Page 25 - Studio International - January 1969

late nineteenth century Rodin discovered that ture could take both form and content from selves were hostile to the problems of public
the figure could be dismembered, fragmented the object world. Subsequently the Surrealists communication, rightly suspicious of the mo-
even, and in the process acquire a new unity: made objects; but they were for the most part tives of those public organizers whose mission
the power of the part, the figure-element as consciously animated or distorted. It was not it is to cram new feet into old boots. Sculpture
real in itself, was released. Rodin's successor, until the last few years that a sculpture started in public places, sculpture and architecture,
Brancusi, developed the portrait bust— head- to emerge that disowned the monumental, the sculpture for schools and hospitals, playground
as-object — into objects that were absolute, dis- precious, the animate—all those qualities that sculpture, festival sculpture, sculpture in gar-
crete from the world, with only an oblique tend to remove sculpture from the object- dens, sculpture as environment: anything to
reference to the figure. world. It rested directly on the ground—was make the new work tame and acceptable, to
Simultaneously sculptors learned from the not elevated on a pedestal— and was made from drain off its real power to subvert a comfortable
Cubist painters that no material and no subject inexpensive, easily available material, the world-view. And sure enough new armies of
was sacred. Sculpture could be made from quality of which was unimportant except inso- bronze generals and marble nymphs disguised
anything, about anything. Permanence con- far as it bodied the formal quality of the object, in steel geometry and vermiform plastic have
sisted in the strength of the idea, not in the and which in any case was usually concealed emerged to reap the harvest of a dead tradi-
material. Sculpture could be literally made, by an opaque skin of paint. The sculpture tion, a temporary and invented public art.
rather than carved, or modelled and cast : out object was finally freed from the residual For there is no public realm in our time to which
of the same materials and by similar processes structure of the human figure, the inhibitions a public sculpture might give visual purpose.
that characterized any commonplace artifact of expensive materials and complex craft pro- Among the arts sculpture is peculiarly prone,
in the world of things. cesses. It could be an object among objects, because of its literal objectness, to a kind of
Nonetheless, the rich possibilities of a new sub- privileged only by its unique configuration, its entropy in terms of human habituation and
ject matter, new materials and the consequent lack of recognized type or function. Its unity inertia, both in the artist and spectator: that is,
re-appraisal of the kind of articulation sculp- would be its own, not that given by an existing the physical object has a greater initial im-
ture might have, remained largely untapped model in reality. mediacy than a painting but correspondingly
after the heroic period of Cubism, until recent If the bright morning of those hopes has some- tends to lose its presence with time, simply
years. The persistence of figure as a basic what dimmed, it may well be because neither because it is physically 'there' and familiar. It
mode of articulation, the use of bronze, carved the artists themselves, nor those who made does now seem that the pedestal, tired old con-
stone and wood, as the proper materials of a themselves responsible for publicizing and vention as it was, did at least secure the
serious sculpture, limited the potential exten- distributing the work, recognized the nature `internality' of the object: it is essential that
sion of sculpture both in itself, in terms of its of the revolution that had occurred. The scale sculpture continue to act inwards, as well as
own possible structure, and into the world, in and availability of the new work was public, outwards on the spectator and environment,
terms of a possible new relation with the but its content was private. Society had not however spectacular the external effects may
environment. Picasso's Glass of absinthe, asked for it and there was no place for it, except be, ifit is to remain an art capable of expressing
Boccioni's Development of a bottle in space, in the non-world of galleries, museums and in continually new terms man's imaginative
Duchamp's Bottle rack revealed that sculp- circulating exhibitions. The sculptors them- relation with the physical world.
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