The Plaster Trace: Reading Creative Processes

One can read the creative and making processes in the plaster models left by the sculptor. Hans/Jean Arp and Mari Andriessen provide excellent examples in the Gipsotheek collection (Museum Beelden aan Zee). Although Andriessen and Arp had very different sculptural ideas, their creative and making methods were sometimes similar: working in models, reworking, taking parts they liked and reintegrating them into other models. Of course, they ended up with very different results. The plaster sculptures are mostly steppingstones on the way to a final sculpture. This emphasizes the flexibility of plaster as a material. In addition, plaster is also used by the sculptor to memorize the different stages of development. The remnants of plaster, the different states and stages of the making process, give us, the art historians, a plaster trail, not a trail of copies, but a plaster lineage of the sculpture.