Robots can sculpt marble, but some disagree if they're making art - CBS News

Nov 13, 2024

By Bill Whitaker, Aliza Chasan, Heather Abbott, LaCrai Scott

November 10, 2024 / 7:30 PM EST / CBS News

After two back surgeries and 40 years sculpting marble, Vermont-based artist Richard Erdman decided to add a new member to his team: a robot. Erdman joins the ranks of many contemporary artists making use of the latest mechanical help.

Since the days of Michelangelo, artists have employed teams of apprentices who work behind the scenes on what's called the "rough cut," knocking the edges off huge blocks of marble in preparation for the artist to polish to perfection. Now Italian company Robotor is using robots to do the job — and at a fraction of the time it would have taken Michelangelo. Robots have upended the sculpture world, sparking a fierce debate on their role. Some artists say using a robot is cheating, destroying centuries of tradition. Others have embraced using robots as the latest sophisticated tool.

"It's not just a machine," Erdman said. "When [the robot's] arm is moving around, I'm really part of it. It's following your design. It's part of you."

The jagged peaks of Italy's Apuan Alps are home to some of the most sought-after marble in the world. This was Michelangelo's old stomping ground. There are more than 600 quarries above Carrara, a town in northern Tuscany. It was here in 1497 that Michelangelo, then 22, spent months looking for a perfect block of marble. The piece he found eventually became his immortal, "The Pietà."

Carrara's miners pull out about a billion tons of marble every year from the quarries. Most of the marble is destined for kitchen countertops and bathrooms. Modern artists had begun to shun marble because it was too difficult to work and too time-consuming. Robotor's co-founder and CEO Giacomo Massari says robots are helping revive the industry by doing the heavy lifting.

Robotor has seven robots and plans to add more. The robot works using a 13-foot zinc alloy arm and a diamond crusted finger. Water jets cool the robot's spinning finger that carves with pinpoint precision down to the last half-inch. The robot is 10 times faster than working the old-fashioned way with a hammer and chisel, Massari said, adding his mechanical employees don't sleep, get sick or take holidays.

The company's chief technician, also a sculptor, takes the artist's model and turns it into a detailed 3D file. That generates a complex set of instructions that tells the robot exactly where to carve. Massari said the robot is capable of doing about 99% of the work. But that remaining one per cent is essential, Massari said, and can translate into months of human work.

Not every artist wants to admit they have a robot on the payroll. When 60 Minutes visited, we were unable to film several sculptures commissioned by big-name artists who insisted their identities remain secret. Massari said he believes the artists are afraid, worried that some people will think the robot is doing all the work.

But Massari says that's not the case. The robot is only as good as the work the artist dreams up. He said if the artist's idea is bad, whether it's made with a robot or not, will make no difference, the final artwork will still be bad.

"But if your idea is good, if you make it with a robot or not, it will be still good," he said.

Robotor has plans to turn a monumental block of marble – about the size of a railway car weighing 200,000 pounds – into one of the world's largest sculptures carved by a robot. Massari said Carrara's miners had spent months scouting for the massive block, finding it in an underground quarry that had been hollowed out over 200 years. Now all Robotor has to do is move it – using a couple of cranes and a huge truck.

As Robotor roils the art world, some sculptors, including Tuscan artist Michael Monfroni, are pushing back. Only human touch can coax the divine out of a stone, Monfroni said, adding that Michelangelo would never lower himself to using a robot, and neither would he.

Monfroni despairs at seeing the master's work being copied by robots.

"It's sacrilege," he said in Italian. "Sculpting is passion. Robots are business."

Monfroni first picked up a chisel at age 7, learning the trade from his father. Now those skills are on the brink of extinction. He said that if you use a machine, you become a machine.

"Your mind is limited by the technology," he said.

Monfroni is not alone. The prestigious Sculptors' Guild of Carrara is dead set against the robots, too.

But even as they warn that Italy's artistic heritage is at risk, many other artists are jumping in.

Contemporary New York-based artist Barry X Ball uses eye-popping stone to make works that have been shown at major museums around the world. He was an early advocate of using robots, and he said he's sometimes come under fire for using them.

"There is a conservative mindset that wants to hold on to some imagined, ancient way of approaching art that's mystifying to me," he said.

Ball said that critics simply don't understand the process.

"They think we're pressing print, and the robot is plopping out a sculpture," he said. "We're very involved in the middle of that, as humans, with that creative process."

He employs six finishers for every robot. Far from eliminating jobs, he says robots are creating new ones.

"To be honest, no one really likes the hard, rough cutting. It's tough work. Running a saw, whacking away big blocks," Erdman said.

His works are held in more than a hundred galleries and museums worldwide.

Erdman said he was skeptical of robots in the beginning, but now he sees them as a tool to cut down on challenging work, while also preventing mistakes that are possible when hand cutting.

"One has to embrace it," he said. "The business is changing so fast with the Robo that an artist that does not embrace the Robo in their work, is really going to be the artist left behind."

Bill Whitaker is an award-winning journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent who has covered major news stories, domestically and across the globe, for more than four decades with CBS News.

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