Viscous Forms

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Viscous forms make solid materials look as though they are still flowing. Salvador Dalí's limp watches in The Persistence of Memory (1931) are the best-known painted case, and sculptors carried the idea into three dimensions. Claes Oldenburg's soft sculptures of the 1960s slump as if gravity were pulling them apart, and from 1968–69 Lynda Benglis poured latex and polyurethane foam onto the floor and against walls, letting the material set where it came to rest.

Glass and ceramics suit the look because both pass through a liquid or plastic stage. Glassmakers catch drips and slumps at the moment of cooling, and ceramicists apply thick, runny glazes that appear to slide down a pot. Furniture and lighting designers extend the effect with poured resin and drooping, bulging profiles. Look for drips, puddles, sagging silhouettes and surfaces that seem to have hardened mid-movement.