Plastic arts

“ Doubtless the purest æsthetic sentiment was gratified in the productions of the plastic arts and of design in general when civilization was at its highest perfection, among people peculiarly alive to this sentiment. ”

“ Or in other language that which the plastic arts secure through the objective fact of a plastic beauty, which displays the entirety of human life, human nature as such, its universal and ideal significance, in the detail of its particularity, without losing that essential harmony, this effect music must produce in a wholly different manner. ”

“ This weakness, among the many, of the critical faculty in æsthetic matters, and the curious bluntness of their perceptions, is seen not in connection with the plastic arts only, but over the whole artistic field, in the domains of music and the drama, as in that of painting and sculpture. ”

“ For the impulse to originate operates best alongside of and in opposition to the desire to conserve. France has been the great originator in the plastic arts during recent times; but it has also been the only country where a genuine traditional standard has existed. ”

“ There is, broadly speaking, a general stand against the “modernity” imported into sculpture by the younger members of the foreign schools, and a disinclination to bend the art to the illustration of everyday life and to the rendering of effects not hitherto considered to be the function of the plastic arts. ”

“ In this tendency towards temperament, which, in the case of objects borrowed from external Nature, may frequently only amount to a general response emphasized between the two sides, we find the most important distinction between painting on the one hand and sculpture and architecture on the other. Painting indeed approximates in this respect more closely to music and emphasizes here the point of transition from the plastic arts to that of tone. ”

“ The plastic arts especially, besides the inevitable influence which they exercise on the character of a nation, have power to work one effect which demands the careful attention of the law. Beautiful statues fashioned from beautiful men reacted upon their creators, and the state was indebted for its beautiful 11men to beautiful statues. ”

“ OF STUCCO AND GESSO
Few things are more disheartening to the pursuer of plastic art than finding that, when he has carried his own labour to a certain point, he has to entrust it to another in order to render it permanent and useful. If he models in clay and wishes it burnt into terra cotta, the shrinkage and risk in firing, and the danger in transport to the kiln, are a nightmare to him. If he wishes it cast in plaster, the distortion by waste-moulding, or the cost of piece-moulding, are serious grievances to him, considering that after all he has but a friable result ”

“ The Plastic Art HE plastic art, which is the art of modelling in the round with a pliable material, was with little doubt the earliest development of the imitative arts. To an untrained mind it is a more obvious method, of copying or delineating an object, than by lines on a flat surface. ”

“ A study of historic samples alone is most tempting, but there is no space for the intrusion of any subject much later than the Renaissance.
Page 213 CHAPTER VII SCULPTURE IN STONE
(France and Italy)
Sculpture is not properly speaking the "plastic art," as is often understood. The real meaning of sculpture is work which is cut into form, whereas plastic art is work that is moulded or cast into form. Terra cotta, which is afterwards baked, is plastic; and yet becomes hard; thus a Tanagra figurine is an example of plastic art, while a Florentine marble statuette is a product of sculpture. ”

“ Yet the influence of both these eminent devotees of the plastic art left, without doubt, a strong impression upon the minds of the people—an impression constantly refreshed by the sight of their works, which helped to create a healthy atmosphere for the development of a taste among us for the plastic art. ”

“ And, best of all, he has been doing original work with plastic material; and to work with plastic material is always a source of joy, whether it be the mud that the child makes into pies, the clay that the artist moulds into forms of beauty, or the facts of life that the creative imagination of the writer shapes into literature. ”

“ Pottery is so closely associated with flowers and growing things, with the decoration of fine rooms, with choice spots of color, and with those receptacles and utensils which belong to the household, that it makes a strong appeal to the feminine mind. Here is a craft which vies with textiles in age and beauty of design, and possesses even greater charm of manipulation because it is plastic. One can imagine no finer outlet for creative effort. ”

“ Impelled irresistibly, she entered and made inquiries as to the method of work, learning thus the secrets of modeling in clay or wax, and of carving wood or gold. It then appeared that her vocation was decidedly for the plastic art. She had the faculty of coloring with skill, and might have been a great painter, had she not resolved to be a sculptor. ”

“ We have nothing in America that can convey a full impression of these superb productions of the plastic art. They are modeled after the forms of the most beautiful Etruscan vases; the most perfect purity of the porcelain material is contrasted with the finest efforts of the pencil, in the pictures, which being incorporated by the fire, are indissolubly wedded to the basis on which they are delineated, and they are resplendent with gold and blue enamel of cobalt. One is at a loss which most to admire, the productions of the Gobelin looms or those of the Sèvres furnaces. ”

“ The various subjects are treated entirely in the spirit of plastic art. The author's aim was, by means of vividness and careful blending of colour, perfection and delicacy of form, severe purity and general harmony of rhyme, in short by means of a skill which neglected nothing, not even the minutest trifle, to produce poetic equivalents of the miniature masterpieces in agate or onyx bequeathed to us by the ancients, or of the Italian or French enamel painting on gold of the days of the Renaissance. ”

“ She developed artistic talents at an early age, and after learning to draw and paint she turned her attention to plastic art. She invented a method of manufacturing imitation Limoges ware, which is utilized in the making of advertising signs, plaques and other forms. ”

“ He resolved everything into its component parts, colour as well as light, so that, by eliminating the complicated and condensing the scattered elements from a given scene, he succeeded in drawing without outline, in painting a portrait almost without strokes that show, in colouring without colour, in concentrating the light of the solar system into a sunbeam. It would be impossible in a plastic art to carry the curiosity for [Pg 125] the essential to an intenser pitch. For physical beauty he substitutes expression of character; for the imitation of things, their almost complete transformation ”

“ And, in contrast with the usual tedious reiteration of time-wearied ornamental motives, how refreshing the novelty and imagination in these borders! The artist has gone to nature for his models, and, while reproducing the character of Renaissance ornaments, has used the natural forms with so delicate an exuberance of fancy that no motive is repeated, the whole being quick with fragrant and fresh appeal. Indeed, so far as my knowledge goes, no plastic decoration has been produced in this country which can approach it in beauty ”

“ Still the study of national manufactures is able to modify our plastic works, just as it has been successfully done in our music, or as in the goldsmiths’ art of Italy, which by preserving the remains of ancient shapes and forms of working, has raised this branch of modern industry. ”

“ Generally speaking, we do not like a look of toil and endeavor in our small bronzes; we want something spontaneous, whether graceful or humorous. Well and good. Yet here again is a real danger; anyone who has had the sobering privilege, year by year, of reviewing the rank and file of little plastic works presented for exhibition180 knows very well that many of these pieces utterly lack the solid qualities of construction, workmanship and an understanding of nature’s detail. ”

“ Thus the Classical plastic art, after liberating the form completely from the actual or imaginary back-wall and setting it up in the open, free and unrelated, to be seen as a body among bodies, moved on logically till the naked body became its only subject. And, moreover, it is unlike every other kind of sculpture recorded in art-history in that its treatment of the bounding surfaces of this body is anatomically convincing. ”

“ It is true that we have not yet produced any masterpieces that can rank with those of antiquity; but, on the other hand, some of our plastic art compares favorably with the best that has been created in modern times. ”

“ But the sense of plastic beauty—though that’s, of course, also an inborn faculty—is something that has to be developed and intellectually ripened. It’s an affair of the mind; experience and thought have to draw it out. ”

“ The work is superb, and causes pleasure as well as wonder; and yet, in spite of the beauty of the design, and the richness of the materials—gold, silver, silk, and wool profusely used—it is a divergence from the legitimate art of embroidery, and is simply the attempt of the needlewoman to combine again the arts of sculpture and painting with the help of so inadequate an implement as the needle. Therefore, except as being a marvellous and beautiful curiosity, it is a failure; it is not art. ”

“ Here the hardest and heaviest materials, wood, iron, and stone, become plastic under the workman's hand, assuming the most brilliant polish, the lightest and most elegant forms; grates, fire-irons, and kitchen-ranges, rival, in lustre and beauty, the attractions of diamonds, goldsmiths' work, and flowers. ”

“ The product of plastic and pictorial art does not present us, as reality does, with something that exists once only and then is gone for ever—the connection, I mean, between this particular matter and this particular form. ”

“ Hildebrand, to return to the more famous theorist, was writing primarily of sculpture, and would naturally confine himself to consideration of the plastic, which is an additional reason against making this interesting brochure, as some have done, the foundation of an aesthetics. It is rather the foundation of the sculptor's, perhaps even of the painter's technique, with reference to plastic elements alone. ”

“ The presence of life forms in relief has produced important modifications in the appearance and the arrangement of the painted devices, and in many cases there is a manifest correlation between the plastic and the painted forms: as, for example, when the body of the vase was thought of as the body of the animal, the extremities of which were placed upon its sides, the colored figures carried out the idea of the creature by imitating in a more or less conventional way the markings of the body. ”

“ Opposed to the inorganic, objective productions of human intellect, as embodied in architecture, is spirit aspiring to a subjective existence in sculpture. The inorganic sternness of architecture is far surpassed by plastic art, which embodies spirit in a less fixed form. Spirit is not yet absolutely free, for it requires a tangible body to show its existence.187 Unlike music and painting, which by a mere movement of the air, or a mixture of tints, produce bodies, plastic art has to fill the three dimensions of space, and does this by means of coarse matter—with clay, wood, bronze, or stone. ”

“ Consequently to painting as to no other plastic art is it not merely permitted, but it is even required from it, that it should unfold dramatic realization, and by the composition of its figures display their activity in a distinctly emphasized situation. ”

“ It may be said that ivory carving is sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts and coloured glass windows are painting. But for metal work, whether in iron or gold, a place must be kept apart; and the same privileges are due to embroidery and to metallurgy. All arts must of necessity have their own laws and rules, which ensure their beauty of execution and their special forms of design; these two last, from the nature of their materials, and the modes of working them, must be studied independently of any connection with painting, architecture, or sculpture. ”

“ We hope, therefore, in considering Plastic Art in relation to its true prototype and original source, Nature, to be able to contribute something new to its theory—to give some additional exactness or clearness to the conceptions of it; but, above all, to set forth the coherence of the whole structure of Art in the light of a higher necessity.
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING Carl Begas]
But has not Science always recognized this relation? Has not indeed every theory of modern times taken its departure from this very position, that Art should be the imitator of Nature? ”

“ The plastic and pictorial decoration of an Exposition offer unusual opportunity to the Artist, at the same time imposing handicaps - the briefness of time, the poverty of material. It affords chances for experiment, invention, and originality only limited by the necessary formal settings of the architecture, out of proportion to the initiative of the artists, a majority of whom prefer, either from inclination or necessity, to take the safe course, the beaten path of precedent. Artists are of two kinds - the Imitators and the Innovators. ”

“ In plastic art everything depends on form and execution, and the skilful handling 194 of a substance deliberately chosen for its resistance (where another might have been used with equal fitness) is rather a tour de force than an artistic achievement.
These last generalizations are intended to show, not only that there is an intrinsic value in almost all old bibelots, but also that the general excellence of design and execution in past times has handed down to us many unimportant trifles in the way of furniture and household appliances worthy of being regarded as minor objects of art. ”