Robert Cronbach, Visiting Artist Lecture 1960

Robert Cronbach gives a lecture at Skowhegan where he talks about the sculptural form and how to find enjoyment in sculpture. Cronbach goes into great detail talking about the tactile senses that sculpture provides, and how this is a very intense experience. Cronbach believes that touch, and the experience of touch, is a very important part of a sculpture. Cronbach then discusses how sculpture at its core is made up of a combination of multiple identities including form, space, volume, and emptiness. For Cronbach, the ability for sculpture to produce form allows it to then create a relationship with the space it occupies. Throughout the lecture, Cronbach shares slides of various artists across history who have exploited the surface of sculpture by pushing the medium to absolute extremes. Cronbach ends the lecture by stating that sculpture is never a frozen motion, but an active movement in how it plays with different forms and spaces.