Sculpture and the Construction of Form
Thus men forgot
That All Deities reside in the Human breast.
_The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_.
The initial signs from which the work of art is built up psychologically
in the case of sculpture differ in several respects from the
initial signs of painting. There are of course forms of sculpture
for which the difference is slight. Some bas-reliefs, for example,
can be considered as essentially drawings, and sculpture placed
as a decorative detail in architecture so that it can only be
viewed from one angle has necessarily to be interpreted in much
the same manner. Similarly some primitive sculpture in which
only one aspect is represented may be considered as covered by
what has been said about painting, although the fact that the
relief and the relation of volumes is more completely given and
less supplied by imaginative effort is of some consequence. Further,
the changes, slight though they may be, which accompany slight
movements of the contemplator have their effect. His total attitude
is altered in a way which may or may not be important according
to circumstances.
With sculpture in which a number (four for example) of aspects
are fully treated without any attempt to fill in the intermediate
connecting aspects, the whole state of affairs is changed, since
there arises the interpretative task of uniting these aspects
into a whole.
This connection of a number of aspects into a whole may be made
in varying ways. The signs may receive a _visual_ interpretation
and the form be mainly built up of visual images combined in
sequences or fused. This, however, is an unsatisfactory method.
It tends to leave out or blur too many of the possible responses
to the statue and there is usually something unstable about such
syntheses. The form so constructed is insubstantial and incomplete.
Thus those sculptors whose work primarily asks for such a visual
interpretation are commonly felt to be lacking in what is called
a ‘sense of form’. The reasons for this are to be found in the
nature of visual imagery and in the necessarily limited character
of our purely visual awareness of space.
But the connection may be made, not through visual combination,
but through combination of the various muscular images whereby
we feel, or imaginatively construct the tensions, weights, stresses,
etc. of physical objects. Each sequence of visual impressions
as we look at the statue from varying standpoints calls up a
group of these muscular images, and these images are capable
of much more subtle and stable combinations than the corresponding
visual images. Thus two visual images which are incompatible
with one another may be each accompanied by muscular images (feelings
of stress, tension, etc.) which are perfectly compatible and
unite to form a coherent whole free from conflict. By this means
we may realise the solidity of forms far more perfectly than
if we rely upon visual resources alone, and since it is mainly
through the character of the statue as a solid that the sculptor
works, this muscular interpretation has, as a rule, obvious and
overwhelming advantages.
None the less a place remains for sculpture whose primary interpretation
is in visual terms. Looking at any of the more recent work of
Epstein, for example, a feeling of quick and active intelligence
on the part of the contemplator arises, and this sense of his
own activity is the source of much that follows in his response.
By contrast a work of Rodin seems to be not so much exciting
activity in him as active itself. The correlation of visual aspects,
in other words, is a conscious process compared with the automatic
correlation of muscular image responses. The first we seem to
be doing ourselves, the second seems to be something which belongs
to the statue. This difference as we have described it is of
course a technical difference and by itself involves nothing
as to the value of the different works concerned. A similar difference
may be found in the apprehension of form in painting.
These two modes are not as separate as our account would suggest;
neither occurs in purity. Their interaction is further complicated
through the highly representational character of most sculpture,
and through the interlinking of different interpretations due
to the congruences and incompatibilities of the emotional responses
to which they give rise.
With sculpture perhaps more than with any other of the plastic
arts we are in danger of overlooking the work of the contemplator’s
imagination in filling out and interpreting the sign. What we
transport from Egypt to London is merely a set of signs, from
which a suitable interpreter setting about it rightly can produce
a certain state of mind. It is this state of mind which matters
and which gives its value to the statue. But so obscure to ordinary
introspection are the processes of the interpretation that we
tend to think that none occur. That we interpret a picture or
a poem is obvious upon very little reflection. That we interpret
a mass of marble is less obvious. The historical accident that
speculation upon Beauty largely developed in connection with
sculpture is responsible in great degree for the fixity of the
opinion that Beauty is something inherent in physical objects,
not a character of some of our responses to objects.
From certain visual signs, then, the contemplator constructs,
muscularly as well as visually, the spatial form of the statue.
We have seen that the picture-space is a construction, similarly
the statue-space is a construction, and the proportions and relations
of the volumes which in this statue-space make up the statue
are by no means necessarily the same as those of the mass of
marble from which we receive our signs. In other words, the scientific
examination of the statue and the imaginative contemplation of
it do not yield the same spatial results. Thus the process of
measuring[54] statues with a view to discovering a numerical formula
for Beauty is little likely to be fruitful. And the work of those,
such as Havard Thomas, who have attempted to use this method,
show the features which we should expect. Their merits derive
from factors outside the range of the theory. The psychological
processes involved in the construction of space are too subtle,
and the differences between the actual configuration of the marble
and the configuration of the statue in the statue-space are brought
about in too many ways for any correlation to be established.
Among the factors which intervene in the building up of the imaginative
form the most obvious are the lighting, and the material.
With change of lighting, change of form follows at once through
change in the visual signs, and since stone is often a translucent
not an opaque material, lighting is by no means such a simple
matter as is sometimes supposed. More is involved than the avoidance
of distracting cast shadows and the disposal of the brightest
illumination upon the right portions of the statue. The general
aim should obviously be to reproduce the lighting for which the
sculptor designed his work, an aim which requires very sensitive
and full appreciation for its success. An aim, moreover, which
in the case of works transported from North to South and _vice
versa_ is sometimes impossible of realisation.
The interpretation of form is an extraordinarily complex affair.
The consequences of the asymmetricality of space as we construct
it must be noted. Up and down have distinct characters which
differ from those of right and left, which differ again from
those of away and towards us. A measured vertical distance does
not seem to us the same as an equal horizontal distance. Nor
does a equal distance away from us seem equal to either. These
effects are modified again, sometimes reinforced, sometimes reduced,
by effects due to quite a different source, to the relative ease
or difficulty with which the eye follows certain lines. The greater
and less compatibility of certain eye movements with others is
the cause of much of what is confusedly called Rhythm in the
plastic arts. After certain lines we expect others, and the success
or failure of our expectation modifies our response. Unexpectedness,
of course, is an obvious technical resource for the artist. The
intervention here of the representational factor cannot be overlooked.
An eye movement which encounters difficulty for any of a number
of possible reasons, among which so-called rhythmical factors
deserve special notice, is interpreted as standing for a greater
distance than an equal but more easy movement. This is only a
rough rule, for yet other psychological factors may come in to
nullify or even reverse the effect; for example, an explicit
recognition of the difficulty. Yet another determining condition
in our estimation of intervals of space is the uniformity of
their filling. Thus a line one inch long hatched across will
generally seem longer than an equal line unhatched, and a modulated
surface seem larger than a smooth one.
These instances of the psychological factors which help to make
the imaginatively constructed statue-space different from the
actual space occupied by the marble will be enough to show how
intricate is the interpretation by which we take even the first
step towards the appreciation of a statue. Our full response
of attitude and emotion is entirely dependent upon how we perform
the initial operations. It is of course impossible to make these
interpretations separately, consciously and deliberately. Neural
arrangements over which we have little or no direct control perform
them for us. Thanks to their complexity the resultant effect,
the imagined form of the statue, will vary greatly from individual
to individual and in the same individual from time to time. It
might be thought therefore that the hope that a statue will be
a vehicle of the same experience for many different individuals
is vain. Certain simplifications, however, save the situation.
Form, we have seen, is, through our selection among the possible
signs present, within certain limits what we like to make it.
As it varies, so do our further or deeper responses of feeling
and attitude vary. But just as there are congruences and compatibilities
among the responses we make, in the case of colour, which tend,
given certain colours, to make us pick out of a range of possible
colours one which will give us a congruent (or harmonious) response,
so it is with form. Out of the multitude of different forms which
we might construct by stressing certain of the signs rather than
others, the fixing even temporarily of a part of the form tends
to bias us towards so interpreting the rest as to yield responses
accordant with those already active. Hence a great reduction
of the disparity of the interpretations which arise, hence also
the danger of an initial misapprehension which perverts the rest
of the interpretation.
This Chapter, like the last, is intended as an indication, merely,
of the ways in which a psychological analysis may assist the
critic and help to remove misconceptions. The usual practice
of alluding to Form as though it were a simple unanalysable virtue
of objects—a procedure most discouraging to those who like to
know what they are doing, and thus very detrimental to general
appreciation—will lapse when a better understanding of the situation
becomes general. None the less there are certain very puzzling
facts as to the effects of forms when apprehended which in part
explain this way of talking. These are perhaps best considered
in connection with Music, the most purely formal of the arts.
[54] This remark applies equally strongly to the attempts which
are from time to time made to find formulæ for the proportions
of buildings. No one with an adequate idea of the complexity
of the factors which determine our responses is likely to attach
great importance to these investigations, interesting though
they are. The interpretation of the results is not within sight
of even the most optimistic of psychologists.