Where did all the good sculptors go?

The Trump administration wants to bolster traditional art. Their attempt to revive sculpture, a mass statue-building program, is doomed. America doesn’t have the sculptors, foundries, and workers to make hundreds of bronze or marble sculptures. North Korea would be in a much better position.

Sam and Samuel sit down with our Art Director, Atalanta, a sculptor by training, and talk all things sculpture. They discuss how art education has become de-skilled, how sculpture has always been the best art form for mass production and the surprising places the tradition has been kept alive. 

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Works in Progress is an online magazine devoted to new and underrated ideas about economic growth, scientific progress, and technology. Subscribe to listen to the Works in Progress podcast, plus Hard Drugs by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen.

Sam Bowman: Hi, welcome to
the Works in Progress podcast.

I'm Sam Bowman.

Today we're gonna talk about sculpture.

Now, if you're anything like me, your
first thought is probably statues.

They're interesting, there's a bit of
history in them, and they often look good.

But sculpture is so much more than that.

When you go to a city like Florence
or a city like Paris, sculpture is

the reason it feels so good to be in.

Sculpture isn't just statues; a
cathedral in some ways is like a

sculpture that you can go into.

Sculpture is signage.

Sculpture is beautiful drinking fountains.

Sculpture is the ornamentation that makes
buildings so beautiful in the first place.

So I'm joined today by Samuel Hughes an
editor at Works in Progress, who writes

a lot about cities, urbanism, design, and
beauty, and by Atalanta Arden-Miller, the

art director of Works in Progress, who
trained as a sculptor and is an artist.

We're gonna talk about everything from
the mass production of sculptures, to

the Greek development of sculpture and
its rediscovery in the Renaissance,

to modern Hindu temples, to drinking
fountains, and why it is that today

drinking fountains are plasticky bits
of rubbish when 100 years ago they were

some of the most beautiful things in
many of the cities they were built in.

So just kick us off,
Atalanta, just set the scene.

Tell us, why does sculpture
matter, why is it important?

What is it?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Today, sculpture
seems like the niche thing that you

have on a plinth, but if you look
back in human history, 28,000 years

ago, we have evidence of the first
clay-fired sculptures made by humans.

It takes another 10,000 years
for any evidence of humans using

that same clay to form bowls to
appear in the archeological record.

So the timeline tells us we've
actually cared about art and about

sculpture for a very, very long time.

Like you said, Sam, I think people
think of sculpture as being a nude

woman on a plinth, but actually if
you look at, for example, 19th century

buildings and think about why people
like them so much, it's because they

have these really complicated facades.

And what these facades have
on them is ornament, and what

ornament is, is sculpture.

Also like you mentioned, the shapes of
sort of public utilities like lampposts,

like benches, like trash cans, you
know, people often say when they come

to London, one of the things that they
love are these beautiful lampposts

with sort of fish spiraling around them
that you can see by the embankment.

That looks amazing because the person
who made it was a great sculptor.

So the changes in how people are taught to
sculpt, how we apply sculpture, have these

huge effects on our built environments.

And sculpture's interesting because
sculpture is this interaction of art

and science that's much more complex
than any other field of the fine arts.

You know, when you're making a
painting, you have to layer it correctly

or else the paint will fall off.

If you mess up a sculpture, it
could fall down and kill someone.

So the stakes of
sculpture are much higher.

Sam Bowman: And yeah, actually, the
thing that I am really interested

in, in sculpture is the fact that
it is so governed by economics and

engineering, unlike almost any other art.

And Samuel, architecture is the
only other art that I can think of

that where the forces of economics
and engineering are just as

important as they are in sculpture.

Samuel Hughes: It's certainly
extremely expensive, right?

So the ballpark from... in the
19th century, the ballpark is, it's

like if you want a life-size stick
of sculpture, that's probably a

lifetime income for most people.

So obviously that's impossible.

It's everything that they
earn in their entire life.

It's not their lifetime surplus income
or something, and today it's still

I mean, a couple of hundred thousand
pounds or something, like a very large

part of most people's lifetime income.

So it's extremely expensive, but
far more than most kinds of musical

performance, books, virtually any
kind of painting except for collector

paintings or these kinds of...

So in that sense, you've definitely got

- a proper sculpture, like a figure
sculpture, or for that matter,

architectural sculpture can't be
done without either some extremely

rich individual or an institution.

And in that sense, it becomes immediately
sort of political or civic in a way

that is not true for most studio arts.

Sam Bowman: On the other hand,
though as you've written, kind

of physical ornamentation can be
extremely cheap at the margin, right?

Because mass production is possible after
you've sort of designed the original one.

Samuel Hughes: Yeah.

I mean, it was partly Atalanta's
point, but if we get down to like, I

mean, the limit case of sculpture is
the little bit of trim on the top of

a bookshelf or something, which does
have to be designed by someone and

is kind of, I mean, it's the edge of
the definition, but it is sculpture.

So that in a sense is costing nothing.

So you do get... Or
costing very, very little.

So it's true.

It's- When you get to the, like edge
definition cases to little bits of

sculpture used in decoration, it sometimes
is a small cost, but any of the bigger

central cases, even facades of buildings
like a full stone cornice or something,

it's already an appreciable sum of
money, money that, uh... and certainly

when you get to the core case, like
statues, like straight away become, does

become important, does become expensive.

Sam Bowman: So last year, the US
government announced that it was

going to fund a pretty ambitious
kind of sculpture building program.

I think it was mostly statues, so
statue building program in this case.

Something like 250 statues, now kind
of putting aside the, or actually

I would like to hear your take on
the kind of merits of that, but the

kind of supply chain of producing
sculptures, statues to that scale.

Like, does it exist?

Like, what are they actually able
to buy, and how do you produce

650 statues on demand like that?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So there
are a few things that are really

interesting about the commission
for this Garden of American Heroes,

which is what this project is called.

It's 250 custom made freestanding
sculptures of American figures

ranging from sort of Hannah Arendt
to Milton Friedman to Shirley Temple.

Sam Bowman: Hannah Arendt?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yes.

It's a wild-

Sam Bowman: That isn't what
I would have expected about-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Also the
Jeopardy host Alex Trebek is in there.

Sam Bowman: I mean, that's
less surprising actually.

I'm more surprised that there is
a Trump administration initiative-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I know, I know

...
Sam Bowman: -to build a
statue of Hannah Arendt.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: The list
is sort of actually sort of

interestingly canny in some ways.

But what's not canny
about it is the timeline.

So they want to open this to coincide
with the 250th anniversary of America,

and the thing that's interesting about
this project as a reflection of why

sculpture is hard, is that if you're
looking at America versus North Korea,

North Korea is much more able to carry
out this project than America is.

You know, the giant foundry in North
Korea well, the biggest in the world

has huge amounts of skilled labor for
doing this kind of big factory work.

In America, because the tradition
of bronze figurative sculpture and

marble figurative sculpture has
become tiny, and there's just not

the actual industrial pipeline.

The foundries are too booked up.

There aren't enough
sculptors who can do this.

It's not really a project that can be
executed unless it's done by China.

Samuel Hughes: So how long...
Let me just break it down.

So how long does it take to
model a life size statue?

So stage one, for people who don't
know, is statues get modeled in

clay more or less by hand, right?

More or less still the same
methods as the ancient Greeks used.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah.

Samuel Hughes: And still basically
by one person with some assistants.

How long does that take?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I mean, it
ba- it depends how good the sculpture

is and what style you're going for.

So if you want really detailed,
really realistic, that's one thing.

If you want sort of sploshy,
rough shape that's another thing.

But you know, I'd say doing like a
great detailed sculpture, you're going

to be looking at multiple months.

The bigger it is, obviously
the longer it takes.

So you're thinking maybe three
to six months to make the figure.

And then there's a kind
of foundry process.

But you know, the really good
foundries are sort of booked up

often for two years in advance.

Samuel Hughes: For bronze sculptures?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: For bronze, yeah.

And then for marble it has
to be physically hacked.

Samuel Hughes: Right.

So if they want to do this,
how long is the timeline?

Sam Bowman: Well, 250th anniversary
of America is this year, isn't it?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yes.

Samuel Hughes: Yeah.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Oh,
they're, they're totally hosed.

Samuel Hughes: All right.

Sam Bowman: Okay.

Samuel Hughes: So they
would actually need-

Sam Bowman: I was, I was doing the
kind of mental maths- Oh, yeah ... I

was like, 'Oh, that's strange.

I thought 1776 was the-'

Samuel Hughes: I was
thinking that as well.

I was thinking I've got the date
of American independence wrong.

Atalanta Arden-Miller:
Yeah, the thing is it-

Samuel Hughes: So they'd,
they'd need thousands and

thousands of teams of sculptors-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yes.

Samuel Hughes: And to do it
in, within this calendar year,

which simply doesn't exist.

Sam Bowman: -Or to buy
them from North Korea.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah.

Samuel Hughes: Right!

Where they do in fact have thousands of
teams of sculptors who are already there.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

I mean, the thing that's kind of
interesting is that that's the-

Samuel Hughes: That would be
a great twist to the story

...
Atalanta Arden-Miller: A great plot twist.

Sam Bowman: And you're kind of saying
North Korea is the Taiwan of the...

Taiwan is to semiconductors what
North Korea is to bronze statues.

Atalanta Arden-Miller:
If you want to have a-

Samuel Hughes: Other countries can do
them a bit, a bit sort of, kind of, maybe.

Sam Bowman: Just about.

Samuel Hughes: But you want it done
properly, you have to go to North-

Sam Bowman: If you want a three
nanometer bronze sculpture then

you've got to go to Pyongyang.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Well,
basically if you want a giant

bronze man, you go to Pyongyang.

So when African dictators want a 50-foot
sculpture made, that's where they go to.

Sam Bowman: What's an example of
an African, sub-Saharan African

country that has bought a dud
bronze statue from North Korea?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Well, the
African Renaissance Monument in

Dakar is a great example of this.

It's about 170 feet tall giant
family sort of ascending to heaven.

But because it's done by these
North Korean artists, if you look

at their faces, they actually look
quite similar to North Koreans.

Sam Bowman: Oh, right, right.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So across
Africa you find these sort of giant

bronze monuments that have these
sort of very, you know North Korean

jawlines and cheekbone structures.

Sam Bowman: And so in terms of the
spending, like what are you, what are they

actually buying at the moment with... Like
if they're spending this money in, across

the United States and they're giving
these huge grants to tiny art schools-

What are they, what are they getting?

Are they ju- are they just grants
to kind of go off and do what they

want with it, or are they expecting
some return at the end of it?

Are they expecting a
statue to be delivered?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So with
the American project, they're

obviously expecting a statue.

You apply and they say, 'You know,
here's money to make Dr. Seuss.

We're expecting a Dr. Seuss by
July.' With the art school it's

basically a run and get bigger.

But if you think about trying to
incentivize people to join an art

school, having more money is great, but
also having the sort of gold stamp of

approval from this administration may
not be the best if you're trying to

recruit for an art school in Brooklyn.

So I think it's going to be a bit
of a mixed bag in terms of the

actual effect on the art world.

Sam Bowman: So help me understand
Samuel and then Atalanta, the kind of

mass production side of this, because
something that I was blown over by, bowled

over by reading your article, Samuel,
for Works in Progress, The Beauty of

Concrete- Was this idea, this concept
of a pointing machine, which is a kind

of machine that sculptors have used
historically to actually sculpt for them.

Samuel Hughes: I remember, in fact,
getting very skeptical comments in quite

a late draft saying, 'Are we really
confident this is true?' 'I feel we

need to have some more sources here.'
Thinking that Works in Progress was gonna

go out and be completely discredited-

Sam Bowman: Worrying-

Samuel Hughes: -with this insane claim.

Sam Bowman: Does Samuel... like worrying
I've discovered that Samuel gets all

his information from a hallucinating LLM
that's just sort of sold him this story.

But this is true, so explain what
these are, what the history is, and

then I'm interested in how widely
used this sort of approach is.

'Cause as you've described Atalanta,
you've described what I imagine, which is

it's an artist or a few artists working
hard on a particular thing, chisel and

chiseling away, and if they make one
wrong chisel, that's, the whole thing's

scrapped and they have to start again.

So I'd like to understand kind of what are
the options if you want to buy sculptures?

Samuel Hughes: So the naive picture
of what sculpting involves, it's the

man with the chisel hammering away
at a giant block of marble and then

slowly the form appears underneath it.

That's not always totally false.

So like when sculpture was first invented,
that probably was roughly what happened.

And in the Middle Ages,
that's roughly what happened.

But in most sophisticated sculptural
cultures, what they shift over to is

you model in clay, and modeling, it just
means you have the clay and you're like,

with your hands or with little wooden
implements, you're pushing and f- like

wrestling with this huge block of mud
for... Eventually you get a form you like.

The problem with clay is
it dries out and collapses.

So it's in, by nature,
an ephemeral material.

So very quickly you cast it in plaster.

Then you send your plaster off to
a specialized workshop, and either

they use one of various complicated
methods to cast a statue from it,

and the prestige material is bronze,
and the cheap materials are stuff

like you can, well, you just do it
in plaster again, or you can do it in

various kinds of concrete or whatever.

Or the alternative is you do it
in stone, with stone what they

use is something called a pointing
machine, which these have existed

since certainly Roman antiquity,
faded out of use in the Middle Ages.

They come back in the Renaissance.

They're completely dominant in
the 18th and 19th centuries.

So the pointing machine's a sort of
elaborate system of needles, and you

point the needles onto the model,
so you get an exact measure, like

you calibrate the whole system so
you know exactly how far from the

armature the statue is at this point.

And then you get your actual block of
marble and with a system of drills,

you work your way down to all of
the points, and probably it's used

for chiseling as well and so forth.

But the process at this stage
is completely mechanical.

It's not done by the sculpt- not,
most of it's not done by the sculptor.

The sculptor might do some
finishing work at the end.

Although the sculptors I've spoken to who
use this method will say, by the time you

get to the pointing machine's finished
and the mechanical process is finished,

you've got this object worth £250,000
in front of you- You want to be really

careful going at that with a chisel and
thinking like, 'Hmm, I think the nose

should look slightly different gonna...
ah, no, actually that it wasn't quite

right and I've now destroyed this £250,000
object and we're going to have to go

through the whole process again.' So it's-

Sam Bowman: So that is, there is a point
where my fear or my kind of anxie- my, my-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Oh, it's
totally, it's a huge problem

...
Sam Bowman: -anxiety is a problem.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah,
we've gotten around many things.

The fact that like marble chips,
has fault lines, fractures

easily- still a huge issue.

Samuel Hughes: It's a bit of a
nightmare material to work in.

But the f- like fun thing about, I mean,
if you're sort of interested in like

scalability and stuff like this, the
fun thing about this is for basically

the- not quite the whole history, but
most of the history of sculpture, it's

been intrinsically a repeatable material
where a repeatable art form either

it's cast, in which case you can cast
as many versions as you like, or it's

created through this mechanical process.

And it's like, in this sense has a
kind of surprising impurity, and it

also shows the ingenu- like the thing
that people worked out first how to

scale or how to get more productivity
out of was artistic creativity.

So your one artist can create a
particular architectural molding which

then gets reproduced 10,000 times
on a building and the artist only

had to think once about the molding.

And that's been true for centuries,
that they've been able to like massively

magnify the productivity of artists
in a way which is d- like not true

for any other stage of the production
process, which remained far more like

hand-based until the 19th century.

Indirect carving, like to me, it's
got a certain like emotionally

satisfying quality, this
ingenious way that people found

-
But it's been a source of... Since,
certainly since the 19th century,

it's been a source of controversy
because you get a certain kind of, I

mean, like a certain kind of person
who views this as sort of like a fake

sculpture, fake method, or like the
object that you actually end up with

doesn't have the sculptor's hand on it.

It may literally, in some cases, not
have been touched by the sculptor, or

if it has been touched, it's been like
a few tiny finishes right at the end.

It's nearly all been generated
through this mechanical process.

So there's like an alien, as they would
say, like an alienation between the

sculptor and the final sculpted object.

And this is one of these I don't - do
normal people have any idea about

that, but like that idea is very
potent in 20th century sculpture.

We call it, and these guys say, 'No,
we have to go back to the method in

the Middle Ages or in like archaic
antiquity and carve the stone by hand.'

It's called direct carving,
the direct carving movement.

And lots of 20th century sculptors
move back towards direct carving.

And this is one you could- it's
usually fairly ob- I mean, it's

usually fairly obvious just because
it becomes less sophisticated as soon

as you have to do direct carving.

It's like if you were to... you can't do
experimentation the same way if you were

to write a book using this incredibly
expensive kind of ink on an incredibly

expensive kind of parchment where if you
made any mistake, the whole thing has to

be scrapped and you have to start again.

So it's like really limits
you in that respect.

Sam Bowman: Well, like the the
Dogme 95 movement in cinema where

they only use natural light and
they avoided reshooting scenes too

many times and things like that.

Samuel Hughes: I tell you what it's
most like in cinema, it's like those

films where they, the whole film is one-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: One take.

... Samuel Hughes: Cut, one take.

Sam Bowman: Yeah, exactly.

Samuel Hughes: And they've got...
They did one in the Hermitage Museum

in St. Petersburg, which actually
is kind of a success, but they,

there are... I think they were told,
'You've got two tries.' and if you do

something seriously wrong in both those
tries, your whole film is over, and

everything you invested in this is gone.

And the final film does have
some minor defects in it.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: It is
one man spikes the camera.

Samuel Hughes: Right.

Atalanta Arden-Miller:
One, one viola player.

Samuel Hughes: So that would
be, that's direct carving,

and so what you'd probably-

Sam Bowman: And what kind of styles
like are these sort of modern styles?

Traditional styles?

Samuel Hughes: Eric Gill would be
a classic English example of this.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: But also if you
imagine a kind of Brâncuși sculpture.

There's a famous Brâncuși sculpture
called The Kiss, which basically looks

like a sort of square bit of stone with
a line running through that sort of

indicates two different people's faces.

The reason you can make that in
direct carving is that you carve

a block and then you like very
carefully chisel out a thin line.

But the sort of manual dexterity to do
that compared to, say like the sort of

Bernini leaves turning into flesh, they're
sort of totally different ballgames.

Samuel Hughes: The other thing you get
is generally a tendency towards a kind

of two-dimensionality; because if you're
direct carving, you can get your block

and you can do stuff like sketch on the
front of the block what it should look

like and work out how you're going to then
advance through the block in certain...

But what you can't do is design in three
dimensions, which you can with clay.

Like where you're walking around it as
you're designing it and changing it and

you're like, 'Hmm, no, that looked right
from the front, but actually from this

angle, that now creates a very weird
perspective onto it.' So the extreme

case would be some of the great Baroque
statuary where, the objects, you come

into the room and you think the thing,
the right way to experience this group,

this statue, is to walk round it.

There is no one point from which
I'm correctly enjoying this.

The correct way to enjoy it is through
movement, and through appreciate...

like, nobody has ever achieved
that with direct carving, even-

Sam Bowman: What about the Greeks?

Samuel Hughes: The Greeks-

Sam Bowman: Like the Parthenon,
the Parthenon marbles are

three-dimensional in that way.

Samuel Hughes: Their statuary is
supposed to be, it was a tympanum frieze.

They were standing in front of the,
like the in the triangular gable

at the front of a Greek temple.

Yeah or on the frieze, also part of the
entablature of the Greek temple And then

the statuary was, would just sit in front
of that or even be integrated into that

in some way and was always expected to
be appreciated just in one direction.

And then the temp- the statues that
stood inside Greek temples, again would-

Typically just in one direction through
the door, down in dim light onto this

seated or standing statue that was
standing in the middle of this chamber.

But very much not expected to be...
Like, they're kind of model cases.

it's the same as medieval
cathedral sculpture.

Well, it's often very good sculpture
in its way, but it sits in its niche on

a cathedral facade and is experienced
canonically in just one direction.

You could... Like, these were good
sculptures, sometimes great sculptures.

You can do great stuff
with direct carving.

But it does limit your options,
and it tends towards a lesser

degree of sophistication.

Sam Bowman: This, and I won't divert
us too much, but this is a sort of

recurring theme for me at Works in
Progress, which is the people you

are describing are basically what,
who, who I would call upper normies.

People, people kind of, people
who like Radiohead and you

know, people who kind of-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I like Radiohead.

Sam Bowman: Nothing wrong with that,
but in music, this battle has been

between rockists who believe very much
in authenticity and musicians should

write their own songs, you should
listen to albums, things like that,

and poptimists who think you should
only judge a song by how it sounds.

Doesn't matter what the
provenance of it is.

And and thus pop music is actually
massively underrated because it's

fine that it's completely inauthentic.

But I'm always delighted to find out
that the kind of ornate styles that

I quite like in sculpture and in the
visual arts are in fact much more

like pop music than they are like-

Samuel Hughes: They were normie styles.

Sam Bowman: They're normie styles.

They are, they are in fact much
more mass-produced, much more, uh-

Samuel Hughes: We're surprised Thorvaldsen
and Canova and Rodin to be told this, but-

Sam Bowman: Nice and, nice
and alienated from the artist.

That's, that's what I...
It's exactly what I want.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Although I will
say in defense of direct carving, the most

famous sculptor of all time, Michelangelo,
did his carving with direct carving.

And we can see this because if you look
at his unfinished work, like his Dying

Slaves, you can see him sort of chipping
them out of the marble And also the Greek

culture that sort of developed the first
freestanding figures through their koros

figures, which are these sort of early
archaic standing people where they've

finally managed to figure out how to carve
out the space between the legs, which

took thousands of years of work to try.

It's really hard.

they seem to have basically gotten to
direct carving, and then pointing seems

to take off basically when there becomes
massive Roman demand for Greek sculpture.

And so they're like, 'Oh, God, we've
got to mechanize things very quickly.'

And basically you see archeological
evidence of pointing machines at the

point where the market is saying 'You
need to produce loads now, here.'

Sam Bowman: Right.

Samuel Hughes: Nearly all of
the statues surviving from

antiquity are Roman copies, right?

Not, not all, but, like...

Atalanta Arden-Miller:
A lot, a lot of them.

They just made a lot of copies.

Sam Bowman: So today, Atalanta, as a
sculptor, kind of talk us through the

business model of being a sculptor or the
kind of economic life of being a sculptor.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I studied as a
sculptor, but now I work as a painter,

and that's partly because I like both
mediums, and when I came to the end

of my degree, I realized that all the
sculptures I hadn't sold, I had to throw

away, and all the paintings I hadn't sold,
I could roll up into a tube and keep.

And I thought like, oh, it's actually very
stupid working in a medium where the work

you make is completely uncompressible.

There are some quite nice
examples of sculptures from

history being doomed by this.

So Umberto Boccioni, who made the famous
futurist sculpture of the man sort of

striding forward, it's sort of bronzey.

He looks like he's turning into waves.

When he died age 30 from falling off
a horse, he had this huge sculpture

studio full of unsold work, and
basically he gave it to a family member,

they gave it to someone else, they
paid the storage bills for 10 years,

and they were like, 'No, screw this.

We need to throw this all away.'

So 90% of the work he made got scrapped,
and sculptors will often have to

basically destroy huge volumes of their
work because storing it is so hard,

and the only people who want to buy
it are people who have space for it.

And especially now that in
cities like New York and London,

housing is so constrained.

You know, most wealthy people
can fit a painting on their wall.

You have to be so rich to fit a
sculpture in your house in New York.

So you're just sort of working in
this medium that people don't really

like because it's not that colorful.

You can't tell a story that easily
because if you're thinking about telling

a narrative, in order to sort of tell
a story in a sculpture, you need to

have one figure over here doing one
thing and then one figure over there,

and then they need to sort of imply a
relationship, whereas like in a painting,

you can sort of do it all very easily.

So it's just it's a very...

it's an interesting art form because
in a way I think public sculpture

can be the kind of greatest, most
impressive, most long-lasting

product a civilization can produce.

You know, when you think about monuments
of the past, the great monuments

are mostly architectural sculptural
pieces precisely because it lasts.

But it's the art form that is
sort of the most economically

disincentivized by the culture to make.

Samuel Hughes: Even in the 19th century,
sculptors, so the jobs they liked doing

were the more, the higher status ones,
were the more pure art ones where they

were doing scenes from mythology or
from history, and there was a narrative

element, at least implicit in them,
and they had a greater scope for

expres- but the bread and butter of the
industry was architectural sculpture,

funeral monuments, and busts, right?

Those were the things where actually
95% of the jobs were those things.

And you... Some people specialized
in those things and did only those.

Like lots of standard architectural
carving was done by people who wouldn't-

maybe wouldn't have been called sculptors.

They would've been called architectural

carvers or something.

But even the top guys would often
have to spend quite a lot of their

time 'Ah, it's another bust.'
Businessman wants a bust, doing a bust.

And you know, they often obviously
produced some really wonderful

portraiture, but it they too found
it a bit frustrating, but they had a

bigger... I suppose they had a bigger
market of routine work to fall back

on to keep them in the industry while
they waited for the rare, really

exciting commissions to come up.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

There's no functional routine work
that sculptors today can really do.

You know, you can maybe
do like a bank facade.

Samuel Hughes: Very,
very, very occasionally.

Sam Bowman: So it's, it seems very
clear, but correct me if I'm wrong,

that kind of public sculpture has
both declined in quantity objectively

and subjectively declined in quality.

For example, you go to Trafalgar Square
in London, and the fourth plinth is

the empty plinth reserved for kind of
new art, new art and things like that.

And it's usually not just sort of not in
line with the rest of Trafalgar Square,

which is fine for- that's the point.

but it's usually pretty bad.

You know, that recently they had a... Not
recently, about five years ago, they had a

kind of cupcake with- that was supposed to
look a bit like a turd with a drone on it

that was supposed to look like a bit of a,
like a fly, and it was like a commentary

on surveillance or something like that.

And you know, either it's kind of trite
or it's just kind of bland, but it's

almost always pretty ugly and plasticky.

It's very plasticky.

And again, looking at London, there's been
a big rollout of drinking fountains, and

they're really ugly, kind of plastic blue.

It's like a blue drop of water.

Really simple.

and I assume cost is a big factor in
the latter rather than just taste.

Although Samuel, I know you, you often
think that's kind of an over- it's

overblown, the idea that cost is the
thing that's governing these things.

But drinking fountains I am pretty
interested in because something that

you don't really appreciate, I think,
when you're walking through a city

like Paris versus a city, like a newer
city, I won't name any names, is just

how many small details that are kind
of left over from periods when they

did very, very thoughtful and very,
very detailed drinking fountains.

Samuel Hughes: Fun, fun detail of this
is, I'm- Atalanta can give the serious

answer, but I'm going to give a fun fact.

The Parisian drinking fountains,
lots of them come from one person

an Englishman called Wallace.

And who- the same Wallace who
endowed the Wallace Collection.

He had loved Paris and spent time
there, and one of the things he

spent his fortune on was sponsoring
very beautiful fountains for Paris.

The Wallace Fountains, of which there are
now hundreds or thousands in Paris, and

they've spread to some extent elsewhere.

In those days, it was a really big
deal because they often brought clean

drinking water to people for the first
time, so they saved loads of lives.

But even today, they're still like
a graceful ornament to the city.

Sam Bowman: Well then maybe that helps
to answer my question, which is do

these things have the same root cause?

Is there a taste-based

change that people are just generally
less keen on public sculpture?

Or is there an economics issue that there
is just less money for public sculpture,

thus what we get less of it, and what
we get is simpler and cheaper and not

as good or are these just disconnected?

Or maybe I'm just wrong.

Maybe the premise is wrong.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: A bit of both.

When you think about the elaborate
Victorian cast iron stuff like a water

fountain, I think lots of people look
at that and they think, 'Oh, they

made it sort of elaborate because
it was hard to make it elaborate.'

Actually, the opposite's true.

When you're doing mass casting one of the
really tricky things is disguising seams.

If you have a really elaborate facade
that goes in and out, it's actually

much more easy to cast it a bit more
cheaply and a bit more quickly because-

Samuel Hughes: Is that so?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: -the
complexity will disguise the seams.

If you look at the extremely sort of
high-end work that was being made at the

end of the 19th century one of the really
desirable things would be extremely simple

beaten metal objects because in order
to make a sort of beautifully cast you

know, let's say toast rack, the metalwork
to get the metal to look sort of elegant

and smooth and simple was so much more
complex than these really sort of fancy,

chunky, covered in seahorses public works.

In the same way, when you look at those
kind of clean, plasticky things, it's

partly designed that way so that it,
rainwater doesn't stay on it, so it's

easy to clean bird poo off the top.

So art has always sort of been a
reflection of like what has been sort of

easy or hard to manufacture industrially.

So to one extent we do it now
because that's now the easy and

cheap thing to produce, and the
other thing used to actually have

these benefits that we can't see.

But also people produce
what they're trained to do.

Basically, no one today in product
design is trained to design complex

naturalistic forms because of the kinds
of art schools and design schools we have.

So we're only going to get the kind
of work people are taught to make.

Sam Bowman: So tell us about that then.

Tell us about the training that
a sculptor or an artist gets,

and what determines what they...
Like, what, what determines that?

Where where is that coming from?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So I'd actually
like to talk about this from the

perspective of how architects are trained,
because I think architecture's a neat

example because you sort of think if
you're an architect you sort of want to be

able to make the building, put the windows
in the right place, and then you can work

with sculptors and painters and interior
designers, and they can do the rest.

You might think that that would be the
framework for how architecture was done.

But that's not at all true.

Basically, before the 19th century,
you effectively couldn't become an

architect if you couldn't also sculpt
and draw to a really high level.

So if you wanted to graduate in
architecture from the École des

Beaux-Arts, part of your graduation test
would be - you'd be given eight hours and

you'd be told, 'Model a complex bas-relief
sculpture that could adorn a building.'

You'd be given eight hours and told
you got to do a charcoal drawing of a

beautiful Greek head, and then you'd
have to do these kind of meticulous

hand-drawn relief plans, and also draw
from memory all five Doric orders.

Samuel Hughes: Lots of drawings
of human, the human figure, right?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah,
huge amounts of figure drawing.

Samuel Hughes: Somehow proper
understanding of architecture is dependent

upon an understanding of the human body.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

Samuel Hughes: It's a quite
an intriguing thing that they-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Like Palladio,
arguably sort of one of the most

famous architects, apprenticed
as a sculptor and worked for the

first 15 years doing stone carving,
famous architects of the Renaissance

include again, Michelangelo, Bernini.

So even architects used to have this
really deep understanding of sculptural

form, which is why older buildings often
look like they're sort of complete works

of art in terms of sort of every facet
being so considered and the sculptures

and the niches interacting so nicely.

Basically, when you have the
sort of spread of modernism in

the early 20th century, all art
schools across all disciplines go

through this massive de-skilling.

So it used to be that if you wanted to
graduate from the top art school in the

world, which was the École des Beaux-Arts,
Paris, you would have to do these insane

tests where you'd be basically locked
in a room, given a mythological theme,

and then asked to produce an excellent
drawing upon that theme with period

accurate props, referencing all the
correct mythology, perfect anatomy,

sandal straps in the right place.

If you look at the curriculum of Yale,
Yale is the most important art school

to go to if you want to have a career.

If you look at the 100 most successful
artists in America in terms of

sales, 20% of them went to Yale.

Which is really outsized
considering they only have about

25 graduating students a year.

If you look at the Yale MFA core
curriculum, do you want to guess the

number of sort of practical hands-on
classes they have to take as a percentage?

Samuel Hughes: How many as a
percentage of their classes?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah.

Samuel Hughes: 50%?

I mean, you've used the structure- Yes
... you've used it- probably less than that.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yes, yes.

Sam Bowman: So I'm gonna say, say zero.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: It's zero.

Yeah, yeah.

So there's, it's entirely
crit-based So if you're going to-

Sam Bowman: Entirely crit-based?

What does that mean?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So basically
the way art school works now, even at

the undergraduate level for the most
part, although there are exceptions,

is you basically, you go to school,
you have sort of lectures on art

theory, like people will sort of
say 'Here's an lecture on how Dada

relates to you know, Albert Einstein.'

And then you make works of art by yourself
with no supervision and no instruction.

You meet together, and as a group
led by a student, you discuss why

this work of art is bad or good.

Samuel Hughes: Your work?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Your work.

And every... You discuss
everyone else's work.

So these crits will often
last for sort of eight hours.

So you might spend two hours discussing
someone's painting, but the discussion

will obviously and necessarily has to be
basically theoretical because let's say I

present a painting, and in my class no one
else is painting and maybe you're doing

carving, maybe you're a photographer.

Well, you're not going to tell me, 'Oh,
I think you should've defined your shadow

shapes more clearly and you have a better-

Sam Bowman: Or use a smaller chisel.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

- Using a smaller chisel because
you're not, that's not your medium.

So basically, the shared medium
becomes concept and becomes thought.

Samuel Hughes: That's very interesting.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: And that's why
if you look at artists today, they're

often quite good at talking about their
work, at least within the art world

context, but the skills you learn in
art school are all from the shop techs.

So it's like the guy who the school has-

Samuel Hughes: The what?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So schools
will hire super skilled makers who

will actually know loads of stuff, and
these people work in the wood shop.

So what happens is you have your idea.

Like let's say I want to make
a coffin with movable legs.

And then you'll go to your shop
tech and you'll say, 'Shop tech, I

want to make this,' and then he'll
have this amazing background of say

working in a Hollywood prop factory.

And he'll be like, 'Okay.

Well, this is how you need to make it.'
He'll help you make the object, and then

the actual reception and discussion,
evaluation, of the object will all

be done by the professors, who are
the actual artists with real careers.

Samuel Hughes: And where
does he get his training?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So if you want
to look at where the school, where the-

Samuel Hughes: Kind of on
the, on the job working for...

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So people have
this idea that skilled art training

disappeared because of modernism.

That's not quite true.

It went into, A, communist countries.

So China and Russia have intact
artistic traditions in this way.

And then it also went into
the entertainment arts.

So if you want to look for the best
sculptors on the planet, in the 1990s,

in America, sorry, not on the planet, you
want to look at the Hollywood prop shops.

Samuel Hughes: So it's
north Korea, hollywood.

There's, the other-

Sam Bowman: And it's the communist
countries because of socialist realism.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

Sam Bowman: So they preserve this kind of
realist style that died out in the West.

Samuel Hughes: The other thing, there
are some other interesting cases, right?

So is it not true that
cars are still model...

I mean, at first they used to be modeled
in clay, and they're still modeled in,

maybe not exactly in clay, but like foam.

Maybe not exactly by hand, but
maybe by hand, certainly in a

kind of... I mean, basically cars
are works of applied sculpture.

Many totally normal people still
love cars and think that...

I mean they obviously are in their way
beautiful objects So there's another case

where it, a kind of applied sculpture
Is still there all the time in everyday

life, popular with ordinary people
all the time, presumably devised by

extremely skilled people working, like
massively valuable skills but unnoticed,

and like completely unconsidered in
art schools as being part of the modern

sculptural tradition or something.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: There's another
fun reason about why the communist

countries tend to have such good art
schools, and that's partly because

these days I think a lot of people think
about art as being this combination

of sort of manual skill and theory.

But you can also think about
art as being basically just

a sort of manual craft skill.

And if you think like, how do you
become world-class at something that

you do with your body, like violin, like
tennis, you have to start really young.

So in North Korea, when they're selecting
the people who go into these foundries,

they start picking them age five, and then
age five you get put into an art school.

Same thing with Russia.

By age 10, you're in a specialist school.

And then historically in the
apprenticeship system, you're working

sort of full-time doing art stuff often by
the time that you're in your early teens.

Because if you want to become
incredibly manually dexterous, you

just need to insert loads and loads
of labor hours sort of between the

ages of sort of like eight and 17.

And if you miss that window, you will
never be able to do certain things

with your body because you just
can't build the same muscle memory.

Samuel Hughes: Yes, I've been to... People
have said that to me about architecture.

they... If you look at, like modern
classical architects, often the

work looks, I mean, some of them are
great, but often it looks a bit off.

They haven't they're not quite able to
do it like 19th century architects were.

And one thing people say, well,
remember they all start, they didn't

do it when they were teenagers because
they've had a normal formal education.

Then they didn't do it at
architecture school because

they weren't taught classical
architecture at architecture school.

They then self-taught or were taught
in some classical firm in their 20s.

Imagine you're learning
Japanese starting in your 20s.

You'd always have an accent, and you
might never really exactly get it.

Like, yes, you could learn to do it sort
of, but you would always, like Japanese

people listening to you would be like,
'This sounds kind of weird in some way.

This has, he hasn't exactly got a proper
intuitive feeling for this.' Whereas

the guys in the 19th century were
often, I mean, it varied from country

to country, some countries they did
have formal systems like in France, but

they were often starting very young,
often apprenticed while they were, when

they were 14-year-olds or something.

It was really intuitive by the time
that they were at the age where

now they would just be starting to
learn this stuff for the first time.

So it's, yeah, another
example of the same thing.

Sam Bowman: So the education
you've described, is that specific

to Yale because it's so elite?

I mean, there are in fact like lots
of talented designers and artists out

there who presumably some, at some
point, some of them have been trained

and they're not all self-taught.

So like how representative
is that of other art schools?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So there's
definitely a kind of Elite premium

where the most respected schools tend
to be the sort of very hand very crit

based ones like Yale, like Columbia.

But actually, if you want to really
learn skills, you sort of have to go to

a less sort of semi applied art school.

So places that teach graphic
design, illustration.

Rhode Island School of Design produces
a lot of really successful painters who

came from the illustration department.

And so there's been this
kind of interesting-

Samuel Hughes: A friend of mine in London
went to City and Guilds, which is half

like restoration, conservation stuff and
half a fine arts department, but obviously

one that's got more adjacency to people
who are like actually working out, oh,

we've got an eighteenth century carpet.

How can we make it look good again?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

There's actually been this kind of
nice movement in painting that's

happened in the past sort of ten
years, where previously these skills

were sort of considered so toxic.

As soon as you can sort of draw
nicely, it makes your work look naff.

And if you're a painter, what you're
trying to do when you make a painting,

if you want to be in the art market,
you aren't trying to make something that

looks like the best possible painting.

You're trying to make something
that definitely doesn't look

like an illustration, because
once it's in the fine art market,

it has worth as an art object.

If it starts looking like an illustration,
that's sort of moving it from this

category where it could be worth hundreds
of thousands of dollars to being this kind

of like cheap applied art no one wants.

But partly because of changes in
preference in terms of like what's

cool, a bunch of people who train as
illustrators have now come into painting,

and they're dominating the sort of
new contemporary figurative art world.

And it's actually because
there's been this change in

terms of being more interested in
artistic identity or in stories.

So basically, like loads of Asian
girls make paintings about being Asian

and female and because they're doing
something that's sort of culturally

accepted, they can do it with a really
high level of skill and people still

like it, and they don't write it
off as being bourgeois illustration.

Sam Bowman: So what you're describing
is they're kind of vibe coding their

art and nothing wrong with that.

I mean, vibe do whatever you
can to get your thing made.

It's a shame.

Presumably, they're not that keen
on using AI to execute on their art.

But I mean, given how conceptual
their value add seems to be, it

would seem like a natural kind
of step for them would be to-

Samuel Hughes: Interesting.

Sam Bowman: Rather than having a sort
of Hollywood prop hand do the work

for them to just have a computer like
an AI model, do the work for them.

I assume a lot of them are not
going to be that excited about that

prospect, but that does seem like an
obvious complementary tool for them.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Well, I think-
The most striking version of the kind

of last mile problem with AI is that
ultimately when you're making a painting,

you're making a physical canvas which
has been covered by pigments And

I think lots of people think like,
'Oh, AI can make like artwork.' So

you're like, well, it can make, it
makes things that are flat images.

Most people view paintings as flat
images, but fundamentally you still

have to like actually make the painting.

And so lots of famous painters have
their paintings made by assistants.

But you still have to get
someone to apply the paint to it.

Samuel Hughes: Really, really,
really good assistants are required.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

And like once, like if you're
already having really good

assistants, you might as well kind
of like take the photo yourself.

Samuel Hughes: So as with so many
cases with AI, it's like, yeah, yeah,

it will happen, but there needs to
also be a solution to robotics first.

Sam Bowman: Yeah.

Yeah.

That's very, very on message, Samuel.

So that's the present day, and you've
talked about the kind of classical world,

but how did sculpture actually get good?

And kind of what's been the technological
evolution of how we do sculpture?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So what I'll
talk about is sort of how sculpture got

good again, which is the Renaissance.

And what you see there is a advance in the
sort of technology of realism, if we can

call it that's driven by sort of, let's
call it like industry cross-pollination.

So what you have is you have a long,
amazing tradition of medieval sculptures

making these big cathedrals, which
are functionally just like giant

sculptures you can walk around in.

And then in the Renaissance, you have
this renewed interest in trying to

make sculptures of the naturalism and
of the quality of the Greek things

that are being dug up at the time.

But in order to sort of make that leap
from Gothic sculptures, which have their

own beauty, but don't really look like
humans, and also don't have the kind of

internal symmetry that Greek sculpture
has to that kind of work, the thing

that does that is actually goldsmiths.

So if you look at the famous Renaissance
sculptors like Donatello, like Verrocchio,

they all trained as goldsmiths.

And the reason is because when you are
doing things as a goldsmith, you model

in wax, so you sort of add little bits,
and that means that your work can be

really iterative, and you can go for a
very high degree of naturalism because

you're not concerned about chipping off
the block and ruining the whole thing.

The other thing is... And this may
sound a bit dumb, but it's true.

When you're doing goldsmith work,
you use really tiny tools, and you're

used to being incredibly precise.

So what happened is all these goldsmiths
who moved into stone sculpture took

the sort of naturalism using these
really naturalistic wax models from

goldsmithry, but they also took the
extreme attention to sort of surface

and detail and form that they had
used in goldsmithry to sculpture.

Samuel Hughes: Why?

So wax, wax models are pretty
- have mostly been unusual in

subsequent centuries, right?

People usually work in clay?

Does clay have any advantages over wax?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: No, wax is better.

Basically, if you're doing a big
clay sculpture it dries over time

and it crumbles, and it's heavy.

Wax is nice bec- basically, wax is a
bit more expensive, so if you want to

make a really big sculpture, modeling
it in clay is much faster, 'cause with

wax you have to melt it and apply it.

Oh, right.

Samuel Hughes: Yes, it's
constantly going hard.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: But also with
terracotta you can fire it, so what

my sculptor friend Judy Fox makes
life-size freestanding sculptures out

of fired clay, but it means that she
has to sculpt and fire the knees and

then the toes, and the elbows and sort
of attach it all in different pieces.

Samuel Hughes: You can, so
you can actually have... You

can cast sculpture in wax.

There are a small number of
famous sculptors who work

mostly, or whose sculptures were
ultimately mostly wax casts.

Right.

And then there's the whole other
phenomenon of wax, wax effigies;

The Madame Tussauds phenomenon.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Rodin and Degas
both worked primarily in wax, and you

can say that actually their wax models
are kind of in some ways nicer than the

the marble sculptures produced otherwise.

And Madame Tussauds is a
really interesting example,

'cause if you look at-

Samuel Hughes: There's also,
there's that 20th century Italian

sculptor, what's his name?

This is... I'll remember it later.

But where the final product is also in
wax, as opposed to modeling in wax and

then casting it into bronze or whatever.

. Those look odd, right?

They're curious creations.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I mean, two
popular or at least famous examples

of wax sculptures that are still
really popular are Madame Tussauds.

Although these days they're
actually cast in silicon.

Samuel Hughes: Oh, really?

Oh, that's disappointing.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah ... and
then also Maurizio Cattelan,

the guy who did the banana.

He did a really realistic sculpture
of the pope being hit by a meteorite.

Those were all produced by an
Italian artist who basically

makes the work for him.

Samuel Hughes: And we've been
able to do this for ages, right?

So the Westminster Abbey has a few
old wax effigies from centuries

ago which are... You could mistake
them for actual human beings.

They're painted, they're
perfectly detailed.

Yeah.

They put them in clothes, and if you
casual glance, you really do a double

take and 'oh, wait, that is a wax model.'

Sam Bowman: Why don't
they melt when it's hot?

Samuel Hughes: Uh, they must carefully
keep them in the shade, right?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah, wax has
different melting temperatures, so you

can get really hard wax and soft wax.

Samuel Hughes: Oh, right.

Why is it that you can get wa-
such a lifelike quality in wax?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So it's
partly because of this quality

called subsurface scattering.

So if you look at human skin especially
sort of paler skin, because it's semi,

it's sort of slightly transparent
so the light passes through it and

then diffuses, you can imagine seeing
someone's ears with the sun behind them.

They look a little bit pink.

Because wax is semi-translucent, the
light goes through the wax then emerges.

Samuel Hughes: Oh, so a
gentle flesh-like glow.

Atalanta Arden-Miller:
It feels like human skin.

And silicon does the same thing.

Samuel Hughes: Marble
does to a limited extent.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly,
and that's partly why marble has

that sort of nice soft, soft look

Samuel Hughes: Yeah, I thought that
when I was in Washington DC recently.

Saw a city, like it's the only
city in the world that has huge

quantities of marble like that.

Like no European city has loads
of marble, we just use limestone.

But it, I thought like, wow,
it's the thing people say about

marble, the soft glow, the
luminosity, that is actually true.

That isn't just a thing people say.

I was really like, wow, it
is a beautiful material.

It wasn't, it wasn't just a scam.

So Madame Tussauds has a
kind of eerie quality, right?

One of the reasons why people want to go
to Madame Tussauds is to be spooked by it?

And that, as I was saying before,
like that's also true with Westminster

Abbey, like there's a weird quality
to the old waxwork effigies.

They had some function in stuff
like coronation ceremonies,

which was supposed to, is a
slightly folk religious character.

Is that a more general pattern with
very lifelike or with multicolored,

with polychromatic sculpture?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I think one of
the things that's quite striking is

that as soon as you paint eyes into a
sculpture, it functions a little bit

more like a doll than like a sculpture.

Like technically, Madame Tussauds is
actually the most visited sculpture museum

in the world, but no one thinks of those
things as art because they're so lifelike

that you relate to them as a person.

Thinking of ev- by now it's
pretty common knowledge that most

ancient Greek and Roman art was
painted as well as being sculpted.

And when we see the contemporary
versions in museums, they

look sort of garish and awful.

This is, I think, mostly because
the people who are painting

them are painting them badly.

If you think about the quality of
sculpting that the Greek sculptors

had, it was this immense lineage,
these people who've been learning

since they were five how to do it.

There's no reason to think that
the people who were painting the

sculptures at the time didn't have
a similarly built up deep knowledge.

You know, they probably were painting
them at standards basically unimaginable

to us because we don't have generations
of people who've grown up apprenticed

painting sculptures really, really well.

So when the museums do the
versions, they're going to look

pretty awful, and that will make
them feel kind of extra creepy.

But I would argue that they
actually feel, even when well

done, still quite frightening.

Samuel Hughes: It's interesting because
they, the answer... So there's, we've

got two unhappy extremes here, right?

One is the weird oversaturated
matte museum restorations of Greek

sculptures and those creepy bizarre.

The other is Madame Tussauds, which
is extremely impressive from a

technical point of view, but also
and intentionally creepy and bizarre.

And then we have the hypothetical sweet
spot of statuary, which is done with

more taste and refinement than the
restorations, but not with exactly the

like 'Oh my God, that's a man standing
over... No, wait, hang on, he's made of

wax.' That which... And that is possible.

I mean, although all the painted
antiques, or virtually all of them

have been lost, they, we do have
painted statues from Baroque Europe,

some from the Renaissance, some from
Japan, some from India, which, which

sometimes are appealing to us, right?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I think people
are incredibly uncreative when it comes

to imagining how good things can be.

And there's we see this sort of,
over and over again in technology.

We're like, ooh, it's actually very nice
not having to sort of pull the stalks of

wheat out of the fields with our hands.

But the same is true of art.

Like, if you basically... Let's say
the big flood came, like the Futurists

wanted it to, through the museums and
sort of washed away pre-20th century

painting, and then you looked at sort
of like a photo-real painting by Chuck

Close, and you ask someone 'Could
there be a better painting than this?'

They might be like,
'Oh, there couldn't be.

This is so realistic.

They've painted all of the pores.' But
then after you show them a Vermeer

painting, you'd be like, 'Oh, not only
does it look like a person, but the

actual calligraphy of each brush stroke
is itself beautiful.' And so I think

just because we can't do it doesn't
mean that they weren't able to make

this sort of amazing artistic product.

It's just that we've lost the technology,
and this happens all the time in the

field of the arts, and it's this sort of
slightly sad inverse story of progress

where I very much feel like I'm sort
of scuttling around the ancient Roman

ruins being like, 'Oh back in, back in
the day, people were taught so well,

and now we're just sort of scrabbling
in the dirt to recreate something.'

Samuel Hughes: Right.

So it's a kind of technology that
has to be borne by, transmitted to

individuals, borne by individuals,
which can't be completely written

down, where, like... and thus can
be additive because individuals can

a tr- that's how a tradition works.

People train their pupils, and
their pupils then get some stuff

from them and can also add to it.

But it can also be kind of cut off, and
then it's extremely difficult to recover,

and you look at the books they produced
and think, 'No, this is only giving us

some of the information that we need.

I can't get all the skills that I need
just from looking at the drawings or

diagrams that they produced,' let's say.

Sam Bowman: We published an article,
of course, on this recently in

Works in Progress, and the author's
speculation was not that it was a

technical limitation, but that... or not
necessarily a technical limitation, but

that the museum curators, or at least
the kind of originators of this style of

paint, of this sort of modern approach
to painting them were kind of either

trolling the public, kind of having
fun, or maybe trying to make a point

about the non-universality of beauty.

You know, the... If it was the case that
the Greeks, who we think of as being

very cold and austere, especially the
Romans as well as the Greeks, because

all we have is these marble statues.

They... It's not just
that they painted them.

They painted them in
incredibly garish ways.

You know, maybe that implies something
about actually beauty isn't universal,

and actually there are completely
culturally contextual things that, that

change what we appreciate and what we
don't, which has troubling, I would

say, implications for other things.

It's also possible that they are trying
to accentuate the strangeness of it.

You know, not, they're not trolling,
and they're maybe not making a political

point, but they're just highlighting the
difference between or the gulf between our

picture of the Roman and Greek worlds and
the reality of the Roman and Greek worlds.

But I think what you're talking about
maybe... I mean, can it explain... Some

of the... I mean, some of them look
like cel-shaded video game characters.

Like, kind of Zelda Wind Waker and
they look really, really, really crude.

Like I think an unskilled person could
do better if they were trying to.

So I'm not... I don't know if how...
I mean, the technical explanation

maybe doesn't go that far, but it
does seem to explain quite a lot.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I mean, I
think they are a little bit right, in

that I think if you look at what most
cultures do to make things look fancy,

it is covering them in bright colors.

You know, bright, colorful things
being the kind of- it's the, it's

the primary method of decoration
that human society seem to use.

So to some extent speaking, speaking
as a sculptor, like I'm a little

bit pleased that they all got... had
the color washed off, 'cause I do

think they just look better that way.

Sam Bowman: No, they do.

Yeah, they do look much better.

Yeah.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: But they are
trying to make a point about... They

are trying to sort of shock us a bit.

But then this also gets to
changing views and conservation.

So you might think that, like
oh, it's fi... Like whatever, art

schools change, it's all theory now.

But that actually has all these
interesting trickle-down effects

where now if you go to a conservation
course, if you're learning to be a

museum conservator, like literally
working on paintings removing

varnish, you're going to be spending
at least half of your time writing

essays on theories of conservation.

And if you're doing a conservation
project for a muse to clean a

sculpture you probably have to write
a report that's around 60 pages long.

Like, the Parthenon cleaning
report was 62 pages.

And so a lot of your time as a
curator... sorry, as a conservator,

is basically documenting things,

which means that the time to develop
the skills that you need to execute

your craft really, really well, it's
getting shrunk and shrunk and shrunk.

Which is partly to go back to the
Russia thing why a lot of people

like hiring Russian conservators
because they trained as artists.

They've known how to sort of use their
hands very carefully from age 10 onwards,

and they just have the kind of the
creative chops to do a really good job.

Samuel Hughes: So you know a thousand
times more about this than I, but didn't

you say that in conservation schools now
they will be strongly advised against

speculative restoration so that a lot of
these restorations of Greek sculptures

would have been- we have actual evidence
of surviving pigments, but they're only

the lowest layers of the pigment, and
you should not speculate about what

they would- because they were artists-
have done with the surface finish.

You should just restore based upon
what we have direct evidence of.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I mean, even
the word used there is change from

restoration to conservation- sort of
tells the whole, tells the whole story.

The idea now is basically you have
a highly damaged object and you hold

it in stasis, and because that way
you're at least not making it worse.

Samuel Hughes: But- There are
remarkable cases, right, like the

Aegina Marbles that in Munich, where
when they discovered them, and it's

a very key group of Greek sculptures.

When they discovered them in the 19th
century, they still thought of themselves,

like those were done by artists.

We are artists some of us,
and artists doing essentially

the same thing as these guys.

Obviously, they would have wanted us
to repair their statues if, when they

were found, and we want them to be
present in the best possible form.

So they got Thorvaldsen, greatest
sculptor of the age, to restore all of

the Aegina Marbles, and he speculatively
but mostly quite plausibly worked out,

'Oh, so they've lost a hand there.

Obviously, there ought to be a hand.

Obviously, ought to be a head.

Ought to be...' And he recreated them as
a perfect finished group, and they then

stayed in that form until the 1960s,
I think, when the modern restoration

conservation orthodoxy had come in,
when the Munich authorities then knocked

off all of the Thorvaldsen completed
bits and returned, I don't want to

say restored, but returned the group
to roughly the condition in which it

was found in the early 19th century.

And I mean, even that I now wonder today
if the Thorvaldsen group had somehow

survived to the 2020s, they might have
said, 'No, the Thorvaldsen additions are

now part of the heritage object.' Yes.

But in the '60s, 19- the 19th century
was still close enough that it doesn't

count as part of the historical object.

It counts as a modern accretion, and you
have to get rid of the modern accretion.

That, I do think that's like a
fundamentally different way of relating

to a heritage object where you're
relating to it as a heritage object

and not as a work of art and its value
is the fact that it's extremely old.

Not primarily the fact that it's a
beautiful object, and so you want

to preserve the authentic old object
rather than making it as beautiful as

possible or as complete as possible.

Sam Bowman: Aren't there amazing parallels
here with heritage buildings and the

preservation of heritage buildings?

Samuel Hughes: Yeah.

Oh, yeah, same movements in play.

Absolutely.

Sam Bowman: It's... I mean, this, the
doctrine of legibility, which you've

talked about, maybe you can you can
expand on the idea of basically heritage

or like precious old buildings no
longer being really primarily things

to live in or live in with a particular
style that you might want to preserve

and extend, but being like museum
artifacts that you need to keep for

historical kind of memory reasons, and
to preserve, as you say, in stasis.

Samuel Hughes: In the 18th century
and into the 19th century, they would

absolutely have thought objects do have,
old buildings do have... they did believe

there were actual heritage values.

So they think the fact this is an
old building makes it different

to a building that looks exactly
the same but was built recently.

But a lot of its value comes from,
if it's a cathedral or something,

because it's very beautiful, because
it's a great building, or because

it's very useful or something.

So, and when you're looking at restoring
the building, you balance those, and

you're not... You don't... You're not
totally ruthless with historic fabric.

Historic fabric is important, and you try
to keep it when it's viable to keep it.

But you do fill in gaps.

You do you know, if part of the best
part of the building was 14th century,

and then there were some 17th century
additions that you think are sort of,

that actually don't fit very well, you
might get rid of those and replace them

with something that was a plausible
pastiche of the 14th century building.

You might, if you were going to add to the
building, you would say, 'What's the best

style of this in the building's history?

And let's add to it in that style
to reinforce what's best in the

building.' If the building's lost its
paintwork, you would speculatively,

you might speculatively say, 'Okay,
what, what did it look like originally?

Let's look at our best examples
around the country of what...'

And pretty much all of Europe's
cathedrals went through this process.

They were very decrepit
buildings by the 19th century.

They were heavily restored
in the course of it.

Some of them now, not much of what
you can actually see with the naked...

I mean, there's still some old medieval
fabric underneath, but what you're

actually looking at is basically 19th
century; nearly everything's been

recased and redone in the... that's...
Even in the 19th century, there's

fashion and that's starting to turn.

And the 20th century, that becomes
extremely unfashionable, and people think

of this as a basically false and wrong
approach to art and to old buildings.

The overwhelmingly dominant value is
artifact value, not aesthetic value.

Sam Bowman: Authenticity again.

Samuel Hughes: Authenticity again.

It's the same as the other normies.

It is direct carving on the march.

So they... Yeah, it's very interesting.

Like, the thread of authenticity
through lots of strands here as a,

an idea that haunts people in their
approach to old buildings, old styles

and even methods of construction.

And so that- It still varies
from country to country.

Britain is, I think, particularly
like a conservation rather

than restoration society.

Asia is still very different and
still much more pro-restoration

approach to to old buildings.

And I think there's probably in recent
decades maybe been a bit of a shift

back towards a restoration approach.

And the other thing that happens is
whenever there's a huge crisis, like

Notre Dame burns down or Warsaw gets
destroyed by the Germans or something,

then all the official orthodoxies
collapse because there's overwhelming

public demand for restoration, and the
professionals have to just work around

that and drop- these events happen that
are completely not supposed to happen,

and everyone's made all their theoretical
commitments to them not happening, but

everyone's like, 'No, we want Warsaw back.

We're not letting the Germans destroy it.

We're going to rebuild the city,'
and there's... So there's- the

picture is mixed and complicated,
but the authenticity brigade have

taken over officially and is very
dominant now in architecture.

Sam Bowman: How universal globally are
the things that we're talking about?

Is this true in... You mentioned
kind of Russia and China are

outliers, and North Korea.

Is this true in Japan and in
Colombia, Pakistan, or is this

specifically a Western thing?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I think it's
very easy in England to have this

narrative of skill has gone, no one can
do impressive, amazing artistic feats

anymore, and it's just not true at all.

If you look at, for example, the
surge in Hindu temples being built

sometimes in India but sometimes by
diasporic communities in America,

in the UK, they're building these
amazingly complex mega temples, often

using things like direct carving.

Skills that have been passed down
in a continuous, unbroken chain.

So in the West, we had this big rupture
in terms of sort of education, which

has really changed what we can do.

But the you know, the c- the complexity
of these temples is just amazing.

Samuel Hughes: The diaspora
communities mostly get the

sculpture from India, right?

They send off commissions to
these extremely skilled hereditary

workshops, and then the stone gets
sent to India or gets quarried in

India, and then gets shipped out to
London or Princeton or whatever the-

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah, in India,
they will sort of carve twenty thousand

different blocks and then sort of ship
it over like the world's hardest Lego set

to be assembled very carefully in London.

Samuel Hughes: Right.

Yeah, I vaguely remember that.

And then elsewhere, I mean, Hindu
architecture is the preeminent tradition

of continuing richly ornamented
stone like sculptural tradition.

Sam Bowman: Is that for reasons
specific to Hinduism or is that-

Samuel Hughes: I think it is.

I think it has to do with the... Well,
I mean, we've commissioned some work

on this recently by Tilak Parekh.

Sam Bowman: We actually have a brilliant
article on this in the new issue of

Works in Progress, issue 23, out now.

it's all about these beautiful
modern Hindu temples, and it's

fascinating and it's beautiful.

It's filled with brilliant, brilliant
photographs of these things, and

they really are kind of things you
kind of have to see to believe.

Samuel Hughes: So my understanding from
Tilak is it has to do with religious rules

that were governing temple construction.

So there was... And I...
It's not exactly a revival.

I think the increasing prosperity of
lots of Hindu communities has allowed

them to do it on a really magnificent
scale, and to start- and a revival to

the extent that they can now commission
on the scale of massively powerful

rulers in centuries past, because
they have modern prosperity, and that

gives them the affluence to do this.

So may- maybe in like the early 20th
century or the mid-20th century,

communities didn't have quite
that kind of commissioning power.

But basically, the religious, the
architectural tradition is constant.

Lots of the families involved
are like continuous families

that go back many generations.

I don't think... I'm no expert, but
there is- we have a piece coming

out about Pakistani architecture.

So there is some of this
in mosque architecture.

But I don't think it has quite the same
tight control through a set of texts

saying, mosques must be built this way.

Like texts, sort of extremely old texts
saying mosques must be built this way.

It's following these systems, and I
think there's been more influence by

modernism as there has in Christian
architecture and Jewish architecture.

In East Asia, there are... in
Thailand, there's a living tradition

of Buddhist temple architecture.

I met a Thai architect who he
said he wasn't a temple architect.

He said he'd be interested to do it.

He said it's... But it's done
interestingly by specialized temple

architects who do only temple
architecture, and they it works quite

separately to any other branch of modern
Thai architecture, even to revival

architecture, as he was interested
in traditional Thai architecture,

which he uses in secular contexts.

And even so, he was different to the
real temple architects who are not

a revival, unbroken tradition, a bit
more like what's going on in India.

So I think... now that I'm saying it, I'm
thinking India's the biggest paramount

case, but there are actually probably
a bunch of other cases, especially

with sacred architecture, of traditions
which never have died out or which have

been revived more recently and which
continue to... And which architecture and

accompanying sculptural traditions which
continue to flourish into the present day.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Hindu architecture
in the terms of the temples is a nice

example of how different, why different
regions have different effects.

So a lot of the New Hindu temples
are made out of white marble

and they're all unpainted.

But when you think of Hindu temples,
you might think of these sort of really

brightly painted temples, and that's
because southern temples tend to follow

a religious text quite closely that asks
that the temple have basically around

1,000 particular deities depicted in
sculpture on the entranceway gates.

And in order to do that, you have to
build an architectural structure that

basically has this enormous tower
entirely covered with sculptures.

but the southern region has granite.

It doesn't have marble.

Granite is really, really hard to
carve and really, really heavy.

And so the only way that you can sort of
fill the religious prescription to have

all these sculptures is by having a kind
of granite base, then brick, then plaster.

But if you have plaster, it needs
to be painted because otherwise

it will crumble in the monsoon.

So that's why in the south you have
these really tall, really highly painted

sculptures, whereas in the north they
follow religious texts that emphasize

more the idea that you need to have
your sculpture at eye level so that

as you walk around the temple, the
sculpture sort of tells you the correct

theological story, and they have huge
marble quarries, so they have the stone

able to make those kinds of sculptures.

Samuel Hughes: And at eye level,
presumably you can shelter it

under a cornice of some kind.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Exactly.

Exactly.

Sam Bowman: And how about in the West?

What are the prospects for a
revival or a kind of diversion away?

The way you described it earlier did
make it sound very, very complicated

because it isn't just about demand really,
it's about an entire kind of industry.

It's like setting up a
semiconductor foundry in Arizona.

it's not straightforward.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yeah, I think
there's an example of this happening

a little bit, which is that there's
been this movement within painting

called classical realism, and these
are basically people trying to reinvent

how to paint like the old masters.

And what's been happening with that
community is that you've seen lots

of artists coming out who are sort of
fairly skilled technically but can't

really do anything interesting with it.

And that's partly because the kinds of
people who tend to opt into these schools,

which are extremely critically restricting
tends to sort of not be that creative.

So once they have the skillset, they
don't really do many things with it.

Sam Bowman: They should do more crits.

Atalanta Arden-Miller:
They should do more crits.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But these schools have started getting
sort of big enough and mainstream enough

that importantly, you've started getting
kids going there who've been going to

these schools from quite a young age,
which means they're actually picking up

loads of skills between sort of 10 to 18.

When they're 18, they
sort of become rebellious.

They want to do their own weird thing,
but they now have both their own strange

ideas and pretty serious painting skills.

So you've actually started seeing
highly skilled, interesting

painting becoming popular again.

But it took about 30 years of these
schools existing because you sort of

need like a whole generation so that you
can be teaching people from a young age.

So I think if you want to have a sort of
big skill revival, you not only need to

have the art schools there, but you need
to have the kind of stability of cultural

funding that means that they can last
for long enough that you can get them

while they're young, like the Jesuits.

Samuel Hughes: But this
works for painting, but not

so clearly for sculpture?

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I think it
would work for sculpture just fine.

It's just that sculpture's hard.

It's more resource intensive,
so it needs a lot more funding.

You know, and lots of rich
people can buy a painting.

Only the richest of the
rich can buy a sculpture.

Samuel Hughes: Or institutions.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Or institutions.

Samuel Hughes: And institutions
usually don't have the confidence

under current cultural conditions.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: And institutions
change in terms of preferences.

You don't want to train to be a classical
sculptor now because you have no idea what

the government might want to commission
in 20 years by the time that you're done.

Samuel Hughes: I do know, I know
one of the only remaining classical

sculptors Alexander Stoddart,
who's just lives quietly in

Paisley in Scotland he does get...

I mean, he's totally booked up.

He does get - there's certainly
enough commissions for him

and without particularly, he's not a fan,
totally uninterested in self-promotion.

It's all like his reputation's
being carried by other people.

But it's it's definitely an odd
marketplace that he serves and

surprisingly many of the people who
commissioned him you would have heard

of because they're so few people or
organizations are rich enough to do it.

He says, yeah, there are lots of
figurative sculptors around today.

So there are people getting some
of... But he, the thing he always

comments on is they may be technically
skilled in a way, but a lot of them

don't have a strong sense of design.

So they look they'll create maybe
something a little, I mean, it might

probably won't be colored, but it will
be something which has some of the

awkward or uncanny naturalism of the
wax works we were talking about earlier.

Like figures that look more like what an
actual human body looks like, like odd

misshapen awkwardly posed not whereas
Alexander Stoddard is much more in a

tradition he's like yes you're working
with -yes you're looking for a certain

kind of realism but actually it's a
very qualified realism as a kind of

stylized version of the human body that
you're working with there are traditions

of like posture and drapery and all
the rest that uh- and that he says

is really rare you can't like to find
people who can do that to any standard

of quality you know you really start
to be counting on one or two hands.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I mean,
there are lots of really good

figurative sculptors working today.

But the problem is that if you think
about how many sculptors you need

and the level of kind of sculptural
awareness and general like artistic

awareness that you want to have to
produce a sort of culture that looks

attractive that's kind of the issue.

Like there's still enough good portrait
painters that like the Queen or the

King can get a nice painting done.

But I think the places that look really
beautiful came out of a culture where

there was sort of this really intense
infusion of craftsmanship and knowledge.

And that sort of fixing that requires
massively expanding the field.

Sam Bowman: So what you're describing
sounds to me like what I would call

an advanced market commitment, which
we're fans of at Works in Progress.

And regular readers will recognize this as
a tool for saying 'We will buy this thing

if you can provide it at some point in the
future.' So historically, NASA did this

to basically produce the to get companies
to produce the parts that it needed.

It said if you can do this,
we promise we will buy 100,000

of them at a certain price.

Our colleagues at Stripe Climate are
doing this along with some other companies

to guarantee climate carbon removal.

So basically an industry can begin
and know it will have some customers.

And really I mean, the quibble with
the US presidency's kind of statue

park problem is probably that they
just had too short a timeframe.

Right?

If they, if they had said or if they
were willing to say, 'We will do this

over the next 10 years,' or something
like that, then that might give enough

lead time to people to say, 'Okay, if I
actually qualify or train in this way...'

Qualification might be the wrong word.

'If I train in this way-

Samuel Hughes: There's a career in this.

Sam Bowman: -Then there is a
job in this at the end.' Yeah.

It's very interesting to think it's
really specifically a kind of timing

problem and a commitment problem.

Like, you need somebody or some
institution to be able to say... Because

this is a problem that I think about a
lot, where there are lots of companies

and people like that and so on, that
I think probably don't want to be in

the fairly ugly glass boxes they're in.

But it's not immediately obvious who
they would turn to to change that.

And it's not like they can just open
the phone book or go on Google and there

will be kind of tons of sculptors who
can help them turn their sort of glass

tower into something like a- something
that might have been built 100 years ago.

Those people just aren't out there.

And unless you are willing to say
and able to say like, 'I'll come

back to you in 10 years if you're
willing to do this for me in 10 years.

And I guarantee you there will be
a job in it for you.' but that's a

model that has a lot of potential.

You can, you can develop vaccines with it.

You can develop drugs with it.

I don't see why you couldn't develop a
sector of the art world with it as well.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: I think that
if you took the $40 million that he's

spending getting all these sculptures
and you sort of spread it out, you could

absolutely train another generation.

The part that makes the art world
a little bit more tricky is that

artists inherently tend to be slightly
allergic to money, if you want to-

Sam Bowman: I was wondering that.

Yeah, I was wondering if I was assuming
they were too monetarily rational.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: Yes, yes.

No, we aren't.

You know?

We know what we're getting ourselves into.

Sam Bowman: Monetarily rational.

I'm not saying they're irrational.

Just, just a different kind of rational.

Atalanta Arden-Miller: So I think
the, basically the prob- I think

there is, there's the problem of
can you learn to do the skill?

And you can solve that through art
school, and it takes a long time to

set up, and it's hard, and it might
take generations, but that's solvable.

The other problem is that if you look
at totalitarian regimes, they just

love highly crafted figurative art.

And so if you think part of the reason
why modernism became so popular is

that it's not what the Nazis liked.

It's not what the USSR was doing.

And so I think basically the kind
of- You know, the vibe of classical

realist art to most artists feels bad.

And if we want to have more of
that kind of work, we need people

to be able to look at it and have
associations of, you know freedom and

democracy and joyfulness and pleasure.

And so that's another reason why I think
the current 40 million funding may not

be having the sort of ideal outcome.

And I think this is the hardest part
to shift because ultimately when you're

in the art world, it's very strongly
about the ideology of what you're doing.

You know, ideology is really, really king.

And so rebranding this work as something
that is not about being retrograde,

being narrow, being old-fashioned,
that's going to be very difficult.

Sam Bowman: Well, that seems
like a good note to end on.

Thank you, Atalanta.

Thank you, Samuel.

And thank you for listening.

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