Page 35 - Studio International - July August 1973

While writing this and the previous set of essays
Gravity, (published in Studio International in 1970), I which has come out of painting. For this reason
aspects of modern sculpture have been
Rodin, have become conscious of the need to articulate thoughtfully appraised, by Stokes, Clement
some central concept that can be seen to animate
Greenberg, and others: but a conception of
the main stream of sculpture from Rodin on, modern sculpture as a whole has been lacking.
Degas binding such apparently divergent careers as The response of the characteristically
those of Rodin himself, Brancusi, Matisse and `inarticulate' sculptor is not surprising: lacking
William Tucker David Smith and such conflicting tendencies as history, he turns to biography, the uncritical
figuration and abstraction, 'the monolith' and emulation of past heroes : lacking a consistent
construction, 'the object' and `open-ness'. and accepted rationale, he takes refuge in
Modern sculpture, perhaps because of the folk-wisdom and homespun philosophy.
paucity of major figures, who thus stand more The experience of the last decade, when
distinctly apart, lacks a continuous argument. sculpture for a moment became the province of
The conventional history of modern art is the the painting avant garde, has served only to
history of modern painting; each of the obscure the lineage of modern sculpture. The
successive movements in modern painting most publicized and discussed work of this kind
carries as an appendix one or two sculptors : was exclusively visual in character and effect:
with Cubism, Lipchitz and Laurens; Surrealism, but one element of previous sculpture that it
Giacometti and Arp; Abstract Expressionism, conspicuously lacked — a sense of gravity, a
David Smith. Only the Constructivism of Gabo strong relation between the form of the object
and Pevsner can establish an historical claim to and the ground on which it lies — suggests that
parity for sculpture in terms of the avant-garde it is this very element which has in fact been
succession — and Gabo himself had started as a central to the most vital modern sculpture since
Rodin painter, and the Manifesto consists of a step-by- Rodin. Gravity unites sculpture and spectator
Eve 1881 step rejection of the traditional components of in a common dependence on and resistance to
Bronze, 67¾ in. high
Coll. City of Manchester sculpture — space replacing volume; the pull of the earth. Materials and structure,
Art Gallery construction and 'new' materials replacing volume and space, the unity and proportions
carving and modelling, stone and bronze; actual of sculpture speak not for themselves but
movement, the illusion of movement. Even articulate a complex and profound sense of our
omitting the last condition, the rejection of the being in the world. Because the object is fixed
human image, of volume, or of traditional and still, its 'life' consists in the evocation,
processes and materials would still preclude remaking even, of our freedom to move, within
most of the masterpieces of sculpture since the given terms of its own structure. A sense of
1900. An apologist for the independence of gravity is the factor which mediates our visual
sculpture might in fact take a precisely opposite perception of sculpture with our conceptual
view, and find a more substantial continuity of knowledge of its `real' form. The life
quality in those sculptors who have held on to of sculpture has in fact always subsisted
those elements of tradition Rodin handed over in this gap between the known and the
intact — the figure, realized in volume by perceived; it was the articulation of this gap
modelling or carving. by perspective which gave painting its three
Such a view, in its reaction from avant centuries of dominance over sculpture, as
gardism, ignores the change of the role of the Biederman has pointed out. But it was the great
figure in Rodin's oeuvre, the development achievement of Rodin to have recovered this
towards sculptural abstraction. This direction territory for sculpture, using the same vehicle
was variously extended by both Matisse and as the Renaissance masters, the human figure,
Brancusi, before Cubism and subsequently to realize within its own structure the essential
Constructivism offered a direct and frontal duality of sculpture : its internal, physical, and
challenge to the Rodinian. Indeed there are its external, perceived nature.
clues — such as the crucial importance of Had the historical effect of Rodin's work
Matisse's sculpture at the beginning and end of been the renewal of naturalism in sculpture,
the first decade of the century in his subsequent then he surely bequeathed a great variety of
achievement in painting : in the existence of a poses which might have become the repertory
`proto—cubism' in the sculpture of Matisse, of the next generation. Only the Age of Bronze
Maillol and Lehmbruck in about 1905-6: in the of his mature sculpture depends on an
crypto—sculpture of Duchamp, Tatlin and articulation of the classical and stereotyped
Rietveld discussed in a previous essay — that pose of the Apollo Belvedere type: thereafter
suggest it might be possible to construct an every figure is so posed to articulate its own
alternative history of modernism in which expressive purpose. But Rodin's underlying
sculpture plays a continuous and less purpose was not mere invention nor the mere
subordinate role. But I am not concerned with naturalistic recording of the nude model in
this kind of re-writing of history : questions of movement (after all we are told Canova had
priority, of who did what first, belong models perform in the same way). The great
essentially to a tradition of the avant garde as figure sculptures from the John the Baptist on
dead as the academic art it once reviled. The are in general not figures in violent movement—
painting bias of modernism is only significant in rather they are in a state of suspended
that it still affects even the best, the most movement. The Walking Man is the type of this
concerned and informed criticism, almost all of kind of sculpture. The perceived illusion of
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