In days of old, precise laws were handed down from generation to
generation, from master to student, in all the workshops of the workers
in art--sculptors, painters, decorators, cabinet-makers, jewelers. But
at that time workshops existed where one actually taught, where the
master worked in view of the pupil. In our day by what have we replaced
that marvelously productive school, the workshop? By academies in which
one learns nothing, because one sets out from such a contrary point of
view.
These principles of art were first pointed out to me not by a celebrated
sculptor, or by an authorized teacher, but by a comrade in the workshop,
a humble artisan, a little plasterer from the neighborhood of Blois
called Constant Simon. We worked together at a decorator's. I was
quite at the beginning of my career, earning six francs a day. Our
models were leaves and flowers, which we picked in the garden. I was
carving a capital when Constant Simon said to me: "You don't go about
that correctly. You make all your leaves flatwise. Turn them, on the
contrary, with the point facing you. Execute them in depth and not in
relief. Always work in that manner, so that a surface will never seem
other than the termination of a mass. Only thus can you achieve success
in sculpture."
I understood at once. Since then I have discovered many other things,
but that rule has remained my absolute basis. Constant Simon was only
an obscure workman, but he possessed the principles and a little of the
genius of the great ornamentists who worked at the châteaux of the
Loire. On the St. Michel fountain in Paris there are very beautifully
carved decorations, rich and at the same time graceful, which were made
by the hand of this little modeler, who knew far more than all the
professors of esthetics.
Such was the purpose the workshops of old served. The apprentice
passed successively through all the stages and became acquainted with
all the secrets of his handicraft. He began by sweeping the studio,
and that first taught him care and patience, which are the essential
virtues of a workman. He posed, he served as model for his comrades.
The master in turn worked before him among his students. He heard his
companions discuss their art, he benefited by the discoveries that they
communicated to one another. He found himself faced every day by those
unforeseen difficulties which go to make an artist till the moment
when the artist is sufficiently capable to master his difficulties.
Alternately, they were both teacher and companion, and they conveyed to
one another the science of the ancients.
What have we to-day in place of those splendid institutions which
developed character and intelligence simultaneously? Schools at which
the students think only of obtaining a prize, not attained by close
study, but by flattering the professors. The professors themselves,
without any deep attachment for their academies, come hurriedly,
overburdened by official duties and all sorts of work; weighed down by
perfunctory obligations, they correct the students' papers hastily, and
hurriedly return to their regular occupation.
As to the students, twenty or thirty work from a single model, which
is some distance from them and around which they can hardly turn.
They ignore all those inevitable laws which are learned in the course
of work, and which escape the attention of an artist working alone.
They attend courses, or read books on esthetics written in technical
language with obscure, abstract terms, lacking all connection with
concrete reality--books in which the same mistakes are repeated because
frequently they are copied from one another. What sort of students can
develop under such disastrous conditions? If one among them is seriously
desirous of learning, he breaks loose from his destructive surroundings,
is obliged to lose several years first in ridding himself of a poor
method, and then in searching for a method which formerly one had
mastered on leaving the atelier.
That is the method that I preach to-day as emphatically as I can,
calling attention to the numerous benefits and advantages of taking up a
variety of handicrafts. Aside from sculpture and drawing, I have worked
at all sorts of things--ornamentation, ceramics, jewelry. I have learned
my lesson from matter itself and have adapted myself accordingly. Only
in being faithful to this principle can one understand and know how to
work. I am an artisan.
Will my experience be of benefit to others? I hope so. At all events, we
have a bit to relearn. It will take years of patience and application
to rise from the abyss of ignorance into which we have fallen. However,
I believe in a renaissance. A number of our artists have already
seen the light--the light of intellectual truth. Acts of barbarism
against masterpieces cannot be committed any more without arousing the
indignation of cultivated people. That in itself is an inestimable gain,
for those works of art are the relics of our traditions, and if we have
the strength to become an artistic people again, to reincarnate an
era of beauty, then those are the works of art that will serve as our
models, expressions of a national conscience that will be the milestones
on our path.
* * * * *
Judged by his work, Auguste Rodin is the most modern of
artists; judged by his life and character, he is unquestionably
a man of bygone days. As a sculptor, he is such as were Phidias,
Praxiteles, and the master architects of the Middle Ages; that is
to say, he is of all times. One single idea guides his thoughts,
one single aim arouses his energies--art, art through the study of
nature.
It is by the concentration of his unusual mind on a single
purpose that he attains his remarkable understanding of man,
physical and moral, his contemporary, and of the spirit of our
age. In the lifelike features of his statues he inscribes the
history of the day. They seem to live, and the potency of their
life enters into us and dominates us. For the moment we are only a
silent spring, merely reflecting their authority.
Through this secret of genius, his statues and groups have
an individual charm. They have taken their place in the history
of sculpture. There is the charm of the antique, the charm of the
Gothic, and the charm of Michelangelo. There is also the charm of
Rodin.
[Illustration: HEAD OF MINERVA.]