MODELLING
One late afternoon, when I was with Rodin in his atelier, darkness set
in while we talked.
“Have you ever looked at an antique statue by lamplight?” my host
suddenly demanded.
“No, never,” I answered, with some surprise.
“I astonish you. You seem to consider the idea of studying sculpture
excepting by daylight as an odd whim. Of course you can get the effect
as a whole better by daylight. But, wait a moment. I want to show you a
kind of experiment which will doubtless prove instructive.”
He lighted a lamp as he spoke, took it in his hand, and led me towards a
marble statue which stood upon a pedestal in a corner of the atelier.
It was a delightful little antique copy of the _Venus di Medici_. Rodin
kept it there to stimulate his own inspiration while he worked.
“Come nearer,” he said.
Holding the lamp at the side of the statue and as close as possible, he
threw the full light upon the body.
“What do you notice?” he asked.
At the first glance I was extraordinarily struck by what was suddenly
revealed to me.
The light so directed, indeed, disclosed numbers of slight projections
and depressions upon the surface of the marble which I should never have
suspected. I said so to Rodin.
“Good!” he cried approvingly; then, “Watch closely.”
[Illustration:
VENUS DI MEDICI
]
At the same time he slowly turned the moving stand which supported the
Venus. As he turned, I still noticed in the general form of the body a
multitude of almost imperceptible roughnesses. What had at first seemed
simple was really of astonishing complexity. Rodin threw up his head
smiling.
“Is it not marvellous?” he cried. “Confess that you did not expect to
discover so much detail. Just look at these numberless undulations of
the hollow which unites the body to the thigh. Notice all the voluptuous
curvings of the hip. And now, here, the adorable dimples along the
loins.”
He spoke in a low voice, with the ardor of a devotee, bending above the
marble as if he loved it.
“It is truly flesh!” he said.
And beaming, he added: “You would think it moulded by kisses and
caresses!” Then, suddenly, laying his hand on the statue, “You almost
expect, when you touch this body, to find it warm.”
A few moments later he said:
“Well, what do you think now of the opinion usually held on Greek art?
They say—it is especially the academic school which has spread abroad
this idea—that the ancients, in their cult of the ideal, despised the
flesh as low and vulgar, and that they refused to reproduce in their
works the thousand details of material reality.
“They pretend that the ancients wished to teach Nature by creating an
abstract beauty of simplified form which should appeal only to the
intellect and not consent to flatter the senses. And those who talk like
this take examples which they imagine they find in antique art as their
authority for correcting, for emasculating nature, reducing it to
contours so dry, cold, and meagre that they have nothing in common with
the truth.
“You have just proved how much they are mistaken.
[Illustration:
A DRAWING
By Michael Angelo
_See page 98_
]
[Illustration:
ANTIQUE TORSO
Bibliothèque Nationale
]
“Without doubt the Greeks with their powerfully logical minds
instinctively accentuated the essential. They accented the dominant
traits of the human type; nevertheless they never suppressed living
detail. They were satisfied to envelop it and melt it into the whole. As
they were enamoured of calm rhythms, they involuntarily subjected all
secondary reliefs which should disturb the serenity of a movement; but
they carefully refrained from entirely obliterating them.
“They never made a method out of falsehood.
“Full of respect and love for Nature, they always represented her as
they saw her. And on every occasion they passionately testified their
worship of the flesh. For it is madness to believe that they despised
it. Among no other people has the beauty of the human body excited a
more sensuous tenderness. A transport of ecstasy seems to hover over all
the forms that they modelled.
“Thus is explained the unbelievable difference which separates the false
academic ideal from Greek art. While among the ancients the
generalization of lines is totalization, a result made up of all the
details, the academic simplification is an impoverishment, an empty
bombastry. While life animates and warms the palpitating muscles of the
Greek statues, the inconsistent dolls of academic art look as if they
were chilled by death.”
He was silent for a time, then—
“I will tell you a great secret. Do you know how the impression of
actual life, which we have just felt before that Venus, is produced?
“By the _science of modelling_.
“These words seem banal to you, but you will soon gauge their
importance.
“The _science of modelling_ was taught me by one Constant, who worked in
the atelier where I made my début as a sculptor. One day, watching me
model a capital ornamented with foliage—‘Rodin,’ he said to me, ‘you are
going about that in the wrong way. All your leaves are seen flat. That
is why they do not look real. Make some with the tips pointed at you, so
that, in seeing them, one has the sensation of depth.’ I followed his
advice and I was astounded at the result that I obtained. ‘Always
remember what I am about to tell you,’ went on Constant. ‘Henceforth,
when you carve, never see the form in length, but always in thickness.
Never consider a surface except as the extremity of a volume, as the
point, more or less large, which it directs towards you. In that way you
will acquire the _science of modelling_.’
[Illustration:
CROUCHING VENUS
]
“This principle was astonishingly fruitful to me. I applied it to the
execution of figures. Instead of imagining the different parts of a body
as surfaces more or less flat, I represented them as projectures of
interior volumes. I forced myself to express in each swelling of the
torso or of the limbs the efflorescence of a muscle or of a bone which
lay deep beneath the skin. And so the truth of my figures, instead of
being merely superficial, seems to blossom from within to the outside,
like life itself.
“Now I have discovered that the ancients practised precisely this method
of modelling. And it is certainly to this technique that their works owe
at once their vigor and their palpitating suppleness.”
Rodin contemplated afresh his exquisite Greek Venus. And suddenly he
said:
“In your opinion, Gsell, is color a quality of painting or of
sculpture?”
“Of painting, naturally.”
“Well, then, just look at this statue.”
So saying, he raised the lamp as high as he could in order to light the
antique torso from above.
“Just see the high lights on the breasts, the heavy shadows in the folds
of the flesh, and then this paleness, these vaporous half-tones,
trembling over the most delicate portions of this divine body, these
bits so finely shaded that they seem to dissolve in air. What do you say
to it? Is it not a great symphony in black and white?”
I had to agree.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, a great sculptor is as much a colorist
as the best painter, or rather, the best engraver.
“He plays so skilfully with all the resources of relief, he blends so
well the boldness of light with the modesty of shadow, that his
sculptures please one as much as the most charming etchings.
[Illustration:
FAUN
By Praxiteles
]
“Now color—it is to this remark that I wished to lead—is the flower of
fine modelling. These two qualities always accompany each other, and it
is these qualities which give to every masterpiece of the sculptor the
radiant appearance of living flesh.”
[Illustration:
THE AGE OF IRON
By Rodin
]