is a sculptor, architect, and philosopher of aesthetics. He is the Queen's Sculptor in Ordinary in Scotland, a position he has held since 2008. His neoclassical sculptures and friezes can be found on the Royal Mile of Edinburgh, at Princeton, Oxford, Buckingham Palace, and in many other famous institutions of the West. Stoddart’s arrival at neoclassicism came about through considerable labor and introspection. After revolting against modernism at art school Alexander Stoddart began a self-study of Greek sculpture and its practitioners throughout modernity. As artist, Alexander Stoddart exercises quietism, believing contra modernism that the artist should be subjugated to, and invisible from, the work of art. Dressed in spartan attire in his unheated studio, he toils continuously and with such commitment that he once considered selling his house to finish a project. He sculpts almost exclusively figures whose historical contributions are intellectual, embeds classical references for only the keenest of eyes, and stops working—out of awe—when his music player stumbles upon Richard Wagner. In 1992 Stoddart’s first public monuments were displayed, and he has since received numerous commissions and accolades.
Stoddart has been awarded honorary professorships from the University of Paisley and the University of the West of Scotland, as well as an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Glasgow. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He remains a member of the International Network of Traditional Building Architecture and Urbanism and in 2001 received the Arthur Ross Award of Classical America for Public Statuary. Stoddart’s resilience in countering contemporary art, which he connects with historical illiteracy and social decline, has made him a fierce and articulate critic. As a dazzling orator and regular guest on radio, television, and online, he offers damning critiques of pop culture, praises the visual and acoustic over the textual, explicates the philosophy and history of sculpture, and genuinely advocates for the finest art for everyone. What foregrounds Stoddart’s approach most fundamentally is an abiding fervor for the inherited tradition and an appreciation to be able to transmit it to others with breathtaking beauty.
