Author Description

This is a history of sculpted representations of the human body, acknowledging the critical debates about the body, as well as the aesthetic and historical significance of individual works of art. The book's coverage ranges from prehistory to postmodernism and incorporates both the great achievements of such sculptors as Donatello, Michelangelo, Canova and Brancusi, and those shadier representations of the human body which the author identifies as sculpture's doppelganger, from waxworks to cyborgs. The book's sub-theme, painting on sculpture and the use of mixed media, is pursued as a historical counterpoint to evolving ideas about the development of the body.