Week 3- Ron Mueck's sculpture and Humanism

A girl (2006) Ron Mueck

Mask II (2002) Ron Mueck

Ron Mueck has become internationally recognised for his unique sculptures, which replicate the human figure with unrivalled technical skill. His work has a powerful psychological range, focusing not only on universal experiences like birth, life and death but on emotional states such as isolation, fear and tenderness. His startling manipulations of scale are key to our experience of each work.

Mueck's work showed at the Christchurch Art Gallery from the end of 2010 through to January 2011. Research Mueck's sculpture in order to answer the following questions;

1. Mueck's sculpture is described as 'hyper-real'. Define the meaning of this term and apply it to his work.

“Hyper realism” first appeared in United States, it is a kind of art that represent a high-resolution of photography, the way that the work shows the details, the point of view and the size of it.

Muck’s works is clearly a hyper-realistic work, his sculpture are extremely detailed (blood, tin, skin, wrinkles, hair, etc) on a oversized baby or head.

2. Mueck is not interested in making life size sculpture. Find out why he is more interested

in working with the scale of the figure which is not life size, and mention 2 works which use 

scale that is either larger or smaller than life.

Ron Mueck does not like life size sculpture because it wont be interesting to see something we actually see everyday, “I never made life-size figures because it never seemed to be interesting, we meet life-size people every day”Mueck.R (Tanguy. S aug 2003).

By using oversized sculpture it make the audience taking their time on the detail, the way he has used to make his work make them feel smaller and this "new" feeling interest them more.

3. Define Renaissance Humanism , and analyze the term in order to apply it to an example of Mueck's work. Note that the contemporary definition of Humanism is much broader than the Renaissance definition.

Renaissance Humanism is a period when people have started to think about human beings instead of the church, studying science rather than church schools.

those inovations are presented in Ron Mueck works, he strongly support the idea of human beings by sculpting human bodies What reality is and used the humanism style by having lot of details in it, there is also no religious sign in his work, it represent a moment in a life that could be anyone.

4. Research and discuss one of Mueck's sculptures that you might find challenging or exciting to experience in an art gallery. Describe the work, upload an image of the work, and explain your personal response to the work. 

Ron Mueck "boy" (2000)

 I have found the work "boy" (2000) really interesting and chalenging, 5 meters tall, the position of the boy, the shape (muscles, tin, veins, etc...), and the details from his hair to the holes on his skin just show how good Ron Mueck is. The expression of the boy’s face also attract the attention, he looks scared, trying to hide from something.

 http://www.xuyang.org/svp/ron%20mueck%20sculptures%20materials-70408.html

 http://hubpages.com/hub/Awe/some_Sculptures_Of_Ron_Mueck

 http://hyperrealism.free.fr/

http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=25104