and incidental eccentricities in technique; overstepping the
limitations of his art, have made Rodin the great man of the fellows
who for some two decades have set the fashion in art and literature. By
these three peculiarities, to which he owes his spurious celebrity, he
will be ruined as an artist, whatever the success he owes to puffing
may be. And that is lamentable, for Rodin is a genuinely gifted
sculptor, who created beauty when he did not yet think himself bound
to work out of gratitude to the “young” journals. Unfortunately, it
is extremely improbable that he will now find his way back to that
simplicity and naturalness in which salvation is alone attainable.
There is no return from Montmartre, not, at any rate, for an old man
who has climbed this height and accepted with passionate earnestness
all what he saw and heard there in advanced years. Young people who are
still capable of change, in many cases awake from the idle dream of
Montmartre æstheticism. Nature does not vouchsafe to the old to begin a
new life.
XIV
RESURRECTION
BARTHOLOMÉ
I do not want to speak of Tolstoi’s novel, but of a work of art—great,
at any rate, materially, as a statue—which every pilgrim to Paris will,
I suppose, wish to see, viz., the monument which Bartholomé dedicated
“To the Dead,” and which is to be seen in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.
It is interesting in so many aspects that one might devote to it a
monograph as thick as a book, which would send out suckers over the
whole domain of æsthetics and the history of art. Never do I feel so
painfully the inadequacy of a short essay as when I proceed to handle
a subject so rich in connections. It is impossible to exhaust it in
this form, and it is painful to leave it as a fragment. One appears
limited, whereas one is only restricted. We must satisfy ourselves with
indications which will easily be looked upon as superficial, though
they are merely terse. What is thought out as a proof takes the form of
mere assertion, and in cases where we should like to convince, we must
think ourselves successful, when we have incited the reader to kindly
co-operation—which, however, goes for the most part its own way.
This pious ejaculation will make it easier for me to accommodate myself
to the conditions which have been imposed on the short essay.
Works of sculpture in public places, which are neither monuments nor
ornamental buildings, viz., such as are not intended to call to mind
special events or particular individuals, are something novel in the
development of high art. Antiquity knew only monumental creations which
had their origin in patriotic sentiments. We have to bear in mind that
religion in ancient communities constituted a part of patriotism,
for there were no gods for mankind in general, but only gods for a
particular people or a particular state. When Socrates had to drain the
cup of hemlock, it was not because he had sinned against Olympus, but
because he had given offence to Athens in the person of her tutelary
divinities. The Battle of the Giants and the Frieze of the Parthenon,
the Pallas Athene of the Acropolis and the Olympian Zeus, were felt, by
those who gazed on them and for whom they had been wrought, as images
from the past and present of their race. Even the “Laocoon” and the
“Farnese Bull” were so regarded: a distinction between the legends of
their race and accredited history, nay, between theology and politics,
did not exist in the consciousness of the multitude at large, or even
in that of the select few. The god made of ivory and gold was the
public worship of a living being who was invested with high rank in
the commonwealth, and the Olympian victor to whom a statue was erected
entered into mythology as a comrade of Hercules, Theseus, and Perseus.
Religious art was the only public art known in the Middle Ages. If
material political interests swayed the minds of communities in Pagan
times, when the nations became Christian the supersensual, _i.e._, the
salvation of the soul, became the great concern of the individual as of
the community. Patriotism disappeared from the domain of emotion; what
took its place—the pride of town, or class, or guild—was merely delight
in material possession, or, if you like, a sort of vulgar dignity
without any ideal background. Faith was their only sentiment, piety
the artist’s sole impulse from which genuine creations could spring.
It followed, therefore, that religious art—the only monumental art
then in existence—attached itself to sacred places, and subordinated
itself to them as really mere accessory decoration. Without resting on
architecture, sculpture stood on its own feet only in the Stations of
the Cross on Calvaries, but, even in this case, it had no object of
its own, but served a definite purpose of worship. The beginnings of a
public art which grew out of an abstract thought of the community—one
not of a religious but of a temporal, of civic nature—are scanty and
dim. As forerunners of such an art we can claim the Roland Pillars of
the Free Towns—the symbol of their civil and criminal jurisdiction—with
their indistinct, historical background of dim memories of Charlemagne
as the legal source of municipal liberties, and perhaps also the
Byzantine Lion of Brunswick.
The Renaissance was the first to create a monumental art that was
to serve no practical, religious, or dynastic purpose, but one
purely æsthetic, from which people looked for no strengthening of
ecclesiastical views, no increase of authority and, through that,
of power in a prince or government, but looked, in fact, only for
delight in beauty. Renaissance art, I admit, rich and free as its
development was, also remained thoroughly under the influence of
mediæval traditions, and knew no other range of themes than those
derived from the Bible and Classic mythology. Even worldlings among the
artists, who had outgrown religious ideas, drew at least their stories
from the New and, even more commonly, from the Old Testament, or from
pagan mythology, which was familiar only to the educated, and to the
multitude at large was meaningless, and devoid of life. A scholastic
pedantry hung about such works as Benvenuto Cellini’s “Perseus,” for
instance, which prevented the masses from appreciating them fully. It
was not, however, done from haughty disdain, for monumental art—the art
of the streets and squares—appeals indeed to the masses. The modelling,
on the one hand, of what is purely human, which appeals to feelings in
every human heart, and is, therefore, understood by every man; on the
other hand, of a subject, well-defined in time and place, which must
be familiar, at any rate, to contemporaries and residents: this degree
sculpture attained only gradually and late. The Goose-man of Nuremberg
and the Brussels Mannikin are instances of local Realism; Tadda’s
“Justice” at Florence and Michael Angelo’s “Pietà”—these in spite of
their religious relations are examples of universal human Idealism.
It is characteristic of the timidity of sculpture, even in its proud
epoch of the Renaissance, that it dared not cast itself adrift from
presenting what was of immediate utility. It thought it needed an
excuse for stepping out into the market-place before all the people. It
found it fairly in supplying towns with water. It created fountains.
These are the first and, for a long time, the only monumental works
which were suggested neither by religion nor by loyalty to some
dynasty; which aim neither at immortalising the memory of a particular
event, nor at refreshing the schoolboy knowledge of the more liberally
educated, but embody, without any pre-possession, a purely artistic
conception of form fulfilled and animated with subjective emotion.
The stages of development of the monumental fountains, which pretend
to be mere sports of untrammelled fancy on the artist’s past, extend
to the present day, in the latest phase, in which the fountain is not
really intended to distribute water, like Sluter’s “Fount of Moses”
at Dijon, or Jean Goujon’s “Fontaine des Innocents” in Paris, but uses
the water only as a decorative element, as Donner’s fountain in the
market-place of Vienna, or Reinhold Begas’s Neptune fountain in the
Berlin Schlossplatz.
We must come down to the last century to find at last a monumental
art of universal feelings or thoughts, still, for the most part,
modestly cringing under the protection of architecture, as groups
on pediments of palaces, theatres, and exhibition-buildings, and
taking possession of the public square in full independence only in
the last decades. Historical works, even of an universal, impersonal
sort, such as the numerous war-memorials in Germany and France, the
_risorgimento_-monuments of Italy, the patriotic battle-memories in
Switzerland—do not come under consideration here, but only abstract
works such as Bartholdi’s “Freedom enlightening the World,” at New
York, or Dalou’s “Republic as the Protector of Labour and Culture,” in
the Place de la Nation, at Paris.
Even these works still continue to show a birthmark, which betrays
their origin from the sculpture of purpose, for Bartholdi’s gigantic
statue is a lighthouse, and Dalou’s “Triumph of the Republic” belongs
to the fountain series.
On the other hand, Bartholomé’s “Memorial to the Dead” is as free
from every idea of commonplace utility as any mouldings for the rooms
of a house. It originated in the artist’s emotion, and had, at its
birth, no other purpose than that of relieving its creator by the
gratification of an impulse. What was to become of the work after it
was finished is a question Bartholomé probably never asked himself
at all. Perhaps he resigned himself to the thought that it would
pass a pensioner’s existence in some museum or other. In any case,
carelessness as to what use would be made of it left him entire freedom
as to the form it should take. And now he had the unexpected happiness
of the work being purchased by the city of Paris, and placed in Père
Lachaise. This has been the first instance, as far as I know, of a
purely subjective, monumental work capturing a public position without
this being justified by a practical service to the community, without
embellishing a building, without satisfying any religious need or
patriotic feeling, without immortalising any historical reminiscence,
without glorifying any event or individual, but basing its claim to
the grateful attention of the people at large only on the grounds that
it attempts to embody in beauty an elemental emotion alive in the
masses, that is to say, a real, common interest of moral order. The
work may become the starting-point of a new monumental art, which will
set itself the hitherto unknown task of presenting, with the authority
of great sculpture, moods and views of the world, viz., the spiritual
conditions common to a people, of interpreting them to that people, and
of fixing them for history.
With all its novelty, Bartholomé’s work is, notwithstanding, not
without organic connection with the historical development of
art. There is no virgin-birth in art. Every work has a pedigree.
Bartholomé’s art is allied to the Campo Santo art of the Middle
Ages, from which it borrows thoughts of consolation and promise. It
nevertheless exhibits a daring progress when it has emancipated itself
from the architecture of gateways, outer walls, chapels, etc., and
forced its way in independent form, complete in itself.
The street of tombs opens at the main entrance of Père Lachaise, and
leads to a gently rising hill, the declivity of which Bartholomé’s
masterpiece occupies. It displays the irregular, decorated side of a
two-storied stone building of ancient Egyptian architecture of the
simplest lines. A high door opens in the middle of the upper story,
into the shadowy depth of which a naked man has entered. Him follows
hesitatingly, with her outstretched right hand grasping his shoulder
and seeking support, a young woman, the lines of whose profile, from
her mouth distorted with fear down to the soles of her feet that detach
themselves reluctantly from the ground, express a horror in presence of
the unknown.
Towards this Gate of Death move, on the right and left, groups, each of
seven persons, whom the artist has striven honestly, yet without real
success, to fashion in various shapes. At the first hurried glance,
the two processions appear to be variously moved; but on looking more
closely into them, we recognise an uniformity which proves a striking
poverty of imagination. On the left, hard by the Gate of Fate, a young
woman is sitting on a stone-bench without support, with her countenance
concealed by her hands. She cannot make up her mind to rise from where
she is resting, in order to take the last step. A second woman is
visible in a similar irresolute attitude, in weak relief on the wall.
Cowering behind the two, kneeling quite low, so that the thighs lie in
parallel lines over the legs, a naked man seems to be whispering words
of encouragement into the ear of the seated woman. Then follows a woman
sunk on her knees as if crushed, who hides her face like the first
with a somewhat different movement, and behind her a man standing, but
bending down to her, and addressing words of consolation. Last of all,
another woman sitting down, whose dishevelled hair is streaming over
her countenance, and, behind her, a man standing upright, likewise as
a consoler. Thus is repeated on this side the theme of the despairing
woman and the calm, comforting man. On the right side the invention
is somewhat richer. Close to the door stands an old man—decidedly the
most expressive figure in the whole composition—clinging tightly to the
door-posts; and with his head and the upper portion of his body bent
forward, he tries to get a terrified glance at the awful mystery, ere
he pulls himself together for entering. To his group belongs a woman
stretched on the ground with her face pressed in her hands before her;
another folding her hands in prayer, and a half-grown girl shrugging
her lean shoulders in terror. There follows a second group of three
figures—a woman with dishevelled hair, bowed low to the ground; a
crouching man supporting her and preventing the feeble figure from
sinking down completely; and a young woman who kneels on one leg, turns
her back to Death’s portal, and glances back on life as though she
still hoped for deliverance.
The lower story shows, through the front-wall, which is removed to its
full extent, the interior of the vault into which the upper Gate of
Death seems to lead down. On a mattress-like couch rest, side by side,
the naked bodies of a man and his young spouse; across their bodies is
laid their little one year old child; in the background is visible in
low relief on the wall a winged angel with outstretched arms, who looks
down lovingly on the three quiet sleepers. With a _naïvité_ which does
not rise above the puerile method of the _quattrocentisti_, of making
their figures express themselves by means of legends issuing from their
mouths, Bartholomé writes on this wall beneath the angel the sense of
his allegory: “They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon
them hath the light shined.”
Above all, the artist deserves the respect that is due to long and
earnest effort. We have here before us a work of ten years’ labour,
executed with composure, inspiration, and conscientiousness. He who
can do that, of him one may say, without the slightest suggestion
of irony: “With his talent, however applied, the man is certainly a
character.” Many details of the monument, nevertheless, prove that
Bartholomé is not only a character, but also a man of talent. The
husband and wife turn their quiet faces to each other in the rest that
is in the grave, and lay their hands one upon the other; and this
movement is so tender and sincere that it makes a deep impression.
It really expresses in sculpture the love that endures beyond the
grave. It is the solitary true emotion in the whole work; for he
whose eyes grow moist at the sight of the dead child with the sweet
little baby limbs, will say to himself that his emotion is not of an
æsthetic nature, is not evoked by the means of art, but is the purely
physical reaction of a human heart from a cruelly painful impression,
in which no artistic element or inspiration is mingled. The woman who
enters Death’s portal a prey to horror exhibits graceful lines, and
the old greybeard who timidly peers into it is cleverly conceived and
accurately represented.
Beside these excellent details, many middling and absolute weak
ones disturb us. The dead husband in the grave has an Aztec face
of repulsive ugliness, which is not called for by any artistic
considerations. The attitudes of many figures, especially those
squatting or cowering, are in bad taste. A primary personage—the man
who has stepped into the Gate of Death—stalks bending forward with
head bowed down and the muscles of his back contracted, like one
who is hauling with all his might. It is a matter of surprise that
the tow-rope with which the vessel is dragged is not to be seen. I
cannot prove it, but I am convinced that Bartholomé has formed this
man, not after a model, but from what he recollected of a hauler by
Constantin Meunier. I have already called attention to the monotony
of the group _motifs_. The whole conception of the composition, at
any rate of the upper story, is an echo of Canova’s monument to Maria
Christina at Vienna, with the further development that Bartholomé
shows the subterrestrial and supernatural continuation of the theme
which Canova carries only as far as the entrance to the realm of
shades, leaving what follows to the pious belief of the spectator. The
weightiest objection which must be made to the work as a whole is its
offensive lack of repose. All the individual details are, with few
happy exceptions, realistic, whilst the effect of the whole composition
moves in extreme unreality. How has Bartholomé’s most original artistic
instinct not preserved him from trying to present a wholly ideal dogma
with the most vulgar, petty realism? Simple mediæval sculptors might
work thus. In our contemporaries we do not believe in simplicity, and
therefore the discord between idea and form has a jarring effect.
The most ideal dogma that Bartholomé preaches is, however, that of
the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body; for
his monument can mean only that, if it means anything at all. It is
conceived as a consolation to the sorrow-laden who form the last escort
to a dear one that is dead, or are making a pilgrimage to the grave
of one they loved. And what consolation has he to offer them? See, he
says, in the figures on the upper story, the sorrow with which men
approach the gates of shadow-land. Why this faint-heartedness? Why this
timorous shrinking from the terrors of death? Death has no terrors.
It is entering into peace and the fulfilment of a high promise. And
he shows, in the lower story, the gentle, blessed rest the dead enjoy
who there slumber until their resurrection, watched by their guardian
angel, who awakes them at the appointed hour, and convey their immortal
souls to their divine destination.
That is the cosmic view held by an artist on the threshold of the
twentieth century. Holbein and his predecessors in painting the
Dance of Death were men who believed in Christianity, but the only
consolation that they offered mortals was this: Don’t bewail your
mortal lot, you share it with Pope and Emperor. The path from the
Rationalism of this exhortation to the mysticism of Bartholomé’s dogma
is called by the decadents Progress.
The decadents are consistent when they call Bartholomé a modern,
one of the most modern, and hail his work as the art of the future.
It is logically on a line with the “progress” and “modernism” of a
Huysmans, Maeterlinck, Bourget, and other New Catholics. But what is
to be said about the city of Paris having this unctuous work erected
in Père Lachaise? Had the Moscow Duma done it, everybody would have
found it natural. But the Paris Municipal Council! This society of
boasting freethinkers which has banished the Cross from the schools and
churchyards, hounded the Sisters of Mercy from the hospitals, has the
dogma of the Resurrection preached officially!
That is the highly interesting ethical side of this work. It reveals
monumentally the confusion in the donkey-heads of the self-styled
freethinkers. That they should decree the honour of a public site to
a composition of a dogmatically religious character is proof of crass
ignorance of their own standpoint, or else of their hypocrisy. I prefer
to assume it to be their ignorance.
XV
JEAN CARRIÈS
The little palace, the charming edifice which was already attractive
as the abode of the Dutuit collection, has received a new value
and consecration. A room has been opened in it, in which a great
artist reveals himself, whose acquaintance, though not indeed quite
exhaustively, but nevertheless very profoundly and familiarly, can be
made only here in the wide world. This artist is Jean Carriès, who died
in 1894, at the early age of thirty-nine, after a marvellously planned
life. To this pattern life, as expressive as any whose story Vasari
has told, belonged a patron who kept what is vulgar away from him,
who saved him from care and anxiety, who made his mind easy as to his
influence on contemporaries and posterity, and, to a certain extent,
symbolically personified his fame for him. This useful part was played
by a certain Herr Hoentschel, who acquired most of Carriès’s works. He
has now presented them to the City of Paris, and, by so doing, rendered
the opening of the Carriès Museum possible. In return his name has
been engraved in letters of gold on the marble slab which declares the
purpose to which the room has been assigned, beside that of his trusted
artist—no mean satisfaction to a high-aiming ambition.
Carriès was the son of a poor artisan of Lyons. He seemed destined,
as he thought, to follow his father’s avocation; but the fairies had
conferred gifts on the proletarian’s child in his cradle: sense of
beauty and power of design. He was for a short time apprenticed to an
artisan; then he taught himself to be an artist. He pursued no beaten
tracks, and could follow no guides. He was left to his own sense of
locality for finding out a path, and he made wide _détours_, but,
nevertheless, raised himself safely to the highest peaks. Phenomena
delighted him as form and colour. His pleasurable sensations sufficed
to impel him to utterance in sculpture and painting; he satisfied
his delight in form by modelling in clay, his delight in colour by
enamelling.
For nearly two decades he sought, strove, and created in solemn
loneliness. Only the patron whom he luckily found at the right time
glanced over his shoulders when at work with bated breath. His
reverential admiration expressed itself in a convincing manner by the
helpful gesture of the open hand. Some intimate comrades were allowed
to witness the lofty drama of an exquisite development. His studio,
however, was far removed from the noise of the market. The heat of
praise and the icy breath of blame brought no disturbance into the
even climate in which his talent was powerfully developing. Quiet and
collected, he worked on until he saw his inner vision realised before
him. Then he said: “It is good”; and allowed a great Sabbath to follow
the hard days of creation. Absolutely unknown to wider circles, in 1892
he stepped before the public for the first time in the Champs de Mars
with a rich exhibition. An hour after the doors of the “Salon” were
open, he was famous. In the history of modern art, never before had
such an impressive revelation been observed. There was no hesitation,
no vacillation. Artists, critics, connoisseurs made pilgrimage, as if
guided by the shepherds’ star in the bodeful procession of the three
kings of the East to Carriès’ glass cases and pedestals, bent their
knees, and brought incense and myrrh. His countrymen shouted for joy:
“France has one great painter more.” Thoughtful persons looked at one
another and said softly: “The world is by one beauty richer.”