Monuments maybe every sculptor’s dream, but they can be a mixed blessing. They communicate beyond the artworld with a big public, and put the sculptor in a line from Stonehenge, the Gothic Cathedrals, Rodin. But they consume disproportionate energies to their aeshetic return.
A sculptor can have any number of new ideas in the maquette studio for the time and energy, usually demanding assistance, needed to realise a single piece at a monumental scale. A maquette, thanks in part to the dollshouse effect, inspires a natural empathy: literally issuing from the hand, it conveys tangible emotion, a felt quality, that will inevitably get lost when transformed into a relatively depersonalized monolith. The biggie is seen by more people, but people who are rushing to catch a train, or sit with their backs to the piece to enjoy a sandwich, or delinquent kids looking for a surface on which to skateboard or graffiti. Alienation, starting with the production process, is felt all around.
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