INFLUENCES, GOING AND COMING
“_Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis cautum est in horas._”
I
Sometimes we talk as if the present state of things were a sort of
terminus; as if by many roads we had at last reached Rome. Would it not
be wiser to look upon the Olympian Washington and the Adams Memorial
and the lately-discussed Civic Virtue as so many figures marking
stations of a journey by no means finished? We have had competent
leaders in the immediate past of our sculpture; is there anything
in our American way of life and our American view of art that will
prevent our having competent leaders in the future? We are too close
to that question to answer it, beyond saying that we are full of
hope. And art is one of those matters concerning which despair is
criminal. Certainly the chaos resulting from the World War is not as
yet sufficiently transformed for the wisest to know from what Ark, high
and dry on what Ararat, will issue the new hopes of all mankind. We can
only cry out with Galsworthy, not yet are there enough lovers of beauty
among us.
Our introductory chapter noted with some emphasis the fact that through
Jefferson’s hands the realism of France and the idealism of Italy came
to the aid of our new-born plastic art. Houdon happened to be a greater
sculptor than Canova; it was our good fortune that we had Houdon at
all. And Jefferson drew the curtain for a steadily unfolding act in
the drama. Since his day, France and Italy have always been our chief
allies in our sculpture. Because of this, and because of the Roman
origin of most of the British culture our early settlers brought with
them, bred in the bone, it follows that the main current of American
sculpture, in thought, in feeling, and even in workmanship, has been
fed from the boundless streams of Mediterranean civilization. Now and
again, a Celtic influence, a German influence, a Scandinavian influence
has made itself felt, for better or for worse.
Each new influence as it comes we shall prize for what it is, after
the gloss or shock of novelty is worn off. Each may have an importance
we can but guess at. Saint-Gaudens was deeply conscious that he had
received his legacy of artistic sensitiveness quite as much from his
Irish mother as from his French father, born in Southern France not far
from those sculptured mountains on which many a French poet and artist
opened infant eyes. Perhaps Celtic glamor was all that made his vision
of man somewhat different from that of many of his comrades at the
_petite école_,--just different enough to give his later work a chance
at immortality, while the images they shaped had to go back dumb to the
clay-pit again. It is a great gift, the Celtic eye, though making small
boast of seeing things steadily and seeing them whole; ah, nothing so
prosaic as that! Celtic melancholy and Celtic mirth raise up a kind
of shimmering rainbow-dust through which an image is seen in glorious
parts; and Celtic exasperation loves stir more than steadiness. But the
plodders need the seers; and ever since the time of Crawford and his
Past and Present of the Republic, our sculpture has been graced and
enlivened by many a Mac and O; never more so than to-day. The Wren
epitaph fits them even during their lifetime:--_Circumspice._
So in our country as in Britain, the Scottish and the Irish and the
Welsh strains in the blood key up the English-speaking peoples in their
arts of vision and expression. Yet when all such things are said, (and
much more might be said, with unmannerly talk of “creeping Saxons” and
the like) the fact remains that the future art of the United States is
even less easy to foreknow than that of the British Isles; and this
because of what we call our “melting-pot” population, with all its
benefits and drawbacks, its clamorous and conflicting ideals in art
and in morality. The great American alembic is still seething. Newer
forces than any that have come from Britain and France and Italy are
now stirring here. What of these? Mr. Sloane, in his address on the
sculptor Ward, reminded us of the slow evolution of sculpture, of
the long journey between the Memnon and the Hermes, of the swifter
travel between Greek art and our own, and of our recent return, not
only to the classic, but to the oriental. That inquiring look toward
the Orient, a corner of the earth always revered in occidental art,
was never so general as at present. Some time ago, the studies of our
sculptors at the American Academy at Rome led them to the eastern
borders of that richly intricate rim of the Mediterranean basin; a
rim from which we are still plucking jewels of hitherto unimagined
splendor, such as those of Tut-ankh-Amen’s tomb. But before pressing
still farther eastward, let us glance a moment at the familiar
influences of recent formative years.
II
We differentiate too rudely if we say offhand that American sculpture
has learned its _art_ from France, its _craft_ from Italy. The truth
cannot be told so simply as that. For instance, the Piccirillis,
American artists and craftsmen of Italian ancestry, are but a few out
of many talented American sculptors of Italian birth. Again, we went
to France for lessons in casting bronze, as well as in making our
weekly “bonhomme” at the _école_. Yet for the whole Western world of
sculpture during the past forty years, the strongest general influence
has been that of the French school, and the strongest single influence
that of a Frenchman aloof from the school, Auguste Rodin. No thinking
sensitive person who uses clay to shape his visions and earn his living
has failed to feel Rodin’s influence; it is already so deeply imbedded
in consciousness that many of those who most imitate this master are
least aware of so doing. It would be a mistake to suppose, because the
shouting is over, that this powerful influence has wholly waned.
We have spoken of the uses of collaboration. But there are souls that
would perish rather than collaborate. Some of these belong in the
ranks of genius, others are distinctly due elsewhere. Of the former
class was Rodin, never willing or able to subject himself to any
architectural tradition. Even while writing of Rodin’s consistent
refusal of collaboration, I hear the ironic voice of M. Anatole France,
a veteran in one art speaking of a veteran in another: “_Et surtout,
avouons-le, il collabore trop avec la catastrophe_.” And he adds, with
that sparkle of malice veterans allow themselves but not others to use
when speaking of veterans, “_Il abuse du droit de casser ce qui, dans
une œuvre, est mal venu_.” According to M. France, Rodin collaborates,
and even too much; not with architecture, as a more conventional soul
might, but with architecture’s logical opposite, catastrophe. It is
more fruitful to dwell on the gifts of genius than on its limitations;
yet the limitations also must be noted, whenever blind worship confuses
defects with qualities. It was a limitation (and so the _Société des
Gens de Lettres_ found it) that Rodin could not bring himself to any
architectural conception of his Balzac:--Balzac, more architecturally
minded than even the English novelist Hardy; Balzac, who will not let
you once look at Père Goriot until you have a clear understanding of
the plan and elevation of the sordid _pension_ where the poor man
lives; Balzac, who jealously hides Eugénie Grandet from you until
you have mastered every arch and cornice of the gloomy mansion that
shelters her; Balzac, who insists that you must know period and style
and galleries and window-glass of _la maison Claes_ before you can
peer at Madame Claes. Balzac built his novels that way because to his
mind man’s architecture is part of his life, his fate, his rôle in
the Comédie Humaine. So what Rodin did lacked basic fitness. In that
portrait statue, the Rodin of it was more precious to him than the
Balzac of it; he could make no compromise.
Now an advancing civilization will make its honorable compromises; and
it seems to me that Saint-Gaudens’s way of letting the significant
winds and waves play about the architectural pedestal or deck that
Farragut bestrides is more civilized than Rodin’s far simpler way
of letting the magnificent head of his Balzac emerge from monstrous
shapelessness to splendor. The Balzac looks splendidly begun, the
Farragut splendidly brought to completion. There is indeed a charm in
things greatly begun. Such things suggest the untamed glory of the
human spirit, and give skyey space for the beholder’s imagination to
dip its wings in. The poorest of us in looking at them can at least
conjecture, if not create. And a very present refuge for the sculptor
is that lump of marble which says nothing but suggests much in Rodin’s
portraits of women, and in many of his ideal groups with certain
surfaces of soft flesh exquisitely carved in their emergence from the
hard stone. Those melodious modulations of light and shade in flesh
are Rodin’s secret; here his genius is forever happy. That woman’s
marble back, for instance; one thinks that if one should touch it, the
skin would yield and pale and redden again. Rodin himself, in his talk
of his own work and of the classic masterpieces he loved, constantly
uses the word “esprit” rather than “chair,” and from his point of view
there is no inconsistency in that. Gratefully we acknowledge that this
master has showed the wonders of both flesh and spirit. It was well for
American sculpture to applaud both triumphs. What next?
Next, there were certain mannerisms better left unlearned by our
students; for example, that use of large extremities, a choice
announcing a healthy abhorrence of prettiness. We have seen in our
land many a Bertha Broadfoot and many a Helen of the Large Hand
created by those who had not Rodin’s excuse for this avoidance of
conventional proportion; they were not revealing the scarce-finished
new beings of Paradise, or the muscular striding bulk of a John the
Baptist in the wilderness. There is yet another mannerism filched by
admiring disciples; perhaps it is something less superficial than a
mannerism. We need not take M. France too seriously when he says of
M. Rodin, “_Il me sémble ignorer la science des ensembles_.” It is
a saying fitter to live in the flow of talk than to be embalmed in
print; yet it draws blood, too, with its prickly edge of truth. Rodin’s
ensembles are his own, not those of sane tradition; his imitators’
ensembles are often pitifully less good than those of either Rodin
or the school. That is serious! At the present moment, many American
War monuments are in the making; too many, perhaps, are casting away
collaboration and tradition. Their creators seem unaware that they are
under an influence; they think they are showing originality, preaching
the gospel of simplicity, and in a really messianic way, calling
architecture to repentance.
But, nowhere is the architectural conception of work more necessary
than in a new country. Without that conception, these United States
would be besprinkled with productions richer in the one virtue of
individuality than in the many virtues of order, unity, harmony, an
underlying sense of natural evolution and continuity. Our civilization
is not yet jaded, and does not yet need prickings toward variety.
For American sculpture, the lesson of Rodin’s genius, as distinct
from the lesson of the school, is that of the titanic conception and
the exquisite _morceau_, but not that of harmonious collaboration.
Meanwhile, it is cheering to see that the singular doctrine of
deformation distilled in France by vigorous modern followers of Rodin
is at present neglected here; when we turn modernist, as sometimes
happens, we choose the path of abstractions, seeking perhaps Epstein’s
“form that is not the form of anything,” rather than form amplifying
itself into ugliness, in defiance of classic balance and measure. In
fact, a recent piece of the new poetry, written about a recent piece of
the new sculpture tells us that
“the immaculate
conception
of the inaudible bird
occurs
in gorgeous reticence.”
Gorgeous reticence is perhaps preferable to gorgeous loquacity.
III
For a long time, and without conspicuous success, Mr. Howells tried
to show his friends the beauty of Russian realism. Apparently much of
the American appreciation that did not go out to Turgenev was being
saved for Chekhov, and for those later realists whose writings chime
with the discords and disillusions of the “expressionism” now making
itself felt in various arts. Both here and in England, the Russian
influence is visible in literature. But sculpture is slower than
literature to accept the exotic; sculpture’s magisterial weight and
bulk, and its supposed permanence, help to make it more self-contained
and less mercurial in its reactions. And indeed all the Russian
influence our sculpture has hitherto met has been of the Gallic
variety; Troubetskoy’s brilliant _pleinairiste_ modeling is as French
as Marie Bashkirtseff’s painting. Meanwhile, Russian peasant drama is
having its brightly colored successes here, in our richest of American
cities, especially among those of our intelligentsia who can afford the
price of admission, or who as critics make their living by appraising
novelties in art. Since American criticism is often created by youth
and for youth, its various impregnable positions shift with a rapidity
that has a certain advantage for a listening public; no one who is
guided by a youthful Mentor needs to remain long in any one error. But
Heaven forbid that youth, and most of all opinion-shaping youth, should
abandon a generosity of outlook toward foreign products of the mind!
To speak seriously, it will be interesting to know just how the
increasing Slavic element in our population will influence our
country’s arts in general, and our self-contained art of sculpture
in particular. When a teacher of art remarks, in some dubiety, “So
many of our students have names that end in ‘sky’,” the only gallant
retort is, “It is our business to be sure that they make no worse end
than that.” Not the least of art’s problems here in America is that
universal American problem of the unassimilated alien. Optimists and
pessimists can unite in one opinion; that our latest immigrants, no
less than those of the Mayflower, have certain native qualities that
need alteration for the benefit of the human race. The Puritan has
altered for the better. Later comers must do likewise. Some of these
have a far harder task than the Puritans, with less ability to perform
it; but they have infinitely more help.
Mr. John Corbin, in one of his penetrating studies of dramatic art,
has pointed out “two stages of American provincialism.” One stage
rejects all foreign culture; the other embraces anything foreign,
provided that it is abundantly subversive of domestic ideals and labors
and attainments. Both stages are hostile to truth and to progress,
and to the only freedom there is, freedom of the spirit. The first
type wilfully stunts growth; the second invites destruction of growth
already accomplished by costly effort. Surely American sculpture, which
has borrowed eagerly abroad and developed soundly at home, should not
fall into either of these degenerate modes of thinking.
“_Quid quisque vitet_,” says Horace, with his canny Roman
philosophy,--“What hourly to avoid is known by none.” What hourly
to accept is our modern question. Since a man’s foes may be of his
own household, what if our own home-grown materialism were after
all the worst enemy of our art? It will do little good to fly
feverish alien contacts if at the same time things of the spirit are
allowed to languish at our own ancestral firesides. Sometimes the
firesides themselves seem less frequent, as ancestors diminish in the
world’s esteem. True, our tawdry and vehement self-advertising has
its magnificent dreams, and our childlike faith in the dollar its
occasional glorious hour of justification; we cannot help seeing that
some of our transatlantic co-workers in art and letters come among us
remembering those things. And it is a healing principle of civilization
that we shall borrow our light from one land, and divide our loaf
with another; even though loaves are wasted thereby. Every lover of
our country will wish its culture to remain at once hospitable and
self-respecting; both characteristics may dwell harmoniously together.
In spite of superficial indications such as those offered by the names
in a city telephone directory, the core and nucleus of general culture
in the United States remains English-speaking; more, it remains true
to ideals of human conduct and human responsibility that have been
fruitfully developed and cherished by the English-speaking peoples.
Whatever lightly-accepted beliefs there may be in regard to this
matter, I am persuaded that the broad basis of American culture is and
will be our Puritanism. Not the narrow, mote-seeking Puritanism of past
story, but an enlightened, liberating Puritanism, with perceptions
and pardons for others, and with questionings as to its own supposed
superiorities; a Puritanism that has gained in grace and goodness
through native development and happy alien contacts. How often we have
mumbled an ancient shibboleth to the effect that art and morality
have nothing in common! On the contrary, they have the one supreme
aspiration of human beings in common; the benefit of the race. It is
the little artist who proclaims himself different from other men, and
so not subject to their laws; the great artist strives to bring his
personality and his work into harmony with the best that he knows of
human effort. Magnanimous men and women unconsciously reveal their
longing that their work may live after them for the happiness of
mankind. Ward on his death-bed, finally assured that all is well with
the great equestrian that had engaged his last thoughts, whispers to
his wife, “Now I can go in peace.” Saint-Gaudens in the later pages of
his Memoirs writes of the knowledge of the beautiful: “I know it is
a question whether such a knowledge increases the general happiness
and morality of a community. I firmly believe it does, as I believe
that any effort to do a thing as well as it can be done, regardless of
mercenary motives, tends to the elevation of the human mind.”
[Illustration: VICTORY
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS]
[Illustration: THE GILLISS PRESS]
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.
Text uses “today” and “to-day” with equal frequency; both forms
retained here.
Page 3: Transcriber removed duplicate book title.