Studio: international art (37.1906)

The International Society s Exhibition. Second Notice

underground clockwork which regulates our present civilization.
They sacrifice themselves for us, these fallen gods, bending their
beautiful strength to work by which their souls must die. Other
souls will be released in the civilization that their labour builds, but
the darkness which they work in shuts out even this end from their
view. They have the stoicism and the majestic silence of gods that
go under to a fate greater than themselves.

To the Jeune fille se coiffant of Bartholome we turn and find

well expressed the content of a soul
unawakened. The little statuette
Silence of Mr. Ricketts touches a
mystic solemn note; it has a re-
membrance of tragedy embodied in
a style that is a remembrance of
ancient art. The silence which
has met the questions for which life
has no answer is symbolised—the
mystical silence of all that is deeper

"silence by chas. r1cke1ts

in Le Baiser as compared with
the fragile virility and refine-
ment of Paolo and Francesco,
the figures swept away in tragic
fate towards the sad destiny
which they surrender to and
meet and make for themselves.
In Le Baiser there is none of
the half acceptance of life and
half rebellion against it, and

little of the spiritual revolt of which the art of Rodin generally
speaks. The exclusion of passion from the theme is the
keynote of its beauty, but its serenity is such that it has
almost excluded tenderness.

The spirit expressed in the finest of modern sculpture is
a despairing revolt against life which has drifted as far from
the control of the gods as art has drifted from their praise.
In Rodin this revolt is expressed in more abstract form than

in the art of Meunier, whose navvies control the pitiless by c. meunier

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• i.e travaili.eur de la mer