique is formulated not only of the historicization of minimalism as the paradigm of artistic innovation in the 1960s, but also of its conspicuous displacement of the body from the sculptural object.

Fig.: Alina Szapocznikow, Untitled (Fetish VII), 1971, Ursula Hauser Collection, Switzerland, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020, Courtesy the Estate of Alina Szapocznikow / Piotr Stanislawski / Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris / Hauser & Wirth

Speakers Jo Applin | Jann Haworth and the Poetics of Softness Marta Dziewańska | The Futurism of the Female Avant-Garde Antje Krause-Wahl | Shiny Matters in/and 1960s Sculptured Figurations

Chair Manuela Ammer