La Montserrat: How Technology Has Changed Art

Technology has changed every aspect of life. People are now attached to an electronic device that they can hardly take their eyes off to have an actual conversation. Technology has also changed art and the way people look at it today. Art began with cave paintings and from there has evolved to have many mediums, and those mediums are constantly evolving with how artists want to express themselves. When photography started to develop, many artists didn’t consider it art. They thought it didn’t capture the imagination of the moment, or with being so reproducible, it also lost the uniqueness and its ‘aura’. Art has now become a communal culture that all can add in their own ideas and input. Understanding three significant ways that technology

La Montserrat is constructed from numerous sheets of iron and welded and shaped to form a faceless woman with a child in her left arm and in her right hand, a sickle. With the technique of shaping sheets of iron, La Montserrat lacks intricate detail but the lack of detail also makes it so the woman could be anyone. The texture of the piece appears rough to the eye from the iron and the way it was shaped (Fig.4). González constructed this piece as an anti-war symbol he stated, “It is high time that this metal ceases to be a murderer and the simple instrument of an overly mechanical science. Today, the door is opened wide for this material to be – at last! – forged and hammered by the peaceful hands of artists” ("La

During this time, most sculptors used a bronze foundry, a marble quarry or a conventional studio, whereas Smith had his studio in New York at the Brooklyn Navy Pier. Smith’s technique in creating pieces makes it look as if he is drawing with the metal ("Hudson River Landscape”). This can be seen in the piece Hudson River Landscape that is a large rectangular shaped piece that could depict a landscape or the views seen from a train ride through the area. The thin strips of metal cross back and forth over the piece giving this heavy weight piece an open airy feeling making it look light. The overall design of the piece helps the piece have balance as lines intersect the sculpture. The scale of the sculpture is quite large, it is approximately 6 feet long horizontally, 4 feet tall vertically, and 16 inches deep (Fig.5). Welding has come a long way from when it was first invented and will continue to evolve as new technology comes