“Anyone could make that!”: criticising modern sculpture

Sculpture can provoke a range of reactions: delight, introspection, sadness or confusion.

But sometimes a piece of sculpture can elicit strong negative feelings in people. This happens for a variety of reasons. In this activity, we’ll delve into a few examples of sculpture that has provoked outrage amongst viewers including examples from the University of York.

We’ll analyse these reactions to see what they tell us about these works and discover how sculpture is still an important part of cultural conversations about art.

Here is a particularly stark example of ‘Anyone could make that!’ which has provided fodder for critics of abstract painting ever since!