DOI Heft:
Nr. 334 (March 1925)
DOI Artikel:Eglington, Guy: Modern sculpture and Laurent
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19984#0180
mceRnAciotiAL
§€»t©
'mother and child" (alabaster) by robert laurent
known nature of a third phenomenon universally
hailed as supreme and all-inclusive within its own
field, or based upon a broadened study of the
thing's nature and its potentiality as expression.
Until recently such a canon existed in sculpture,
based upon the Greek art of the fifth century
B. C, with later variations to include the vagaries
of the High Renaissance, and all that did not con-
form thereto was dismissed. Archaic Greek,
Romanesque, Gothic—the ineffectual stammer
of a child. Egyptian, Chinese, Hindu—mere
ritual. But the slow lesion of blood from the
official art built thereon, the repeated failures at
regeneration by return now to its model, now to
life itself, or rather that concept of life which is
called realism, spelt inevitable if protracted death.
The wonder is that a rootless art kept alive so
long. An art already past its zenith and contain-
ing within itself the germs of decay cannot hope
to father an art of comparable vigor, for progress
can only spell decadence. But in revenge its very
splendor can so dazzle whole generations as to
blind them to the existence of all else in the world,
and its largeness offers countless by-ways capable
of being explored and exploited. That is what has
happened in sculpture. The world has been so
blinded by Greece that it has been content for
centuries to pick up the crumbs which the Greek
artist, negligent in his riches, let fall from the table.
But one day there must be an end, even to
crumbs. And then what? Man is humble enough
to be content with the merest trickle of blood, but
when that ceases, when clay, bronze and stone
are seen to be nothing more than dead lumps,
when finally the mass of the false obscures the
splendor of the true, he will revolt even to the
point of blaspheming where he has worshipped.
His bedazzlement is over and he comes to a slow
realization that what he has worshipped is not an
isolated phenomenon, self-contained, suspended
Jour forty
march 1925
§€»t©
'mother and child" (alabaster) by robert laurent
known nature of a third phenomenon universally
hailed as supreme and all-inclusive within its own
field, or based upon a broadened study of the
thing's nature and its potentiality as expression.
Until recently such a canon existed in sculpture,
based upon the Greek art of the fifth century
B. C, with later variations to include the vagaries
of the High Renaissance, and all that did not con-
form thereto was dismissed. Archaic Greek,
Romanesque, Gothic—the ineffectual stammer
of a child. Egyptian, Chinese, Hindu—mere
ritual. But the slow lesion of blood from the
official art built thereon, the repeated failures at
regeneration by return now to its model, now to
life itself, or rather that concept of life which is
called realism, spelt inevitable if protracted death.
The wonder is that a rootless art kept alive so
long. An art already past its zenith and contain-
ing within itself the germs of decay cannot hope
to father an art of comparable vigor, for progress
can only spell decadence. But in revenge its very
splendor can so dazzle whole generations as to
blind them to the existence of all else in the world,
and its largeness offers countless by-ways capable
of being explored and exploited. That is what has
happened in sculpture. The world has been so
blinded by Greece that it has been content for
centuries to pick up the crumbs which the Greek
artist, negligent in his riches, let fall from the table.
But one day there must be an end, even to
crumbs. And then what? Man is humble enough
to be content with the merest trickle of blood, but
when that ceases, when clay, bronze and stone
are seen to be nothing more than dead lumps,
when finally the mass of the false obscures the
splendor of the true, he will revolt even to the
point of blaspheming where he has worshipped.
His bedazzlement is over and he comes to a slow
realization that what he has worshipped is not an
isolated phenomenon, self-contained, suspended
Jour forty
march 1925