Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body

Explores how artists from the European Renaissance to the global present have used sculpture and color to evoke the presence of the living body 

Since the earliest myths of the sculptor Pygmalion bringing a statue to life through desire, artists have explored the boundaries between sculpture and the physical materiality of the body. This groundbreaking volume examines key sculptural works from 13th-century Europe to the global present, revealing new insights into the strategies artists deploy to blur the distinction between art and life. Sculpture, which has historically taken the human figure as its subject, is presented here in myriad manifestations created by artists ranging from Donatello and Degas to Picasso, Kiki Smith, and Jeff Koons. Featuring works created in traditional media such as wood and marble as well as the unexpected such as wax, metal, and blood, Like Life presents sculpture both conventional and shocking, including effigies, dolls, mannequins, automata, waxworks, and anatomical models. Containing texts by art and cultural historians as well as interviews with contemporary artists, this is a provocative exploration of three-dimensional representations of the human body.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Met Breuer
(03/21/18–07/22/18)

Luke Syson is Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman in the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sheena Wagstaff is Leonard A. Lauder Chairman in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Emerson Bowyer is Searle Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago. Brinda Kumar is assistant curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hillel Schwartz is a cultural historian. Marina Warner is a historian, folklorist, and novelist.