Page 60 - Studio International - May 1970

The first thing that one thinks of on seeing
already been so lavishly applauded. He had a
Antoine Bourdelle's L'Eloquence (Grande Tête tendency to embellish sculpture with literary
Definitive) is archaic Greek sculpture. Not only devices, and often became so absorbed in
is L'Eloquence built up out of rhythmically re- fragments and details that he lost sight of the
lated planes, but the facial expression is that whole.
of the serene standing Kouroi. It has their Bourdelle worked as if he was lopping off the
massive, formal simplicity based on enigmatic heads from Rodin's St John the Baptists, con-
mathematics and the cool, confident smile of sciously rethinking the torso not as skin over
their Apollonian rationalism. muscle, but as a meaningful generalization, at
The comparison is not fortuitous; Bourdelle the same time both atavistic and idealistic.
was unashamed of the archaic associations of His Torse de I'Epopée is sombre, solid, silent,
his work : 'everything that is synthesis is articulated through the rational relationships
archaism: archaic is the opposite of "copy", of its planes. This is the opposite of Rodin's
it is the born enemy of lying and of all that modelled impressionism.
stupidly odious art of trompe l'oeil which turns With remarkable perceptivity, Rodin heral-
marble into a corpse. The archaic is not ded him as 'a pioneer of the future', and now,
naïve, it is not rough; the archaic is the forty years after his death, it is the prophetic
deepest of arts, the only one in harmony with quality of his work which is likely to intrigue
the universal; it is at once the most human us most.
and universal of arts.' The best pieces of Bourdelle look like source
Greek sculpture progressed along a continuum material for the development of twentieth-
from the fervent, intellectual assimilations of century sculpture. His torsos seem to be the
the archaic artists to the irridescent naturalism forerunners of Arp's marbles; and his con-
of Praxiteles and his contemporaries, through scious interest in the archaic is perhaps the
the unbridled frenzy of Scopas, into the sheer first manifestation of an area of sculptural
orgy of chaos that was Hellenism. activity which continued until the invasion of
Bourdelle's work developed along a similar the arts by technological consciousness in the
matrix, but it moved in the opposite direction. mid-fifties. Jeune Sculpteur, 1918, a cubist
Early works like La Riviere have about them a work which emerged logically from his early
frantic erotic sensuality. Crouched female experiment, demonstrates that the areas he
figures stoop over streams of bronze, display- was exploring led naturally to the Cubism of
ing their exaggerated haunches like exotic Laurens and Gaudier-Brzeska.
fruits. They invite us to touch rather than to Under these circumstances, it is tempting to
contemplate. Suggesting movement, rippling exaggerate his achievement : the link between
skin and intense muscular activity, they Rodin and the twentieth century cannot be
stimulate the empirical senses rather than ignored.
activating the mind. However, the current GROSVENOR GALLERY
The influence of Rodin, whose rougher-out show clarifies the reasons why Bourdelle has
Bourdelle became, is indelibly splashed across not received the attention which one might
these figures. have expected. Despite the strength, the quiet
But Bourdelle did not remain happy modelling fervour of individual pieces, despite their
pieces of derivative, dynamic indulgence. He strong prophetic implications, much of
began to simplify drastically, not through a Bourdelle's work has about it a massive
reactionary primitivism, though 'loyalty to tentativeness and lack of assertion, as if he
the earth' was a perpetual preoccupation, but was fully aware that he was experimenting
through a desire to create forms which were with a variety of ideas which would each be
non-allusive, integrated entities. more thoroughly explored and developed by
He saw that representational sculpture was his successors.
dishonest; the sculptural statement is only His development was not steady, nor, finally,
valid if it speaks in its own language—the conclusive. The late work Tete du Fruit, for
language of form. example, is draped in the arid literary
Simplification as practised by Bourdelle was excrescences he despised. With this figure he
far from being a brutal philistinism, or a has tempered his austere, almost mystical in-
retreat into ignorance. It was a process of sight with a palatable dash of sentimentality.
enlightenment motivated by the desire to In the last year of his life he produced Petit
discipline matter on its own terms, through Buste Pathétique, his final study of Beethoven,
the strenuous activity of the mind. a face which haunted him throughout his life.
And so, with the refinement of his 'archaism', It differs radically from the early Beethoven
came work which was intellectually articulate, busts : Beethoven a la Colonne (1901) is as close
which proposed new sculptural values in a to a summary of Bourdelles's contribution to
way in which Rodin's achievement, for all its sculpture as one could hope to get. But this
tempestuous splendour and Dionysiac energy, final head is tortured, agonised, ravaged
did not. through its tiny formless mass with pain and
Rightly, Rodin's position in the history of art suffering. It leads one to wonder if, at times,
is like that of an impregnable volcano, but Bourdelle did not have a Rodin inside him,
the recent Hayward show underlined his struggling to get out. q
limitations, if only because his excellences had PETER FULLER