International studio (80.1925)

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first is the most popular method, the second
comparatively rare and no one has so much
as attempted the third. Yet until an effort
be made to define, however imperfectly, the
nature of the medium—adequately to do
which would require a study of its entire
history—criticism cannot but be vague and
without direction. We have but the haziest
conception of the functional properties of
sculpture and even for these we have no
names. On what then can criticism be based,
since our canon is both hazy and incom-
plete, our vocabulary non-existent? Our
only basis can be the conventions which the
individual sculptor accepts and proclaims.

All of which has been most forcibly
brought home to me by weeks of struggling
with the amazing diversity of Robert Lau-
rent. One can write about Maillol with
some hope of being understood, because
Maillol was born with a vehicle of expression
essentially complete, yet so simple and broad
as to be capable of containing all that expe-
rience and the widest eclecticism could add.
One can write about Lipschitz and the other
experimentalists because, however wide the
range of their experiments, they follow a
plan. Every phase of their activity can be
classified, their aims clearly formulated and
definite deductions drawn from their suc-
cesses and failures. One can write about
Gill and Faggi because, even before they
were artists, they were Catholics. Behind
them is a powerful and unbroken tradition
which dictates not their subjects only, but
"mother and child" (marble) by robert laurent the;r very eclecticism. Freed on the side of

experience from the burden of choice, their
The critic's task at this juncture is an unenvi- only problem is that of expression and to that end
able one. He can either steer by the wind; that they borrow what and where they will,
is, judge by his own reactions, the emotions, if But Laurent is set free by no such fetters,

any, which a given work arouses in him; by so follows no intellectual plan, was born with no all-
doing he will land both himself and his readers in sufficing vehicle at his command. Rather is he
complete muddledom the moment he leaves the possessed by an appetite for freedom quick to
purely academic. Or he can class every separate resent any restriction not imposed by the medium,
work by reference to the predominating influences Avid of choice, which his fecundity finds no
which he finds therein; in which case he runs the burden, he will submit never to any scheme die-
risk of encouraging the belief that styles in sculp- tated from without by tradition, nor yet to any
ture can, like the so-called Orders of architecture, plan in which intellect, even his own, has borne
be applied machine-made. Or, lastly, he can set the major part; only in face of his material is he
to work to study the nature of sculpture, the submissive and it is in the semi-erotic play
range of its expression, the extent of its expres- between material and imagination—the former
sional variation in relation to light, to the mate- most sensitive in its masculinity, the latter most
rial out of which it is cut or of which it is modeled— robustly feminine—that his finest creations arc
approaches diametrically opposed—to the space conceived. Finally, in place of a single mould
in which it is enclosed or the architectural struc- capable of containing all that experience and
ture to which it is related. Needless to say, the imagination can pour into it, he was born with a

Jour Jorty-two

march 1925