DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0342
PYRAMID AND TEMPLE
Rome. The artist’s sensibility alone creates the cult-form.
We do not ask where the Ludovisi throne stood, whether in
a temple or elsewhere, and how it was adored. Possibly it
wasn’t a throne at all; none the less we are still ready to
adore it.
In the cabinets of the Acropolis Museum the ideas, with
which we toyed outside when gazing at the temple, un-
expectedly find their confirmation. One would never expect
an insecure culture, which maintained its level only with the
utmost effort and for a very short time, to be realized in
sculpture. Here they had constantly to find substitutes.
Actually the variations in quality are incomparably greater
here than in architecture. The dreariness of the Theseum
has none of the sting of ugliness. It’s a hard job to get used
to the fantastic fact that the two or three things in Europe
and America represent practically all the important works
that have wandered abroad and left Greece with practically
nothing, in spite of its more comprehensive possessions.
Important and unimportant are not the adjectives to express
such differences; there had to be good and mediocre statues,
but our concern for order has led us to indiscriminate ad-
miration. The great demand required daily repetitions.
Jones and Smith wanted to dedicate votive-offerings, and the
provinces had to have their share. Hence these arbitrary,
commercial, tiresome statues of gods — always gods. Our
countless Pietas and crucifixes, those fingerposts of piety, are
often dull and insignificant, but they are never repellent; and
the last and dullest wooden cross retains the gesture of the
Sufferer. The archaic ladies suffer from a banality of gesture.
The scheme carries no weight. The onus of this failure
weighs not so much on the art as on the cult that was satisfied
with such mannequins.
You have to grow old before you realize this. This sort
of disillusion is not mixed up with the museum as such. Why
not another insignificant museum? You have had dozens of
316
Rome. The artist’s sensibility alone creates the cult-form.
We do not ask where the Ludovisi throne stood, whether in
a temple or elsewhere, and how it was adored. Possibly it
wasn’t a throne at all; none the less we are still ready to
adore it.
In the cabinets of the Acropolis Museum the ideas, with
which we toyed outside when gazing at the temple, un-
expectedly find their confirmation. One would never expect
an insecure culture, which maintained its level only with the
utmost effort and for a very short time, to be realized in
sculpture. Here they had constantly to find substitutes.
Actually the variations in quality are incomparably greater
here than in architecture. The dreariness of the Theseum
has none of the sting of ugliness. It’s a hard job to get used
to the fantastic fact that the two or three things in Europe
and America represent practically all the important works
that have wandered abroad and left Greece with practically
nothing, in spite of its more comprehensive possessions.
Important and unimportant are not the adjectives to express
such differences; there had to be good and mediocre statues,
but our concern for order has led us to indiscriminate ad-
miration. The great demand required daily repetitions.
Jones and Smith wanted to dedicate votive-offerings, and the
provinces had to have their share. Hence these arbitrary,
commercial, tiresome statues of gods — always gods. Our
countless Pietas and crucifixes, those fingerposts of piety, are
often dull and insignificant, but they are never repellent; and
the last and dullest wooden cross retains the gesture of the
Sufferer. The archaic ladies suffer from a banality of gesture.
The scheme carries no weight. The onus of this failure
weighs not so much on the art as on the cult that was satisfied
with such mannequins.
You have to grow old before you realize this. This sort
of disillusion is not mixed up with the museum as such. Why
not another insignificant museum? You have had dozens of
316