26. Cast and Impression: Sculpture and Print in Dialogue

Despite their shared reliance on replication and workshop production, sculpture and printmaking have largely been treated as separate fields within art history. Museum collections, exhibitions, and scholarly literature rarely consider the two media together. Yet both emerged through analogous processes of transfer and reproduction (mould and cast, matrix and impression) and raise related questions concerning originality, multiplicity, authorship, and the status of the copy. While some publications, such as the catalogue of the 2013 Göttingen exhibition Abgekupfert: Roms Antiken in den Reproduktionsmedien der frühen Neuzeit have explored the reproduction of antique sculpture in points and scholars such as Malcolm Baker have explored points of intersection between sculpture and print (Baker 1995; 2000; 2016), the broader relationship between these media remains underexamined.

This session seeks to bring sculpture and print into dialogue by focusing on their shared processes, technologies, and systems of production. Throughout history, sculptors have turned to print and printmakers to sculpture, while many artists have worked across both media. In each, the artist’s degree of direct involvement may vary considerably, with significant stages of production delegated to specialist artisans, printers, founders, carvers, engravers, or casters. Technological innovations, including photomechanical reproduction and mechanical enlargement, transformed the production and circulation of prints and sculptures alike, challenging distinctions between original and reproduction.

At a moment when contemporary artistic practice increasingly transcends medium-specific categories, and when intermedial, material, and decolonising approaches encourage us to rethink inherited disciplinary boundaries, a renewed consideration of sculpture and print is particularly timely.

This session invites papers addressing any period or geographical context. Possible topics include artistic exchanges; workshop practices; reproduction and dissemination; technological innovation; and materiality and touch.

Themes: print, sculpture, making

Additional format comment: Standard panel with three to four 20-minute papers

Lead Convenor: Anastasia Belyaeva, Independent scholar, United Kingdom

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.