Sculpture Collections in Europe and the United States, 1500-1930
2021, Brill, in association with The Frick Collection
Malcolm Baker, co-editor

Exploring the variety of forms taken by collections of sculpture, this volume presents new research by twelve internationally recognized scholars. The essays delve into the motivations of different collectors, the modes of display, and the aesthetics of viewing sculpture, bringing to light much new archival material. The book underscores the ambiguous nature of sculpture collections, variously understood as decorative components of interiors or gardens, as objects of desire in cabinets of curiosity, or as autonomous works of art in private and public collections. Emphasizing the collections and the ways in which these were viewed and described, this book addresses a significant but neglected aspect of art collecting and contributes to the literature on this branch of art and cultural history.

This book evolved from a symposium “Sculpture Collecting and Display, 1600-2000,” organized by the Center for the History of Collecting, that was held at The Frick Collection on May 19 and 20, 2017. Both the book and the symposium were made possible through the generous support of the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation.

Art as WorldmakingArt as Worldmaking: Critical Essays on Realism and Naturalism
2018, Manchester University Press
Malcolm Baker, co-editor

Art as Worldmaking is a response to Alex Potts’s provocative 2013 book Experiments in modern realism. Twenty essays by leading scholars test Potts’s recasting of realism through examinations of art produced in different media and periods, ranging from eighth-century Chinese garden aesthetics to video work by the contemporary Russian collective Radek Community. While the book does not neglect avatars of pictorial realism such as Menzel and Eakins, or the question of nineteenth-century realism’s historical antecedents, it is contemporary in orientation in that many contributors are particularly concerned with the questions that sculpture, photography and non-traditional media pose for realism as an aesthetic norm. It will be essential reading for students of art history concerned with art’s truth value or more broadly with conceptual problems of representation and the intersections of art and politics.

TheMarbleIndexThe Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain
2015, New Haven and London: Yale University Press
Malcolm Baker, author

Providing the first thorough study of sculptural portraiture in 18th-century Britain, this important book challenges both the idea that portrait necessarily implies painting and the assumption that Enlightenment thought is manifest chiefly in French art.  By considering the bust and the statue as genres, Malcolm Baker, a leading sculpture scholar, addresses the question of how these seemingly traditional images developed into ambitious forms of representation within a culture in which many core concepts of modernity were being formed.  The leading sculptor at this time in Britain was Louis Francois Roubiliac (1702–1762), and his portraits of major figures of the day, including Alexander Pope, Isaac Newton, and George Frederic Handel, are examined here in detail.  Remarkable for their technical virtuosity and visual power, these images show how sculpture was increasingly being made for close and attentive viewing.  The Marble Index eloquently establishes that the heightened aesthetic ambition of the sculptural portrait was intimately linked with the way in which it could engage viewers familiar with Enlightenment notions of perception and selfhood.

FameandFriendshipFame and Friendship: Pope, Roubiliac and the Portrait Bust in Eighteenth-Century Britain
2014, London: Paul Holberton Publishing
Malcolm Baker, author

No literary figure of the 18th-century was more esteemed than the poet Alexander Pope, and his sculpted portraits exemplify the celebration of literary fame at a period when authorship was being newly conceived and the portrait bust was enjoying new popularity. Accompanying an exhibition at Waddesdon Manor (The Rothschild Collection), this publication explores the convergence between authorship, portraiture, and the sculpted image in particular, by bringing together a wide range of works that foreground Pope’s celebrity status.

Pope took great pains over how he was represented and carefully fashioned his public persona through images, published letters and the printed editions of his works. Examined alongside some of the most celebrated painted portraits of the poet, will be a selection of the printed texts which Pope planned with meticulous care. The core of the publication will consist of eight different versions of the same portrait bust by the leading sculptor of the period, Louis François Roubiliac. Read More →

FiguredinMarbleFigured in Marble: the Making and Viewing of Eighteenth-Century Sculpture
2001, London and Los Angeles: V&A Publications and J.Paul Getty Museum (shortlisted for Apollo Book of the Year 2001)
Malcolm Baker, author

This work is a study of 18th-century British sculpture, illustrated with sculptures from both the V&A and the J. Paul Getty Museum and also many impressive pieces from private collections and churches. The book starts suggesting new ways of looking at 18th-century sculpture and exploring its relationship to themes that have figured prominently in recent discussions on British painting. The relationship between painting and sculpture, and the links between making and viewing, are themes that are explored throughout the book. The chapters are arranged in five sections, each prefaced by a brief introduction, forming groups of case studies which illustrate approaches to: writing sculptural histories; design, making and materials; categories and genres; and finally, settings, collecting and display.

Read More →