abstraction is "the essence, or real sense of things"

Apollonius' sculpture known as the Belvedere Torso may have been of a satyr and originally it was certainly a complete figure. The Greek ideal of beauty was grounded in wholeness, and a partial or unfinished figure would have been unthinkable in ancient times. Apollonius' statue contradicted earlier Classical ideals of moderation both in its focus upon excessive muscular development (hence, imbalance between mind and body) and in an attention to anatomical details unbalanced imaginative overall design.

After the torso' rediscovered in the Renaissance, it gained partial-figure concept developed by Rodin, who in turn had derived his inspiration from such ancient fragments as the Belvedere Torso. Constantin Brancusi stripped his body to a point where its shapes have been generalized into a few cylindrical volumes. (Despite its title, the ambiguity of its gender creates of this sculpture a kind of "impartial" figure.) Simplification to the point of absolute reductiveness was the means by which he thought his art could approach the essence, or "real sense," of things (and naturalistic sculpture isnt real?). At a certain point in the process of reductiveness, as Brancusi found, the body can become associated with other, nonhuman shapes of a botanical or technological character, depending in part upon whether the material was wood or bronze. (This piece can be exhibited successfully even if inverted, something wholly impossible in naturalistic art.) Thus a plurality of associations, which broaden the frame of sculptural reference, are possible. Brancusi had no desire to emulate what he called the "beefsteak" of the Belvedere Torso or the sculptures of Rodin. His final surfaces are the outcome not of modeling but of rubbing and polishing. By reducing the torso to elementary but kindred and still sensual shapes, he was able to achieve sculpture that was for him perfect in its proportions and over-all concordance.

Hans Arp's Human Lunar Spectral has certain affinities with the Belvedere Torso and yet remains suggestively ambiguous. The torsion of the former recalls the flexibility of the Greek work but lacks any definite evidence of spine, pelvis, or muscle. There are also affinities in the lower portions of both; but Arp's form gives no hint of a skeletal or muscular substructure. Both Arp and Brancusi helped introduce into modern art a "sculpture without parts." Unlike Brancusi's torso, that of Arp seems capable of growth or swelling and contraction, thereby having greater reference to organic life. Rodin had defined sculpture as the art of the hole and the lump, yet as something always tied to the body's configuration.

Arp gave a purer and more obvious demonstration of sculpture as a logical succession of pliant concave and convex surfaces enclosing a volume. The rightness of this sequence is measurable not against the standard of the human body but only in terms of the sculpture itself.

Sculptors since the Egyptians and Greeks had frequently used the human body to personify some aspect of nature. (The Greeks used reclining male figures as river gods.) Modern sculptors such as Arp and Henry Moore have tended to see the body in terms of nature and to fuse qualities of both into a single work, thereby suggesting the unity of all life.

Woman receives a new life and serenity in the work of Henry Moore. In terms of the problem of disparate and unevenly distributed shapes referred to previously, Moore transformed the body to effect a more satisfactory sculptural balance, consistency, and continuity. When Moore reduced the size and definition of the head, eliminated the feet and hands, fused normally distinct or unconnected body parts, and introduced a great hollow in the middle of the torso, he was not motivated by a superficial desire to shock. His rephrasing of the body and investing it with a tissuelike surface created strong and fluid rhythms that for him suggest linkages of man and nature. His reclining forms of wood and stone seem shaped—that is, smoothed down—by the corrosive and abrasive action of the elements. The reclining pose had been traditionally associated with tranquillity and dignity, and these connotations were still honored. The living body possesses many openings, and Moore's use of hollows derives from mixed associations, from esthetic and sexual reveries centering on the inner cavities of the body, the womb, as well as fantasies and inspiration from caves and holes in wood and rock. His personal image exalts qualities and processes sensed, if not seen, in the body and elsewhere in nature.

- Albert Elsen