The Principles of Aesthetics Part 11

The represented s.p.a.ce of the picture is not, of course, the real s.p.a.ce of the canvas or of the room in which the picture hangs. The former is infinite, while the latter is only so many square feet in area. The frame serves the purpose of cutting off the represented s.p.a.ce from all relation to the real s.p.a.ce, of which the frame itself is a part. A confusion of these two s.p.a.ces is sometimes found in crude work and in the comments of people upon genuine works of art. I have, for example, seen a picture of a lion with iron bars riveted to the frame and extending over it,--a represented lion in a real cage! And I once heard a man criticise one of Degas' paintings on the ground that "if the dancing girl were to straighten her bent body she would b.u.mp her head on the frame!" The rule that the color of the frame should harmonize with the main tones of the picture is no proof that they belong together; its purpose is merely to protect the colors of the painting from being changed through their neighborhood with those of the frame.

Although painting is essentially a spatial art, it includes a temporal element, the "specious present," the single moment of action or of motion. The lines are not dead and static, but alive; they progress and vibrate; by their means a smile, the rippling of a stream, the gesture of surprise, the movement of a dance, may be depicted.

Successive moments, the different phases of an action or movement, cannot, however, be represented. Strict unities of s.p.a.ce and time should be observed in painting. Only contiguous parts of s.p.a.ce and only one moment of time should be represented inside a single frame.

Both these unities were violated in old religious paintings where sometimes the Nativity, Flight into Egypt, Crucifixion, and Resurrection were all portrayed on one canvas.

The s.p.a.ce of painting is no abstract aspect of things such as the geometer elaborates. To be in a common s.p.a.ce with other things, implies, for the pictorial intuition of the world, to be played upon by the same light and to be enveloped in the same atmosphere. s.p.a.ce, light, and air const.i.tute the milieu in which everything lives and moves and has its being in painting. To every difference in the arrangement and foreshortening of objects, to every variation in their lights and shadows and aerial quality, the sensitive soul responds. The close proximity of objects in a tiny room has an effect upon feeling very different from their wide distribution over a broad s.p.a.ce. An equal difference depends upon whether light is concentrated upon objects or evenly distributed over them; upon whether it is bright or dim; upon whether they are near and clear in a thin air or far and hazy in a thick and heavy cloud. The masters of light and air, Rembrandt, Claude, Turner, evoke myriad moods through these subtle influences. A long development and the following of many false paths was necessary before painting discovered its true function as an expression of the elements, the once hard outlines of things softening in their enveloping embrace.

The representation of s.p.a.ce, which painting alone of all the arts can achieve, does not imply, however, a representation of the full plastic quality of individual objects, which is the function of sculpture.

This, to be sure, can be done in painting, as the great sculptor-painters of the Renaissance have shown; but it cannot be done so well as in sculpture; and when done tends to interfere with other things. It makes objects stand out too much by themselves, destroying their felt unity with other elements on the canvas, so that when provided with all the colors of life, they seem rather real than painted, and look as if they wished to leave the world of representation, where they belong, and touch hands with the spectator.

The depth and the extent of s.p.a.ce, the distance and the distribution of objects, light and shade and air, are all independent of the plasticity of individual things, which tends to disappear in proportion as they are emphasized. Only when attention is directed to the individual object does its full plasticity appear; see it as an element of the environing whole, and it flattens out to view.

There are, in fact, two ways of seeing, to each of which corresponds a mode of painting. On the one hand, we may see distributively, holding objects as individuals each in our attention, neglecting light and s.p.a.ce and air. Or else we may see synthetically, first the whole which light and s.p.a.ce and air compose, and then individual things as bearers of these. The one is the more practical way of seeing; because, for practical purposes, the separate thing that can be grasped and used is all important, and the film of light and air and the neighborhood of other things are of no account. The other is more theoretical and sthetic; for to a pure vision which does not think of handling, there are no separate things, but only differences of shape and color and location in a single object, the visible whole. [Footnote: Cf. Lipps, _Aesthetik_, Bd. 2, s. 165, et seq.]

In the type of painting corresponding to the first way of seeing, objects are represented more as we think them to be, or as we should find them on further exploration, than as they actually appear to sight at any given moment; the outlines are clear and sharp and detail is emphasized. This mode of painting is most in place for interiors where there is an even distribution and no striking effects of light and shade, as in so many genre pictures of the Dutch school; but above all when the human significance of objects or their dramatic relations, which depend upon their being taken as separate things, is to be expressed. For example, to get the expression of the action of a woman pouring water into a jug, it is necessary that we feel the shape and color of the latter as aspects of a tangible reality having a distinct purpose, that of holding water; and this purposefulness makes of the object a separate, individual thing. Yet a too great distinction of objects and a too great elaboration of detail, as in Meissonier and the English Pre-Raphaelites, is inartistic; the picture breaks up into separate parts and all feeling of unity is lost. In the work of the Flemish and Dutch, on the contrary, we take delight in the perspicuity of things without losing the sense of wholeness; for there is a sameness and simplicity of color tone which unites them. A genuine and unique sthetic value is possessed by such work,--that of clear intuition of the visual detail and human significance of things.

Very often the unification in painting of this type is dramatic chiefly--some link of action or of symbolism which the elements of the picture have as meanings, a unity of content, therefore, and not a coloristic or a linear unity. The colors are essentially local colors, serving first to characterize and distinguish the objects properly, and then to lend to them severally high value through brightness and temperament; although harmonizing as mere colors, they are held together more through some connection in what they mean than through a unity of pure expression. The dominance of any one ma.s.s, too, depends more upon its superior significance as meaning than upon its claim upon the attention through any intrinsic quality of color. Nevertheless, even if secondary, the unity and dominance through color and line must be present, and should be consonant with the unity and subordination in the meanings. The painting of the great Italian masters was of this character. In a Madonna picture, for example, the elements representing the Holy Family are united through the spiritual oneness of the objects which they represent, and the Madonna is dominant through her superior significance for the religious life. The colors serve to characterize and distinguish the figures; yet between the former there is a harmony corresponding to the inner harmony of the latter; the spiritual dominance of the Madonna is expressed in a purely formal fas.h.i.+on through her larger size, central position, and more brightly gleaming garments.

In painting which corresponds to the synthetic way of seeing, all particular objects are subordinated to s.p.a.ce and light and air; their outlines are melting, suggested rather than seen, and there is little emphasis on detail. Turner's painting of light and the more recent examples of impressionism afford abundant examples of this. In this style, unification is effected almost wholly through color and line as such, and through the light and s.p.a.ce and air which they represent.

Just to live in the same atmosphere or in the path of the same light, to be enveloped in the same darkness or shadow, or merely to partic.i.p.ate in a single composition of colors or rhythm of lines serves to unite objects. The relative importance of elements, too, is determined rather by some intrinsic quality which arrests attention than by any supremacy as meanings.

Through such materials and methods as we have described, the possibilities and limits of expression in painting are determined.

First of all, painting has the power, through color and line as such, to express the purely musical emotions; this we demand of painting just as we demand music of verse: without word-music, there is no poetry, no matter how high the theme; so without color and line music, no matter how skillful the representation or how n.o.ble the subject, there is no picture. Painting may give little more than this. In much of still-life painting, for example, the values attached to the objects represented are borrowed from the music of the medium. And even when the objects represented have a value in themselves, the superiority of their representation over the mere perception of them in nature comes from this source. Why, for example, does the painting of flowers by a real master afford a richer aesthetic experience than real flowers?

Painted flowers have no perfume, rightly called the soul of flowers.

It is because in painting the expressiveness of the purer and more subtly harmonious colors more than compensates for the lack of odor.

Through the music of color and line we are made responsive to common things which otherwise would leave us cold, or if we are responsive to them, our sensitiveness becomes finer and keener. It is largely because he is so accomplished a musician in color and composition that Jan Vermeer can make the inside of a room or some commonplace act by a commonplace person the object of an intense and sympathetic contemplation.

For the beauty of landscape also, which the art of painting has created and which during the last century has become its favorite theme, the music of color is equally essential. In its highest form, that beauty requires emotional responsiveness combined with the power accurately to observe and reproduce the qualities of things; without observation and reproduction, the feeling is incommunicable; without feeling, the imitation is lifeless. Love of the object, which at once reveals and makes responsive, mediates the highest achievements of the art. By translating the object into the language of abstract color and line, it is purified for feeling; for those qualities toward which feeling is indifferent are eliminated; only so much as can enter into an expressive color or line composition survives. The artist gives us the illusion that he is reproducing our familiar world all the while that he is glorifying it through the beauty of the colors in which he paints it. The painting of the human body, especially the nude human body, belongs to the same cla.s.s of subjects as the painting of landscapes.

For the human body unclothed, and as unclothed severed from the conventional social world, is a part of nature and speaks to us as nature does through form and color. To bring that object before us with all its expressive detail; to make us, in the imagination, move with it and touch it; to caress it with our eyes; to awaken that pa.s.sionate interest which makes us see and feel it more vividly than anything else in the world, yet to subdue pa.s.sion wholly to a glowing contemplation, this is one of the highest achievements of pictorial art. And the artistic right to represent it in the woods by lake or stream, or in the meadow among other natural things, must be accorded to the artist despite all protests of convention and habit; we never actually find it there, to be sure, yet there it belongs for imaginative feelings. The maidens in Corot's paintings, for example, seem to belong as naturally to the landscape as the very trees themselves.

But the painter can depict the human body not merely as something sensuously beautiful, but as expressive, through gesture and pose and countenance, of character and thought. The complex psychic life of man is thus open to him for delineation. In the portrait, through the attentive study of the many varying expressions of the inner life, leading to the selection of some characteristic pose or action, the artist concentrates into a single image what seems to him to be the distinctive nature of the man. And he can express this nature over again, and so more effectively reveal it, in the mere colors and lines which he uses. Thus Franz Hals has embodied the abundance and good cheer of his burghers in the boldness and brightness of the lines and colors with which he paints them; and Hogarth, in the "Shrimp Girl,"

through the mere singularity of line and color, has created the eerie impression which we attach to the girl herself. The best portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the portrait as a painting of the soul should be placed pictures of ideal characters; ideal, not in the sense of good, but in the sense of more highly complex and unified than actually existing persons. Such pictures symbolize for us the quintessence and highest level of definite types of life. Manet's "Olympia" and Goya's "Maja" belong here equally with Leonardo's "Christ" or "Mona Lisa," with Raphael's Madonnas and Michelangelo's G.o.ds and angels. In them is attained the most intense concentration of psychic life possible.

It is now pretty generally recognized that the unities of time and s.p.a.ce exclude from the sphere of painting story telling and history, which require for effective representation more than the single moment included in painting. In order to tell a story in painting, one has to supplement what is seen with ideas which can be obtained only from a catalogue or other source external to the picture; one has to add in thought to the moment given on the canvas the missing moments of the action. But a work of art should be complete in itself and so far as possible self-explanatory; it should not lead us away from itself, but keep us always to itself. If the scene represented be a part of a story, the story should be so well known that its connection with the picture can be immediately recognized without external aid, and should admit of a certain completeness in its various parts. The life of Christ is such a story; everybody knows it and can interpret a picture portraying it forthwith; its various incidents and situations have each a unique and complete significance in themselves. Historical paintings are not necessarily bad, of course, but the good ones are good despite the history, and a proof of their excellence consists in the fact that when we see them they make us forget for the moment our historical erudition.

This norm does not exclude from the sphere of painting the expression of the relation of man to his fellows; it simply confines painting to the delineation of momentary and self-sufficient glimpses of social life. Pictures representing a mother and child, a pair of lovers, a family group, festival, tavern scene, or battle charge are ill.u.s.trations. In Dutch painting the social life of Holland in the seventeenth century found its record; yet there is little or no anecdote. The genre, the representation of a group of people united by some common interest and with an appropriate background, has the same legitimacy, if not the same eminence, as the portrait. It does not possess the rank of the portrait because, since the interest is rather in the action or the situation portrayed, the figures are more merely typical, being developed only so far as is necessary to carry the action; seldom is a subtle and individualized inner life portrayed.

Objections are rightly raised, however, against pathetic, sentimental, and moralistic painting. Here color and line, the whole picture in fact, counts for little or nothing except to stir an emotion, usually of grief or pity or love, or to preach a sermon; the unity of form and content is sacrificed, the one becoming a mere means to the other.

But, as we know, it is never the purpose of art merely to stir feeling; its purpose is to objectify feeling; if the art be painting, to put feeling into color and line, and only when feeling is experienced as _there_ is it aesthetic feeling at all. And what shall we think of a picture like the "Doctor" of Luke Fildes', which is so pathetic that one cannot bear to look at it? Surely a picture should make one want to see it! Of course I do not mean that an artist cannot paint pathetic and sentimental subjects. The great painters of the Pa.s.sion would disprove that with reference to the former and Watteau with reference to the latter. But a power to achieve beauty of color and line and to objectify pathos and sentiment through them was possessed by these painters to a degree to which few others have attained. For moralistic painting, however, there can be no excuse. You can paint visible things and as much of the soul as can appear through them; you cannot paint abstract ethical maxims. Of course a painter may intend his picture to be an ill.u.s.tration of some moral maxim, or may even, as Hogarth did, paint it to expose the sins of his age and create a beautiful work notwithstanding; but only if, in the result, this purpose is irrelevant and the concrete delineation everything.

CHAPTER XII

SCULPTURE

The sculptor has this advantage over all other artists, that his chief subject is the most beautiful thing in the world--the human body. In two ways the body is supremely beautiful: as an expression of mind and as an embodiment of sensuous charm. In the body mind has become actually incarnate; there purpose, emotion, and thought have taken shape and manifestation. And this shape, through its appeal to the amorous, parental, and gregarious feelings, and through the complete organization of its parts, has no rival in loveliness. What wonder, therefore, that sculptors have always thought of their work as simply one of mere imitation of nature, the divine. Yet in sculpture, as in the other arts, the imitative process is never slavish, but selective and inventive. For the body is interesting to the artist only in so far as it is beautiful, that is, so far as it has charm and exhibits the control of mind; some of its details and many of its att.i.tudes, having no relation to either, are unfit for imitation; and, although inspired by his model, the sculptor seeks to create out of his impressions a still more harmonious object.

To give to his material the semblance of the body beautiful is the technical problem of the sculptor. Although this semblance is primarily for sight, it is not exclusively so. For in sculpture shape is not two-dimensional, but plastic; and for the full appreciation of plasticity, the cooperation of touch is required. Moreover, not only the perception of the form, but also a large part of the appreciation of the charm of the body depends upon touch. Of course we do not ordinarily touch statues, but they should make us want to touch them, and we should touch them--in the imagination. The surfaces of the statue should therefore be so modeled as to give us, in the imagination, the pleasures that we get when we touch the living body. It is well known that these touch values were destroyed by the neo-cla.s.sicists when they polished the surfaces of their statues. Such sculpture for the eye only is almost as good when reproduced in an engraving that preserves its visual quality, and is therefore lacking in complete sculptural beauty. But no plane reproduction can replace the best Greek, Italian, or French work.

The life of the statue should, however, be more than skin deep. We should appreciate it through sensations of motion and strain as well as through sight and touch, feeling the tenseness or relaxation of the muscles and tendons beneath. We should move with its motion or rest with its repose. And this does not mean that we should merely know that an att.i.tude of quiet or of motion is represented; we should actually experience quiet or motion. In our own bodies sensations corresponding to these should be awakened by the visual image of the statue, yet should be fused with the latter, becoming for our perception its, not ours, in accordance with the mechanism of _einfuhlung_ described in our fourth chapter. The light rhythmic motion of the figures in Carpeaux's "Dance" should thrill in our own limbs, yet seem to thrill in theirs.

Because it preserves the full three-dimensional presence of the body, sculpture is, next to the drama, the most realistic of the arts. This realism is not, however, an unmixed advantage for general appreciation.

For, finding the shape of the body, men sometimes demand its color and life, complaining that the statue is cold and dead;[Footnote: See Byron, _Don Juan_, Canto II, cxviii.] or else, giving life to the form, they react to it practically and socially, as they would toward the real body. Yet, for the one att.i.tude, the art itself cannot be held responsible, but rather some want of genius in the artist or lack of imagination in the spectator; and as for the other, although only a bloodless dogma would demand the elimination of pa.s.sion and interest from the appreciation of sculpture--for unless the marble arouse the natural feelings toward the body it is no successful expression--nevertheless, good taste does demand that, through attention to form and a sense of the unreality of the object, these feelings be subdued to contemplation.

In order to keep the statue on the ideal plane, it should not be too realistically fas.h.i.+oned. If it looks too much like a man, we shall first treat it as a man, as we do one of Jarley's or Mme. Tissaud's waxworks, and then after we have been undeceived, we shall have toward it an uncanny feeling, totally unaesthetic, as towards a corpse. The statue, therefore, if life-sized, should not be given the colors or clothing of life. Tinting is not excluded, provided no attempt is made at exact imitation; and when the statue is of heroic, or less than the normal size, as in porcelain, both coloring and clothing may be more realistic. No hard and fast rules can be formulated; yet the principle is plain--there should be realism in one aspect, above all in shape, in order that there may be an aesthetic semblance of life, but not in all, in order that the statue may not be a mere subst.i.tute for life, awakening the reactions appropriate to life. Moreover, appreciating the beauty of his material, the sculptor may not wish to cover it up, as he would if he tinted it. As in painting, the attainment of beauty in the medium may interfere with full realism in execution. For the sake of beauty of color, the worker in bronze will be content to see the white man black, and for the sake of beauty of line he may even sacrifice something of exactness in the rendering of shape.

For there is a beauty in the media of sculpture, apart from what they may represent, quite as real, if not as obvious, as in the other arts.

And without this beauty, there is no artistic sculpture. Its subtlety does not diminish its importance or its effect upon our feeling, for it makes all the difference between a mere imitation of nature and a work of art charming and compelling. We do not need to recognize its existence explicitly in order to appreciate it; yet, as soon as our attention is called to it, we admit it and accord to it that rare influence which before was felt but nameless.

In the first place, the color of the material is expressive. The black and gold of bronze have a depth and intensity, the whiteness of marble a coldness, clarity, and, serenity, inescapable. The weight and hardness, or lightness and softness, of the material, also count. If people do not feel the expressiveness of these qualities directly, they nevertheless do feel it indirectly, whenever they appreciate the superior fitness of marble and bronze for the embodiment of the heroic and supernatural, and of the light and fragile porcelain for the more fleeting and trivial phases of life. Size, too, is expressive. There is a daintiness and tenderness about a little statue, contrasting strongly with the grandeur and majesty of one of heroic size. The usual small size of the terra cotta figurines among the Greeks was appropriate for the genre subjects which they so frequently represented, and an Aphrodite in this material is rather the Earthly than the Heavenly Love.

There is also an evident beauty of line in sculpture, similar to the beauty of line in painting. The curved line is expressive of movement and grace; the horizontal, of repose; the crooked line, of energy and conflict. Compare, from this point of view, Rodin's "The Aged Helmet- Maker's Wife" with his "Danaid,"--how expressive of struggle and suffering are the uneven lines of the former, how voluptuous the curves of the latter! Michelangelo is the great example of the use of tortuous lines for the expression of conflict. Undulating vertical lines are largely responsible for the "grace and dignity" of the cla.s.sic sculpture.

There is an organic unity of line in sculpture, similar again to that in painting. And by line I mean not only surface lines, but the lines made by the planes in which the body lies, the lines of pose and att.i.tude. The predominance of a single type of line, the union of many lines to form a single continuous line, balance and symmetry of line, proportion of length and parallelism, are all to be found in sculpture.

Especially important is rhythm--the harmonious, balanced movement of lines. In the "Venus de Milo," for example, the plane of the lower limbs from the feet to the knees moves to the left; there is an opposite and balancing movement from the right knee to the waist; the first movement is repeated in the parallel line from the right hip to the top of the head; this, in turn, is balanced by a line in the opposite direction running from the left hip to the right shoulder, parallel to the second line; but the equilibrium of line is not a rigid one, for the body as a whole moves in an undulating line to the left, imparting grace and a total unity.

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. All conventionalization is in the interest of increased beauty of line. But too great a sacrifice of the natural contours of the body, as in some of the work of the Cubists, results in a lifelessness that cannot be atoned for by any formal beauty.

The unification of line in sculpture is a matter not only of lines within the whole and of single contours, but of the total visual form of the whole, of silhouette. Although three-dimensional, every statue casts a two-dimensional image on the retina. It makes as many of these plane pictures as there are points of view from which it can be seen.

One can easily convince oneself of this by viewing a statue from a distance, when it will flatten out to a mere outline or silhouette.

As such, it should be clear and simple and pleasing, capable of being grasped as a whole irrespective of detail. Michelangelo demanded that every statue be capable of being put inside of some simple geometrical figure, like a pyramid or a cube; that there be no wayward arms or legs, but close attachment to the body, so close that the statue might be rolled down hill without any part being broken off. This last is perhaps too rigorous a requirement, but the best work of all periods exhibits visual clarity and concentration.[Footnote: Compare Adolf Hildebrand, The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture.]

Within its contours the statue stands alone. This is the essential difference between painting and sculpture; the painted thing is always a part of a larger spatial whole within which it exists in relation to other things, while the sculptured thing exists by itself; the s.p.a.ce of the statue is the s.p.a.ce which it fills; there is no further s.p.a.ce to which it belongs, no background in which it lies. The s.p.a.ce of sculpture, like the s.p.a.ce of painting, is of course a represented or imaginary s.p.a.ce, to be carefully distinguished from the real s.p.a.ce of the room in which it is placed and the floor upon which it stands. The pedestal serves the same purpose in sculpture as the frame in the sister art; it cuts off the ideal s.p.a.ce which the statue fills from the real s.p.a.ce where it is housed, raising it above the common ground of real life, with its practical and social att.i.tudes, into the realm of contemplation. The pedestal should be of a different material from the statue, else it belongs with the latter, and fails to perform its separating junction. The plate, on the other hand, should be of the same material, otherwise the statue would be made to stand on our earth, and in the same s.p.a.ce with us.

However, just as in painting every object should be represented as belonging to a wider whole of s.p.a.ce, so in sculpture, every part of the body should be represented as belonging to the whole body. If, therefore, only a part of the body is sculptured, it should be evident that it is a part and not the whole. In the portrait statue, for example, if the head alone is represented, there should appear, along with the head, as much of the bust as will suggest attachment to the body, in order that it may not seem decapitated! It is because the torso is so obviously a fragment of an ideal whole that we do not feel it to be an uncanny mutilation of a man or woman. In its present condition, the "Venus de Milo" is not the statue of an armless woman, but a statue of part of a whole woman.

A statue is not sufficiently unified by representing a single individual or several individuals united by some common interest or by partic.i.p.ation in some common action; the unity in the object should be expressed through a unity in the material of representation. The finest taste requires that every statue should be made of only one kind of material. One part, say the body, should not be of marble, and another part, say the girdle, of gold or bronze. Such a combination of materials gives the impression of two things juxtaposed, not of a single whole. If in defense of this one were to say that through the difference of materials real differences in the object are portrayed, consistency would require that the principle be carried out, that the hair be of another material, and the eyes of still a third, with the result of making the statue a sheer agglomerate. And when more than one individual is represented, even a unity of material is not sufficient; it is necessary, in addition, that the several figures in the group be in contact with each Other. It is not enough that they stand on the same plate; for the real empty s.p.a.ce that we see between them will keep them apart. The ideal s.p.a.ce to which they belong, and the spiritual or dramatic oneness, should be mediated by a material touch of hands or other parts of the body. Compare, in this connection, Rodin's "Citizens of Calais" where this principle is violated, with the three figures from the summit of his "h.e.l.l Gate," where it is observed. In the former we simply know that the figures belong together, but we do not feel them as together.[Footnote: Compare Lipps, _Aesthetik_, Bd. 2, Fuenftes Kapitel.]

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. In the group, however, where several figures are represented united by some common interest or by partic.i.p.ating in some common action, this difference is already beginning to disappear. For, in order to appreciate the dramatic significance of the group, the point of regard from in front is essential. The other aspects remain important for their corporeal beauty, but, since that is not ordinarily paired with an equal inner significance, they come to acquire a secondary place.

Impressionistic sculpture represents a further departure from the normal and in the direction of the pictorial. Here part of the block from which the statue has been hewn is left an integral member of the piece; and out of it the figure seems to grow, as it were. It performs in the whole a function corresponding to the background of a portrait--the representation of the environment. Thus, in Meunier's "The Miner," the block represents the mine; in Rodin's "Orpheus and Eurydice," it represents the mouth of Hades; in his "Mystery of the Spring," a basin. Through the possibility of thus representing the relation of man to his environment a notable extension in the scope of sculpture is obtained.

When a background is introduced, the figure or figures, being members of a larger whole, require less detailed treatment, less clearness of outline. Their parts may even be left in large measure unfinished, the contours melting together with the block. A special point of regard, from which alone the figures are modeled, is obviously essential.

Striking is the contrast of this type with the cla.s.sic, where the utmost precision in modeling is necessary. Along with the diminished emphasis on clearness of form goes an increased effort at the portrayal of the inner, more spiritual life; sentiment and mystery find an unwonted place in the art. Rodin's "Psyche" is a good ill.u.s.tration.

Yet, despite these differences, the cla.s.sic demand for living surfaces, for rhythmical lines, for perspicuity and totality of silhouette, for singleness and unity of material, abides.

However, when the block attains prominence, the unification of the different figures through contact is no longer of equal necessity. The background serves the purpose of bringing the figures together, of providing a material bond between them. This is especially true in the various kinds of relief, between which and sculpture in the round, impressionistic sculpture is a sort of compromise. In relief there may even be a representation of perspective, the figures seeming to lie behind each other, flatter and smaller to indicate distance. But we shall not enter into the technique of this, which obviously approaches that of painting.

When the charm of the body is the prime object of expression, those actions and poses which exhibit grace and vigor are the ones naturally chosen. This beauty is best revealed in the single figure, because in the group there is usually some dramatic interest which diverts attention from it. The figure is preferably wholly or partially undraped, or when drapery is used, it should reveal the body underneath and possess beauty of line of its own. Elaboration of drapery for its own sake, or in order to display virtuosity in modeling, shows lack of true sculptural vision, which always has its eye on the naked form.

Aside from lack of charm, the old and crippled are avoided because their inharmonious lines would appear again in a statue which reproduced them; it is not possible, as in painting, to make a harmony out of them through relation to other lines in the total work, for no other lines exist; nor can their natural ugliness be so easily made acceptable through beauty of color and light. Nevertheless, no one can dogmatically a.s.sert that the artist must confine himself in his choice of subjects.

If by harmonizing the distorted lines of an ugly body with each other, and by enhancing the given purity and expressiveness of his material, the artist can create a beauty of form overlying the repellence of the subject, and if he can make us feel the tragedy or pathos of age and disease, no one can gainsay his work. In his "Aged Helmet-Maker's Wife," Rodin has perhaps accomplished this. [Footnote: See Rodin's own defense of this statue in his _L'Art_, chap. II.]

In the cla.s.sic sculpture the expression of the inner life is subordinate to the expression of corporeal beauty. Or, so far as mind is revealed, the revelation occurs through the body as a whole,--through att.i.tude and pose and act. In this way complete unity between the inner and the outer beauty is preserved. For when through subtle modeling of the face the expression of the intense and individualized life of thought is attempted, the beauties of soul and body tend to fall apart and become rivals for attention. In cla.s.sic sculpture, therefore, the face is rightly somewhat inexpressive, or better, is expressive of only the broad and typical human emotions. Fine or deep qualities may, however, be expressed; for dignity, poise, intelligence, sorrow, and active joy make themselves manifest in the total _habitus_ of the body no less than in the face.

The work of Michelangelo is a further proof that sculpture can express the spiritual life, not only in the face, but in the body also. The expression there is no different in essential kind from that found in the heroic cla.s.sic sculpture. It is universal, typical, not individual, personal; of the G.o.ds, not of men. Its quality alone differs; it is monstrous, pathological, grandiose, instead of serene and happily balanced.