Page 27 - Studio International - January February 1975

effective claims of painting, so function of the Rodin lecture : sculpture strives to escape, rather than to
limits architecture. I don't mean the `Things. attain to.
actual function of each building, but the `When I say that word (do you hear ?), Perhaps then, if we consider the
general function of architecture, which I there is a silence; the silence which meaning of 'thing' not in the context of
take to be the making of shelter, of an surrounds things. All movement art, but of thought and of language, we
internal space. Seen from the outside, subsides and becomes contour, and out of might then see how this word could
architecture at a certain scale, though past and future time something provide an ambition, rather than a mere
here I would argue that it works as permanent is formed: space, the great definition for sculpture. I have started
sculpture, might enforce a strong claim as calm of objects which know no urge .. already down this track in speaking last
thing : but an interior can surely not be so And further on: 'Things were made time of Brancusi's Kiss and Rilke's
grasped. The character of the interior very early with difficulty, after the description of what he felt to be the core
space, of the relation between interior and pattern of natural things already existing; of Rodin's art (both works incidentally
exterior, of the necessary size and utensils and vessels were made, and it dating from the same year, 1907).
structural relation to the ground of most must have been a strange experience to At much the same time Edmund
architecture — all these point to an see the made object as a recognized Husserl was trying to move the whole
experience, like that of pictorial space, of existence, with the same rights and the base of philosophy from opaque
which 'thing' is certainly not the prime same reality as the thing already there .. . metaphysical speculation to the human
component. (I am deliberately using the From the earliest, images were . . . individual's immediate apprehension of
term 'thing' now rather than 'object'. The attempts to form out of the visible human the world, 'to the things themselves' in
reason for this I mean to leave until my and animal world something immortal his celebrated phrase; 'to return to things
next talk.) and permanent, belonging to an order themselves is to return to that world
Sculpture and sculpture alone can immediately above that world: a thing. which precedes knowledge, of which
make valid claim to being thing among `What kind of a thing ? A beautiful knowledge always speaks, and relation to
the arts. Thing first, before it is image, thing ? No. Who would have known what which every scientific schematization is
material, extension. This discovery of beauty was ? A similar thing. A thing in an abstract and derivative sign-language
sculpture as thing we largely owe to two which one recognized again what one as is geography in relation to the
men working in the first decade of this liked, and what one feared, and what countryside in which we have learnt
century: to Brancusi, and to Rilke in his remained incomprehensible.' beforehand what a forest, a prairie or a
interpretation of Rodin. Brancusi's The room, the clear space which river is,' wrote Merleau-Ponty of
contribution is well known, and I have sculpture occupies among the arts, is that Husserl's injunction. Husserl aimed at
commented on it frequently before: but of being thing. All the arts, even music much more than a simple description of
in case it should be thought to belong to a and poetry, have a degree of 'thingness' : the world as it is immediately
particular period or fashion, instead of but the thingness of sculpture alone can experienced; but it was in the light of the
bringing to light in the work, through the be seen perfectly to co-exist with the immediate experience of the world that
work, the permanent and central work of art itself. But what distinguishes all reflection, all theory was to be tested:
characteristic of sculpture, I cannot do sculpture among the arts, this open and the fundamental constituent of the
better than quote Sidney Geist's occupation of the world's space, at once world as it is directly experienced, for
comparison of Brancusi's with Rodin's renders it especially liable to the Husserl and his followers is the thing.
Kiss: `Rodin's work images elements contingency of being in the world, along Husserl describes 'the natural
besides the bodies of the lovers, elements with other things: liable not only to the standpoint' thus : 'through sight, touch,
which create the illusion of a situation effects of time, nature and accident, but hearing, etc. in the different ways of
and a space in which the lovers find to a kind of absolute uselessness, resulting sensory perception, corporeal things
themselves. In Brancusi's carving we see from sheer habituation, a condition from somehow spatially distributed are for me
only the lovers; they are set in real which the other arts are protected by simply there whether or not I pay them
space, since they are congruent with the their less wordly nature. I will come back special attention . .. For me real objects
sculpture:object which is in real space .. . to this later. are there, definite, more or less familiar,
Of Brancusi we can say that no sculpture Books agreeing with what is actually perceived
of the mature oeuvre — that is, from The Michelangelo and Cellini: Letters to with being themselves perceived or even
Prayer on — is integral with a base. In the Varchi in ' A Documentary History of Art', intuitively present.' Of course, when
absoluteness of this distinction we must vol. II New York, 1958 Husserl writes 'We must not make
read a radical change in sensibility. Richard Wollheim: Art and its Objects, assertions about that which we do not
Brancusi shuns illusion. He does not New York, 1968 ourselves see,' he speaks of experience in
image space or a continuity of unlike Sidney Geist: Catalogue introduction to the widest sense — 'a chair, a star, a law of
things. His subjects become sculptured Brancusi retrospective, New York, 1967 nature ... a headache, the sense of
R. M. Rilke: The Rodin Book, part two,
objects; they were indeed objects in the from Selected Works, vol. z, Prose, London, impending doom, the law of contradiction,
first place. His immediate sculptor's task 1954 the square root of — r . . anything: —
is to make discrete bodies.' L. B. Alberti 'De Statua' London 1972 thing being taken to represent the unit of
By identifying the embracing figures experience, that which is present to the
with the object, by finding a firm subject without presupposition.
horizontal base section on which to What Merleau-Ponty returns the thing to the
ground this newly separate thing, world and affirms its constancy to human
Brancusi declares sculpture's perception: 'When I contemplate before
independence from the architectural and Sculpture is me the furniture in my room, the table
pictorial obligation of Rodin's elaborate with its shape and size is for me not a law
pedestal. The sculpture now stands not or rule governing the parade of
on imaged feet, but on virtue of its own phenomena, and an invariable
standing, its own stability, having its own William Tucker relationship : it is because I perceive the
centre of gravity. But this sculpture does Part four table with its definite shape and size that I
not arrogantly make its claim to being a presume for every change of distance or
thing. Like the individual figures imaged orientation, a corresponding change of
in it, the whole sculpture keeps its back So far we have remarked sculpture's shape and size and not the reverse. Far
turned to the world — on every side. The character, opposed to that of the other from it being the case that the thing is
modest scale, the simplicity and directness arts as being essentially `thing'; and reducible to constant relationships, it is
of workmanship, the quiet, private image briefly and rather arbitrarily defined in the self-evidence of the thing that this
make The Kiss a model for sculpture's `thing' as 'that which can be grasped'. constancy of relationship has its basis.'
contained and separate existence, as You may well feel that this definition of Now I think we have already moved a
thing. sculpture is a lowest common little way from a mere description of the
Rilke, developing a theme first stated denominator — accurate perhaps of all world and of our reaction to it. By
in the first and better-known monograph sculpture until very recently, but a identifying the thing as the object of
on Rodin, writes, at the beginning negative condition, one from which attention and reflection, by recognizing it
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