The book begins in the late eighteenth century, when a systematic formal distinction began to be made between painting and sculpture. Following changing attitudes toward sculpture through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Potts analyzes for the first time the radical transformation that has occurred not only in the nature of sculptural works but also in their display and reception. He focuses on a broad range of texts by major writers who have in some way been obsessed by sculpture and by such artist-theorists as Adolf Hildebrand and Donald Judd. The author also offers a detailed view of selected iconic works by key players in modern thinking about the sculptural. The impact of minimalism features prominently in this discussion, for it placed the phenomenology of viewing three-dimensional objects for the first time at the center of debate about modern visual art.