THREAD. A running list of sculpture we want to remake or carve in stone for the first time. This is not about the “top sculpture” or necessarily the most famous sculpture but objects we have a particular interest in making at Monumental Labs. 1/ The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers. The most famous American sculpture of the 19th C. It was the first fully nude life sized sculpture exhibited publicly in the US and became a media sensation. The narrative of a chaste Christian woman’s enslavement was crucial to its acceptance. It later became symbolically important to the abolitionist movement. Five life-sized copies were made in marble from the original model, as was typical at the time, commissioned by patrons and carved by Powers’ studio in Italy, They today reside in England, New Haven, Brooklyn, Newark, and Washington DC. They are subtly different and of varying quality. Hundreds of busts and miniatures were also created and sold. It is The Greek Slave’s place in American history and 19th C. studio practice that makes creating a new copy so appealing. The West Coast needs their first to boot. It would be fitting that the sixth version be a collaboration of robots and humans, and every bit as good as the Italian-carved versions. That’s the challenge we want to take on at least.

3/Excited about these early 20th C. Jacques Lipchitz sculptures, one of which I found at the Barnes Foundation. Very cool geometry, easily reproducible so a wide audience could afford them, but turns out they don’t enter the public domain until 2044. Until then it’s up to the estate.

During a pitch a GP asked why we don't just melt the stone down and reconstitute it later on the job site. Concrete invented again from first principles 👏

Likewise, the future of sculpture could be highly ornate objects for collectors and low-fi forms for architecture, cheap enough to adorn almost every building.