Existentialist influences in contemporary sculpture

This text, titled Existential Influences in Contemporary Sculpture, has been prepared as a text of Proficiency in Art. Existentialism, as a philosophical discipline, emerged after the Second World War, in a Europe that had gone through two world wars, was in ruins and saw the destruction of its own ideals, and took root in this geography In many sources that deal with existentialism historically, the movement finds its roots in Socrates, who revolutionarily changed the history of philosophy and turned the direction of philosophy from nature to man with his thoughts on the importance of knowing oneself in the world and how one should live. Of course, Socrates is not an Existentialist philosopher, but he greatly influenced the philosophers of this movement with his thoughts. There are many different philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Blaise Pascal, who are not actually Existentialists like Socrates, but are associated with this movement, but the place where Existentialism really flourished, as stated above, is Europe after the Second World War. Since the concepts such as boredom, being thrown into the world, existence of man in the face of death, anxiety and the absurd found concrete responses in the social and political life of the period, it became a very popular philosophy movement and its effects have survived to the present day. Another reason why its influences last so long in such a wide area and temporally is that the philosophers of the movement conveyed their philosophical thoughts and concepts more through literary texts, unlike other philosophy movements and disciplines, and thus, they made a sound in daily life as well as in intellectual circles. Existentialism has been criticized for its popularity and accused of being a philosophy of depression and despair. The influences of existentialism, exceeding the limits of literature and theatre; It was also reflected in fields such as painting, sculpture, cinema, poetry and photography, and there were many artists who were influenced by this philosophy and made a relationship between their own life and ways of creating and this philosophy. This is why the relationship between existentialism and sculpture, which is the subject of this text, is also important. The productions that make up the work part of this work text, after all these concepts are explained historically and philosophically, are explained by sampling the works of today's artists, whose productions can be a reference to the relationship between existentialism and sculpture, and the text is completed in this way. Keywords: Existence, Sculpture, Anxiety, Time, Boredom