Sculpture

“ I too see that painting and sculpture are gymnastics of the eye, its training to the niceties and curiosities of its function. There is no statue like this living man, with his infinite advantage over all ideal sculpture, of perpetual variety. What a gallery of art have I here! No mannerist made these varied groups and diverse original single figures. Here is the artist himself improvising, grim and glad, at his block. Now one thought strikes him, now another, and with each moment he alters the whole air, attitude and expression of his clay. ”

“ In the finest figures of sculpture we behold a tranquil depth, which unfolds, as it were, the pregnant womb, from which all other potencies may be born. In contrast with sculpture it is yet of more vital importance to the arts of painting, music, and poetry, that they should display the inmost complexity of character, and real artists of every age have recognized this. ”

“ What has been said about sculpture will apply in a great measure to this art. The human form, the world around us, the works of man's hands, are represented in painting, not for their own sake merely, but with a view to bringing thought, feeling, action, home to the consciousness of the spectator from the artist's consciousness on which they have been impressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculpture, can represent more complicated feelings, can suggest thoughts of a subtler intricacy. Through colour, it can play, like music, directly on powerful but vague emotion. ”

“ THE DECORATIVE MOTIVE IN all ages sculpture has been intimately allied with architecture, somewhat as the blossom with the tree, reaching often its noblest expression as an efflorescence of decoration upon the surface of a building or as separate forms within it; springing up in statue, tomb or pulpit like bursts of flowery growth in the forest. ”

“ The sculpture of the human figure is throughout very good; remarkable for simple, bold, deep folds in the draperies, quite Gothic in spirit, and much more akin to our best fourteenth-century work than to any Classic examples. ”

“ If, however, sculpture, which could not keep pace with its rival in the enamelled coloring and mysterious charm of the chiaro-oscuro which it brought into the field, would, in anywise, do the same as painting, it was compelled to plunge regardlessly into the same naturalism of forms and into the same bold display of passion with which painting produced such grand effects. ”

“ Sculpture shows with little labour what in painting appears a miraculous thing to do; to make what is impalpable appear palpable, flat objects appear in relief, distant objects seem close. In fact painting is adorned with infinite possibilities which sculpture cannot command. ”

“ But sculpture, and, above all, painting, propose to themselves the imitation not only of the forms of nature, but of the characters and passions of the human soul. In those sublime arts the dexterity of the hand is of little avail, unless it is animated by fancy, and guided by the most correct taste and observation. ”

“ Whatever tells us of the yet unknown attraction can charm, interest, delight, and captivate us. A cold engraving, showing the oval of a pure face, even an old-fashioned painting, a sculpture,—a sculpture especially,—awakens a new feeling in our hearts ”

“ What little can be seen of the painting—and only ill-lighted fragments remain—is full of tenderness, refinement, and grace; no touch of drama; no hint of passion. The sculpture, stripped of its stucco surface, is rude but often impressive. But what impresses most is not the art but the religion of the place. ”

“ The beauty of line in sculpture is, of course, no invention of the artist; for nature has created it in the body itself. The sculptor takes this beauty as the basis of his work, remodeling only by the elimination of details, through which purer effects of line are obtained, or by the selection and emphasis of pose, through which these effects are rendered more intensely expressive. ”

“ In poetry and painting, the situation predominates over the character; in sculpture, the character over the situation. Excluded by the limitations of its material from the development of exquisite situations, it has to choose from a select number of types intrinsically interesting—interesting, that is, independently of any special situation into which they may be thrown. Sculpture finds the secret of its power in presenting these types, in their broad, central, incisive lines. ”

“ The public was reminded that sculpture is a living art, with roots and branches; that it is not dedicated entirely to pediments, portrait statues, and other monumental grandeurs; and that sculptured forms may charm the eye of the home-maker and the garden-lover, in intimate possession. ”

“ From extreme realism on one side, with portrait statues in the last detail of modern costume, silk hats, kid gloves, and in one case holding a cigar, to the vague suggestions of a shapeless mass of marble, out of which protrude unfinished limbs and half-developed heads, sculpture has been pushed from side to side, but is settling into a vigorous, steady, onward movement, in which the best men of all nations stride along together. ”

“ Thus while the great artist retained the antique, he superadded a loftiness such as the ancients rarely produced; and sculpture became in his hands, not demoralizing and Pagan, resplendent in sensual charms, but instructive and exalting,— instructive for the marvellous display of anatomical knowledge, and exalting from grand conceptions of dignity and power. His knowledge of anatomy was so remarkable that he could work without models. ”

“ Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we accurately use the general term 'glyptic' for it, may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word 'engraving.' For, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected with each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves. ”

“ Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as the art of fiction in solid substance, we are now to consider what its subject should be. What—having the gift of imagery—should we by preference endeavor to image? A question which is, indeed, subordinate to the deeper one—why we should wish to image anything at all. ”

“ Coloring sculpture and giving it a life-like reality is manifestly trenching on the province of painting, and so departing from the true principle of sculpture, which is to give form in its most perfect and idealized development. ”

“ But to this display of capabilities—to the exhibition of science, and the sporting with difficulty, truth, simplicity, feeling, and real beauty, have been sacrificed. In this nothing seems peculiar to painting as distinguished from sculpture; nor, indeed, is there any discrimination: color, tone, light, shadow—all is systematic and ideal, but all mighty and overpowering in the whole. Again, when the influence of such a style upon the progress of improvement is considered, it appears that such influence could be favorable neither to future improvement nor to stationary excellence. ”

“ And I must so far anticipate what we shall discover when we come to the subject of sculpture, as to tell you the two main principles of good sculpture; first, that its masters think before all other matters of the right placing of masses; secondly, that they give life by flexure of surface, not by quantity of detail; for sculpture is indeed only light and shade drawing in stone. ”

“ From this point of view sculpture seems suitable for the affirmation, painting for the negation, of the will to live, and from this it may be explained why sculpture was the art of the ancients, while painting has been the art of the Christian era. ”

“ Sculpture —the most sublime and most difficult of the arts —that which concentrates within itself more than any other power, passion, individuality and beauty—has been cultivated almost only in connection with religion, and even there how few of the forms which your sculptors have produced represent what is grand, beautiful or ennobling. ”

“ Only the rudiments of sculpture and painting existed, and that only as ornaments applied to architecture, in the shape of tiers of tinted reliefs, representing in a kind of picture-writing the exploits of kings upon the walls of their temple-palaces. Gradually sculpture took greater salience and roundness, and tended to disengage itself from the wall, while painting found out how to represent solidity by means of its own, and dispensed with the raised surface upon which it was first applied. ”

“ And here we must conclude what we have to say as to the association of sculpture with or distinction from architecture.
If we further compare sculpture with the other arts we shall find that it is more especially poetry and painting which will engage our attention. Small statues no less than groups present to us the spiritual form in complete bodily shape, man, in short, as he exists. ”

“ In sculpture all is staid, enduring, actual; movement alone is the only passing object of imitation. Expression, therefore, at least strong and individual expression, as a primary characteristic—as destructive of symmetry, and as implying an effort ungraceful, when connected with unyielding materials, seems not a legitimate beauty of higher art. ”

“ Hence he was the first in our country to understand and render the language of Nature, and to prove that sculpture is no mere journeyman’s task, but the outcome of artistic inspiration, drawn from the very depths of man’s soul. ”

“ But in this they correspond, that in none is mere imitation the final, or most exalted, object of the artist. In the fidelity of representation, and in the facility with which the originals in nature may be traced, Sculpture and Painting are superior to all the other imitative arts. Between the vivid creations of these, and the more varied, more imaginative, but less defined, efforts of poetry, the middle rank is occupied by Architecture, whose mighty masses and harmonious proportions fill the mind with awe or delight, as they recall the majesty or grace of the material world. ”

“ In sculpture, we closely imitate the parent, nature. The most superior specimens of statuary are said to be modelled after nature, as seen in the unlaced, unpinched, unaltered original—just as nature's own hand has chiselled. In sculpture, modelling is the inventive part of the work, and requires taste and genius; copying is a merely mechanical operation. ”

“ In the normal type of sculpture only one figure is represented. For this, there is, perhaps, a chief point of regard, in front, the same as that which we ordinarily occupy with reference to our fellow men. Yet, since the body is beautiful from every point of view, the statue, unless designed to fit into a niche, should be so made that we shall want to move around it and survey it from every angle. Here is another difference between painting and sculpture. ”

“ The charm, the indispensable requisite, of sculpture is unity of effect. But painting rests in a material remoter from nature, and its compass is therefore greater. Light and shade give external, as well internal, being even with all its accidents, while sculpture is confined to the latter. And here I may observe that the subjects chosen for works of art, whether in sculpture or painting, should be such as really are capable of being expressed and conveyed within the limits of those arts. ”

“ Hence have sprung the characteristic beauties and the besetting errors of his style in sculpture—a style discovering much that is derived from liberal and enlightened study of the sublime and graceful in nature, but still more of those qualities which arise from the peculiarities of an individual and erratic, though rich and powerful, imagination. ”

“ From this point of view the function of sculpture is to present the Divine simply in its infinite repose and sublimity, timeless, destitute of motion, entirely without subjective personality in the strict sense and the conflict of action or situation. ”

“ Sculpture, to put the matter in general terms, conceives the astounding project of making Spirit imagine itself in an exclusively material medium, and so shape this external medium that it is presented to itself in such and recognizes the presentment to be the objective form adequate to its ideal substance. ”

“ The first art which comes next to sculpture is that of painting. It avails itself for a medium of its content and the plastic configuration of the same of visibility as such, to the extent that it is differentiated in its own nature, in other words is defined in the continuity of colour. No doubt the material of architecture and sculpture is likewise both visible and coloured. ”

“ But one may well urge the compensating worth which sculpture will always possess of recalling men to a sense of the value and beauty of the individual as such, especially in an age like our own where they tend to be forgotten.
The principles that apply to the use of historical, literary, and symbolic themes in painting hold with increased force in sculpture. We must admit the right of the sculptor to illustrate simple and well-known historical or fictitious situations. ”

“ Although the highest possibilities in sculpture may not yet be reached, it is animated with new spirit of life and nature. Nineteenth-century aims and modes of expression have greatly enlarged its province. Like Painting, Sculpture has become democratic. ”

“ Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves from the other fine arts by the imitation of concrete existences in nature. They copy the bodies of men and animals, the aspects of the world around us, and the handiwork of men. ”

“ The last sort of ancient sculpture of which I shall speak is portrait sculpture, and perhaps this belongs also to historical sculpture, for it is by means of statues and busts that we know the faces and forms of many of the great men and women who hold their places in the regard of the world through all the centuries, because they were concerned in the events which make up what we call the history of the world. ”