Publisher's Synopsis
William Tucker (born in 1935) is a British-born sculptor who moved to North America in 1976 and became an American citizen in 1986. This is the first major monograph on his work and includes a complete catalogue of his sculpture to date. Tucker began making sculpture in the late 1950s and came to public prominence along with fellow sculptors David Annesley, Michael Bolus, Phillip King, Tim Scott and Issac Witkin when they were included in the New Generation 1965 exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Tucker and his contemporaries presented abstract assembled forms, often painted in bright colours and influenced by American abstract painting. The exhibition marked the conclusion of a period of intense dialogue and experimentation nurtured in the remarkable atmosphere of the sculpture department of St Martin's School of Art in London under the maverick leadership of Frank Martin. Moving to the US, Tucker established his reputation in a newly expressive and increasingly bodily sculptural form. He challenged many of his own precepts by engaging with the history of sculpture, mainly from the western tradition, and reintroduced into contemporary art, in a restituted and invigorated form, of one of the most traditional sculptural techniques: modelled forms, often large in scale and cast in bronze. Tucker's career is characterized by his intense investigation of the language and condition of sculpture, both in his work itself and also in his pedagogy and writing. His book, "The Language of Sculpture", first published in 1974, evolved from lectures given while he was Gregory Fellow in Sculpture at the University of Leeds. Joy Sleeman's text situates the entirety of Tucker's sculptural enterprise in a broad interpretative framework and explores its wider implications for reconsidering the recent history, theory and practice of sculpture. The book has been compiled in close collaboration with the artist, whose comments are included in the fully illustrated catalogue of sculpture. It will be essential reading for artists, art historians, curators, dealers and all those with an interest in the recent history and current practice of sculpture.
