Constructed Worlds

As early as the beginning of the 20th century, a large part of modern sculpture marked a radical shift away from tradition, by following the route of abstraction. Paradoxically this was a way of analysing the world in a more objective and universal manner: rather than modelling the surface of things, certain artists like the cubists wanted to reveal their essential structure. They divided up the objects they studied into lines, volumes and planes. In their wake, sculptors and diverse avantgardists baptised their works “constructions” or “structures”, opting for a radical abstraction, where lines and right angles predominated. If industrial architecture encouraged these tendencies known as “constructivist”, occasionally willing to produce functional objects, sculpture also looked to redefine what is unique to it: the relationship to gesture, to materials and above all to space, clearly structured, even modular and dynamic, involving the spectator. Modernist artists wanted a transparency and a balance for their sculptures that they wanted to see transposed into human structures. The most important pieces which are assembled here from the Centre Pompidou call into question the spawning of this utopian abstraction, followed by the analysis of it and finally, its contemporary deconstruction.