Art Talk: Saint Louis Art Museum Sculpture Garden

in Art Talklast year (edited)

In addition to the Missouri Botanical Gardens to see Chihuly and going to the Gateway Arch we also went to the Saint Louis Art Museum or SLAM.

It is a gorgeous museum located in Forest Park which I loved as it was surrounded in GREEN.

Sara and I got to the museum before it opened and walked around the sculpture park. I am a big fan of sculpture and was so happy to see works by some of my favorites, Moore, Renoir and Paine and new pieces by Oldenburg, Nagare, Maillol, Gasteiger and Lipchitz.

Oldenburg

The first piece we saw is this piece called Giant Three-Way Plug and we had to get a closer look and picture.

Claes Oldenburg Giant Three-Way Plug, 1970-71

According to the plaque:

Claes Oldenburg produced monumental sculptures of everyday consumer objects. The artist described it as resembling "an implement left over from war, returning to nature" Oldenburg first installed the sculpture here in 1971.

It is made of Cor-Ten Steel and Bronze. Claes was born in 1929 in Sweden and died in 2022 in the United States.


Henry Moore

I am a very big fan of Henry Moore, on of my first exhibits in a botanical garden was Henry Moore in the New York Botanical Gardens in 2008. The SLAM has three Moore sculptures.

This piece is called Standing Figure and it was made in 1950. Usually I can recognize a Henry Moore piece and I had not idea this was done by him. It looks like a little alien and it fascinated me!

Henry Moore is a English artist that lived from 1898-1986. He was a radical artist in his time who created monumental semi abstract art. He is my gateway to modern and abstract art.

Two-Piece Reclining Figure No.2 , 1959-60Two-Piece Reclining Figure No.1 , 1959-60

Masayuki Nagare

Confluence, 1964-65
Sometimes like with this sculpture you wonder what is the artist saying? Is this really art?

According to the plaque:

Masayuki Nagare sculpture an arching curve of granite, counterbalancing the rough and polished surfaces of the stone. The Japanese artist visited St. Louis in 1964, and this work, inspired by the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, suggests the changing swell of the water and waves. His art is grounded in a deep attachment to nature and a respect for the intrinsic qualities of the stone.


Venus Victorious

Venus Victorious is a sculpture by the famous French impressionist painter August Renoir and his assistant the young Spanish Sculptor Richard Guino. It was completed in 1916 three years before Renoir died.

The Mountain

This beautiful statue of a female nude is called The Mountain. It is created by Aristide Maillol a French artist who lived from 1861- 1944. This sculpture is made of lead. I really enjoy taking portrait picture of sculptures.

Hercules and the Hydra

The most impressive sculpture to me is this bronze piece by the German artist Mathias Gasteiger. It was created from 1921-1930 and is of the Greek hero Hercules battling Hydra the many headed snake. It reminds me of another of my favorite sculptures- Lacoon.

Look at those muscles made in bronze!

The Bather

Here we have a cubist sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz who is a Lithuanian born French artist that lived from 1891-1973.

The cubist movement was from 1907-1918 and this piece was created shortly after in 1923-25.

According the plaque:

This monumental bather was Lipchitz's first life-sized work and the culmination of his experiment with Cubist visual language.

I don't know enough about cubism to understand it very well and therefore the works are hard to understand also.


Placebo

I was introduced to Roxy Paine in the National Gallery of art sculpture garden. This tree is very similar. They are both made of stainless steel and stand the height of a tree.

According the plaque:

Roxy Paine explained, "I take this organic majestic being and break it down into components and rules."

It is made by welding together standard industrial piping. Placebo highlights the complex relationship between the man-made and the natural world.

Here are a few more shots of the entrance to the museum.

Next time we will go in and see the great work inside!

Sources:
Henry Moore
Cubism
The plaques next to the sculptures.

*Art Talk Series Highlights

Art Talk: 2022 Posts
Art Talk: 2021 Posts
Art Talk: 2020 Posts
Art Talk: 2019 Posts
Art Talk: 2018 Posts

Sort:  

I view your posts and my mind relaxes. The museum and the park look marvelous at your pictures. And .... my favorite sculpture is The Tree! It looks stunning on the perfect green background.

That makes me so happy that my post can help you relax. Thanks. Yes, that tree in that green grass with the trees behind it is stunning.

I wanted to say I loved Henry Moore pieces the most until I saw the female nude made out of lead. It's beautiful 😍❤️. Thank you for sharing. ❤️

Hello @iskawrites. It is always fun to hear what other people like when I share the art. That she is made in lead is fascinating. I almost always see bronze.

I could have sworn I saw bronze too until I read through and you said it's lead.

It's beautiful 😍

Thank you for sharing 🥰

Wow how people can create those masterpieces @sjarvie5. Sculptors did a great job to make those sculptures. I really like the idea to have Sculpture Garden. It adds more beauty to surrounding landscape and it is where artists can freely create art.

@dodovietnam it really is amazing what humans can make with their creativity.

I love the combination of nature and art - these gardens with sculptures and other things. It is always a double effect on the mind and the senses. Very interesting, thanks!

Yes, I totally agree it is so cool to be walking around in the grass and trees and see these marble, bronze, steel and lead sculptures.

Normally if I saw all these sculptures, I would probably take one look at them and walk past. Reading through some of your interpretations about the pieces makes so much difference now.

This makes me so happy Pauline. Art is amazing and the more you know about it and the artist it is really exciting and interesting.

This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.

Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.

Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.

image.png

100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.

Thanks for the support!

Hiya, @LivingUKTaiwan here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Honorable Mentions in Daily Travel Digest #1970.

Your post has been manually curated by the @pinmapple team. If you like what we're doing, please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider supporting other authors like yourself and us so we can keep the project going!

Become part of our travel community:

Thanks!

~~~ embed:1692150597691035740?t=Nx8qsxMzYESU6zsUZ-yCfQ&s=09 twitter metadata:SXNrYWZhbjF8fGh0dHBzOi8vdHdpdHRlci5jb20vSXNrYWZhbjEvc3RhdHVzLzE2OTIxNTA1OTc2OTEwMzU3NDB8 ~~~

Congratulations, your post has been added to Pinmapple! 🎉🥳🍍

Did you know you have your own profile map?
And every post has their own map too!

Want to have your post on the map too?

  • Go to Pinmapple
  • Click the get code button
  • Click on the map where your post should be (zoom in if needed)
  • Copy and paste the generated code in your post (Hive only)
  • Congrats, your post is now on the map!

This way it takes a lot of effort to make things and this way of testing we see that all these sculptures are looking very beautiful and also take a lot of time on them. This is a very nice and informative site. is in terms of rotation.

The sculptures are so perfect and well-detailed! Goosebumps!