Page 53 - Studio International - March April 1975

exist in mutual dependence. of the figure in itself is no guarantee of gives both their visual permanence,
If we now turn to what distinguishes visibility. In fact experience — in the which keeps them fresh for us now, and
sculpture-as-thing from other made shape of the acres of marble and plaster which also so disconcerted
things, and include all sculpture from statuary in so many museums — rather contemporaries as a vivid 'lifelikeness'.
whatever period, whatever its subject or teaches the opposite : that the presence of It seems that sculpture of so high an
material or apparent function, we are the figure in sculpture may tend to reduce order cannot long be sustained so close
inevitably confronted with sculpture's visibility, may make the work hard to see. to an illusion of life. In the long traditions
visibility, the fact that sculpture is made Does this boredom, this visual entropy of figure sculpture outside Europe, the
to be seen. Of course all made things must attach to the figure as such the poor figure functioned as a means of
necessarily be visible in order to be useful, quality of the sculpture, or to the recognition of the sculpture; the thing-
and it may be that many things have been monotony of colour and surface, or even quality of the work is not threatened by
made to be looked at and visually enjoyed, perhaps to sculpture itself ? the demand that the sculpture become a
as well as to be used. But of sculpture All these factors are involved, not one substitute for the figure. The presence of
only can it be said that its visibility merely. Sculpture, as an art, precisely the figure is that of a sign: the
precedes any possible function: indeed because of its existence in the world, characteristics of the figure as thing — its
the function, where one exists, is made carries a higher potential of boredom, of uprightness, its symmetry, its major
possible through the primary fact of habituation in the onlooker: if it cannot divisions and proportions, the fact that it
sculpture's visibility. sustain its own presence sculpture is has a front and back and sides, the focus
I use the words 'visible', 'visibility', condemned to a non-existence in the of detail, of expression at various points —
here not as synonymous with world in which it is no more than a visual these components are used to enforce the
`perceptible', that is simply open to and physical obstruction. Lacking sculpture's visibility, with the
perception in the manner of the function, lacking the visibility which is accumulated power of our most primitive
perceptibility of all objects, but to its own function, bad sculpture's presence experience of visibility at its source. It is
designate an active quality in the work — in the world is that of an obtrusive and this most rudimentary visible presence of
it goes out to meet, it is made to attract wasteful redundancy. We don't have to figure that comes to the surface in our
and hold our sight. The distinction hear the second-rate music or read the own work: and equally is suppressed by
corresponds to that between 'object' and worst poetry of earlier periods, but the stylized illusion of skin and internal
`thing'. Sculpture is, or is potentially but poverty of inspiration in sculpture is muscular structure, the displacement of
rarely in actuality, the most visible of the always with us. frontality, in the decadent Western
arts. If here we might seem to join with Sculpture itself is thus most liable to figure sculpture we know too well.
the classic argument of Cellini and, more visual exhaustion. Thrust fully into our Picasso and his generation seized on
recently, of Greenberg, it is with this perceptual field, any failure to establish exotic sculpture, African especially,
proviso — that the visibility of sculpture is an authentic visibility, proper to the because the sign-presence of the figure
grounded in its primary existence as particular price, will be inevitably found strikingly offered by this work seemed to
thing. Sculpture is thing-made visible, out by time and habit. No tricks of craft, provide a means for renewing the historic
that is, more than merely perceptible. no formula, can establish this visibility in role of the figure. But, as with Donatello,
The role of the figure, as the image of advance. Where it has been accessible to no formula could be found to guarantee
almost all sculpture until very recently, many successive generations of sculptors, the visibility of more than one sculpture.
has been that of making-visible. The working in a common and inherited style, Visibility is now finally released from
human image, localized and stabilized in as in Egypt or India, it is not the style representation; it is identified with the
the thing-world, draws and holds the eye. that has guaranteed visibility: rather, the presence of each separate sculpture-as-
It is not a matter, as the concept of continued awareness of visibility as the thing, which is where in fact it must
empathy argues, that the channel of sight only guarantee of sculpture's separate always be found, whatever the subject of
offers a medium though our body can existence. the work.
identify with, can in some sense occupy In the West we have experienced two Of course there is a safeguard in
a body outside ourselves. We may long epochs of decadence in sculpture, in representation. The spectator may be
experience sculpture in that way, but it middle and late antiquity, and in the unwilling to tolerate the urgent presence
would seem to me a most sophisticated sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, in of new objects, things present-in-
and self-conscious response. Rather is it which sculpture found a formula for the themselves, in the world. Representation
that the recognition of another, that is `ideal' human image. Sculpture made to ensures a certain psychic distance
another human being in the world this formula satisfies neither as imitated between sculpture and resistent onlooker,
besides oneself, experienced at a time figure nor as thing-in-itself. The presence who, confident in the knowledge of what
when one has no possible conception of of the living being in the sculpture, as the the sculpture stands for, can then safely
one's own appearance, is so deeply sculpture, grasped by the urgent ignore it. This would explain the outrage
embedded an impression, that the most curiosity of the fifth-century Greek the lay public feels in face of abstract
rudimentary signs for human presence sculptors, of Donatello and later of sculpture which simply stands, which
are continually and avidly seized on by Rodin and Degas, in fact points the way takes up an unexplained position in the
the eye. Those of you here who make to the variety of attitudes and physical public world : a sense of outrage that
sculpture yourselves must have types which could potentially have seems to me more deeply rooted than the
frequently had the experience of finding provided a limitless vocabulary for a traditional objection that the human
an unwanted human image suddenly sculpture whose aim was solely imitative image in sculpture is misrepresented or
surfacing in a work in progress, or indeed of the figure. Yet no prolonged tradition distorted. To confront sight with a thing
when it is already complete : and of the of naturalistic figure sculpture has made only to be seen, which resists
difficulty of suppressing or breaking sustained itself by continued and renewed recognition or explanation, is hardest of
down this image, which persists so observation of reality without descending all to take.
strongly, not in the sculpture itself, but to the gratuitously morbid and bizarre.
in the unwillingly recognizing eye of the Both Donatello's David and Rodin's
maker. Taking abstract sculpture for the Age of Bronze drew the absurd charge
moment as the norm, where the from contemporaries of being cast from
appearance of an inadvertent figure — life. The very success of naturalism that
image acts as a short circuit, pulling the the response indicates is based, as we
eye continually away from its desired are now acutely conscious in face of these
path around or through the contours and works, on their structural integrity, their
axes of the sculpture towards the homogeneity as things. Both sculptures
obsessional presence — if we take abstract now impress us not as faithful imitations
sculpture as the norm, then the deliberate of the figure, but rather as contained and Books
presence of the figure, in a work in which internally satisfying re-constructions of the Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition,
figure and sculpture are identified, would figure. They are true to their internal New York, 1959.
necessarily seem to be of compelling nature, as thing, while registering visibly Clement Greenberg, The New Sculpture in
visibility. Yet, paradoxically, the presence as figure: it is this internal integrity which Art and Culture, London, 1973.

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