Between Haptics and Kinaesthetics: Body Experience in Some Contemporary Theories of Sculpture
Between Haptics and Kinaesthetics: Body Experience in Some Contemporary Theories of Sculpture

Summary/Abstract: The text deals withthequestion abouttheperception of sculpture which isthis kind of plastic art in which all human body is engaged in the process of per-ception.In Katarzyna Kobro’s and Władysław Strzemiński’s Composition ofSpace (1931) we can read that sculpture is a way of space organisation. The experi-ence of sculpture is not (as in painting) based on looking or understanding, but on the feeling of spatiotemporal motion. Oscar Hansen also emphasised the role of psychophysical activity in con-tact with sculpture and went a step furtherthan Kobro i Strzemiński experiencing the impact on the human body different sculpting materials.In William Morris’s Notes on Sculpture (1966–1969) sculpture exists only in subjective, corporal way of experience, away from consciousness and discursive association. All those theories and their artistic concretizations redefines the role of the viewer of artifact and extend the Classic concept of sculpture as an art close to the body. In a number of contemporary sculpture this is not the model’s body that is the most important. Rather they deals with view-er’s body which is increasingly drawn into artistic representation.

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