DOI article:
Furst, Herbert E.: Sculpture and architecture
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29343#0038
THE PATHS INTO THE WOOD WOODCUT BY PAUL NASH
THAT is to say, one tribe or people may have,
according to its stage of development, abstract
ideas very much like another not necessarily of
the same race or even period, and may consequently
wish to express very much the same thing in sculpture,
say a God of Heaven, or a God of Hell, or a Goddess of
Fecundity,but their expressionsvriM differ in accordance
with ethnic variation and the concrete material they
have at hand. We are in such cases inclined to seek a
difference in assthetic principles, a different conception
of “beauty,” and particularly are we inclined in these
days to regard “respect for the material” as a sign of
assthetic probity. We think that stone-sculpture should
differ in treatment from bronze casting; that is to say
that the carved thing should show by its solidity of
forms that it is carved, whilst the cast thing should dis-
play the fluidity of its metal in the greater freedom of
its forms. Up to a point this may hold good, but only
up to a point—it bears but little stress. As a matter of
fact throughout the history of art we find forms con-
stantly applied to one material though they have been
derived from quite another. That is as true of the wood-
wicker born “Round Tower” of Ireland, and of the
ubiquitously exploited Assyrian “Tassel,” as itis of the
Tree-Trunk evolved Apollo of Tenea. Nearly all
elements of ornamental design have changed their
original habitat, and the very shapes of vessels, such
as the ancient Chinese pots, have come from a foreign
material. Indian sculpture was as freely carved in stone
as it was cast in metal and—none the worse for it.
Gothic tracery in stone resembles in certain phases such
a flimsy fabric as lace. It would seem as if assthetic rules
were only made in order to prove exceptions.
NEVERTHELESS wherewesee Rodin carving
marble arms or legs that have to wear marble
splints or crutches, or casting bronzes which
have lumps of metal sticking to them like mud on a
bog-trotter’s boot, we may rightly argue that Rodin has
broken the rules without proving the exception; he has
indeed committed an assthetic offence. But why? Not
because he has ofFended against some abstract and abso-
lute “law,” but because these stays and stilts and clumps
interfere with the significance of form, with the purity
of the silhouette,and sculpture is essentiallyneither more
nor less than a solid silhouette: a ciibic system of “out-
lines”expressing an idea; and because it is neither more
nor less it is the only “Fine” Art of three dimensions.
ARCHITECTURE, which is also called afine
art, is only so in one of its branches. Only in
one of its branches can it be said to express an
idea without props or stays or other irrelevant matter.
At present that branch bears only one kind offruit, viz.,
Sacred architecture; and even this has to be qualified
and defined as “shrine-building,” such as we find in
India. These shrines have no other purpose than to
honour the deity to whom they are dedicated. They
are not buildings in the European sense, because they
are hardly “structures” or “constructions” at all but
mere hollow mounds, sculpture-cumuli, that hold to-
gether only by the law of gravitation. Built in horizon-
tal courses, they have no strains to complicate their
stability, nor have they the slightest utilitarian use.
34
THAT is to say, one tribe or people may have,
according to its stage of development, abstract
ideas very much like another not necessarily of
the same race or even period, and may consequently
wish to express very much the same thing in sculpture,
say a God of Heaven, or a God of Hell, or a Goddess of
Fecundity,but their expressionsvriM differ in accordance
with ethnic variation and the concrete material they
have at hand. We are in such cases inclined to seek a
difference in assthetic principles, a different conception
of “beauty,” and particularly are we inclined in these
days to regard “respect for the material” as a sign of
assthetic probity. We think that stone-sculpture should
differ in treatment from bronze casting; that is to say
that the carved thing should show by its solidity of
forms that it is carved, whilst the cast thing should dis-
play the fluidity of its metal in the greater freedom of
its forms. Up to a point this may hold good, but only
up to a point—it bears but little stress. As a matter of
fact throughout the history of art we find forms con-
stantly applied to one material though they have been
derived from quite another. That is as true of the wood-
wicker born “Round Tower” of Ireland, and of the
ubiquitously exploited Assyrian “Tassel,” as itis of the
Tree-Trunk evolved Apollo of Tenea. Nearly all
elements of ornamental design have changed their
original habitat, and the very shapes of vessels, such
as the ancient Chinese pots, have come from a foreign
material. Indian sculpture was as freely carved in stone
as it was cast in metal and—none the worse for it.
Gothic tracery in stone resembles in certain phases such
a flimsy fabric as lace. It would seem as if assthetic rules
were only made in order to prove exceptions.
NEVERTHELESS wherewesee Rodin carving
marble arms or legs that have to wear marble
splints or crutches, or casting bronzes which
have lumps of metal sticking to them like mud on a
bog-trotter’s boot, we may rightly argue that Rodin has
broken the rules without proving the exception; he has
indeed committed an assthetic offence. But why? Not
because he has ofFended against some abstract and abso-
lute “law,” but because these stays and stilts and clumps
interfere with the significance of form, with the purity
of the silhouette,and sculpture is essentiallyneither more
nor less than a solid silhouette: a ciibic system of “out-
lines”expressing an idea; and because it is neither more
nor less it is the only “Fine” Art of three dimensions.
ARCHITECTURE, which is also called afine
art, is only so in one of its branches. Only in
one of its branches can it be said to express an
idea without props or stays or other irrelevant matter.
At present that branch bears only one kind offruit, viz.,
Sacred architecture; and even this has to be qualified
and defined as “shrine-building,” such as we find in
India. These shrines have no other purpose than to
honour the deity to whom they are dedicated. They
are not buildings in the European sense, because they
are hardly “structures” or “constructions” at all but
mere hollow mounds, sculpture-cumuli, that hold to-
gether only by the law of gravitation. Built in horizon-
tal courses, they have no strains to complicate their
stability, nor have they the slightest utilitarian use.
34