Page 42 - Studio International - May June 1975

There are not only the obviously limited `contaminated by reality', as I said in my
`worlds' of the mathematician and first talk. There is no guaranteed space
physicist : there is my world and your for sculpture. The world is hard on
world and the world of every single useless things : churches, temples,
human individual. The congruence of galleries and museums will only give
these separate worlds is at best fairly temporary protection.
vague and general affair, perhaps only to To have come through into the world,
be comprehended as a 'style', unless through work, to become a work; to be
there is some way in which it may be disclosed, made visible, to attain the
be momentarily concentrated and character of a complete and separate
localized. thing: this is not easily or arbitrarily
I think there is a way, and I think it is done, nor achieved simply through
in sculpture. Here is a piece of sculpture. intelligence, or wit, or taste. It is only to
It is substantial, it stands on the ground be done by a full engagement of the world
we stand on. Hit it, and you'll break your as medium, with hand and eye and mind.
hand on it. It is made of the stuff of The world can't be shut out of sculpture;
which solid, worldly things are made. sculpture, in order to be, must recognize
As we stand around it we each know that that it is constituted of world, that the
we are looking at and thinking about the world is in the sculpture as surely as
same thing. Yet it is present to us sculpture is in the world.
differently and separately; not just I will try to illustrate this. Look at this
because each one of us is presented with version of Brancusi's Fish. Essentially
a separate view of it, but because our it is a simple object on an elaborate
separate perceptions have their source pedestal. You can think of it purely as a
in separate persons. Even if it were fish, and disregard the base, or regard
Seated Statuette of Ameny, Son of Ameny possible for two or more people with the base only as a decorative support for
Egyptian XII Dynasty, circa 2000 BC. measurably the same eyesight to see the the object. Or you can look at the object
Basalt. Coll : British Museum same object from the same position under and base as a whole, and let your eye
distinguishes 'sculpture' from 'world' ? the same conditions of light and so on, travel over, around and through the
Suppose we say, the medium of sculpture we can never conceivably know whether sculpture, seen as a series of interwoven
is the world. The attributes of the world their separate perceptions of it are elliptical shapes, achieved with marvellous
we just described are implicit in the word. identical. There will of course be a economy and invention in contrasting
We are speaking of sculpture as we find general agreement, but there can be no materials. You may interpret its
it, and as we confront it. Forget for the certainty. Now when we say 'the world is presence, the way it frontally addresses
moment that you know anything more the medium of sculpture,' we are saying you, as like that of the portrait bust. But
about it, about its history or its purpose. `our world is a world of objects and spaces I would ask you to think of it for a
It is made of the material of which other and of our separate perception of them. moment as a statement about the
things are made : but it is separated from The sculpture is real, in the world, an being-in-the-world of both living and
them, from the world in general, by its object among objects, set in the space we inanimate things. The reflective surface,
evident coherence, its completeness. It move and see through. Yet the totality the endless profile, the delicate balance
achieves and maintains this completeness of the world can only be present to us, of the fish, stand for the transparency of
in the depth of our gaze : its quality as can only be comprehensible (that is, the air we breathe, see through, move in;
`thing', on which we have spent so much put within our grasp) in the shape of an the warm rich wood of the base, its
time is imparted by our attention. object which has no other function than to relative massiveness, the direct and
Because this thing holds our gaze, be in the world and to be visible to simple cutting — these recall the earth,
sustains our attention, demands that we ourselves, that is to say a sculpture.' its stability and its solidity, and that of
return to it time after time, it clearly has a We cannot avoid or escape our own the things rooted in it or held fast by
claim on us that no merely arbitrarily presence in the world. But we can gain gravity. Yet the asymmetry and subtle
detached aspect of the world could exert. a stability, a certainty, by regarding modulation of drawing in the fish reveal
It is not that it represents us or reflects things which do not physically change, its origin in carved stone: and the great
us, though it may do — we have spent yet are in the world as surely as we are. pierced oval in the base allows free
enough time dealing with this : it is not The permanence of sculpture is the passage of light and air.
enough to say that we 'identify' with it, permanence of the world of things : the This interpenetration of the massive
that we are in some mysterious way separateness of each sculpture is — should and the spatial within the boundary of
present in it, or it in us. This may be an be — the separateness of each individual. the one sculpture may be taken to
argument for a covert persistence of Thus the sculpture is a view of the world, represent the interpenetration of the
representation: but it will not explain like the individual's boundless, world and sculpture. The world is thrust
the sculpture's individual presence to us continually shifting view of the world, up in the sculpture as the sculpture is
in the world. If we think for a moment but because it is also part of the world of thrust up in the world.
of the way we understand the world, we things, it is both durable and physically Sculpture today is affected by a
may better be able to establish the bounded. certain self-consciousness about its
sculpture's claim to independence of the Perhaps you can now see why I boundaries. We are told either that there
world while physically belonging to it. insisted on the idea of 'transparence' is no boundary between sculpture and
Merleau-Ponty writes : 'Finally, the as the goal of sculpture, and how we can world, that the sculpture is simply an
world itself, which . . . is the totality of speak without absurdity of sculpture arbitrary and undifferentiated area of
perceptible things and the thing of all being more present than other things. the world : or that the quality of sculpture
things, must be understood not as an It may seem more there, it may seem less is what is at issue, its relation to the world
object in the sense the mathematician or there : it allows us to speak of presence being fixed in advance by accepted
physicist give to this word . . . but as the qualitatively, rather than quantitatively. conventions. Each sculpture which stands
universal style of all possible perceptions.' And if the world is the medium of in itself will find its own limit, its own
In other words, the world precedes our sculpture, then its subject-matter is particular relation to the world. The
awareness of it and our reflection on it, surely 'being-in-the-world'. nature of the boundary cannot be decided
and necessarily and continually exceeds Having said that, and in conclusion, I in advance, it is determined by the
the embrace of our perception and our want to make it clear that I am not character of the individual work. Indeed
thought. The only way in which it can advocating a kind of mystical 'sculpture you can see sculpture as the continual
be grasped is in terms of a certain of presence', as if presence could establishing of a boundary with the
expectation, a certain continuity, which somehow be isolated from sculpture, and world: but sculpture remains sculpture
Merleau Ponty calls a 'style'. The world preserved in some magically guaranteed because it is not boundless, but is
contains not only all perceived objects niche in reality. I would insist on the bounded by the world of which it is
but all separately perceiving subjects. worldliness of sculpture, that it is constituted. •

190