Antony Gormley New York Clearing, 2020. Installation view, Brooklyn, Bridge Park Project, New York, 2020.
Photo Credit: Scott Rudd © Antony Gormley

Art critic and author Martin Gayford discusses his ground-breaking new book on sculpture with art historian and literary critic Michael Prodger. This innovative book, Shaping the World: From Prehistory to Now, co-authored by sculptor Antony Gormley, juxtaposes a rich variety of works – from the famous Lion Man, c. 35,000 BCE to Michelangelo’s luminous Pietà in Rome, the Terracotta Warriors in China to Rodin’s The Kiss, Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project and Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus, as well as examples of Gormley’s own work.

The conversation will touch on what sculpture is and how it has been fundamental to humanity from the earliest times. Evidently, the desire to carve, mould, bend, chip away, weld, suspend, balance – to transform a vast array of materials and light into new shapes and forms – runs deep in our psyche and is a fundamental part of our human journey and need for expression.