The Origins of Modern Sculpture o a the twentieth century, sculpture as an expressive Jand experimental art form enjoyed something of a remissance. Its modern development has been even more remaslable than that of painting. The painting revolution ‘was achieved against the background of an unbroken great nnadition extending back to the fourteenth century, In the nineteenth century, despite the prevalence of lesser academicians, painting was the principal visual art, produc ing during the first seventy-five years such artists as Goya, Blake, Friedtich, David, Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix, Constable, Turner, Carot, Courbet, ancl Manet. ‘he lead: ing names in sculpture ducing this same period were Berl ‘Thorvaldsen, Frangois Rude, PierreJean David d’Angers, Aanroine-Louis Barye, Jean-Baptiste Carpeau, Jules Dalon, ‘Alexandre Falguiére, and Constantin Meunier, none of whom, despite their accomplishments, have the world reputations ofthe leading painters, ‘The eighteenth century also was an age of painting ‘ather than sculptnre, During that century, only the French, "Neoclassical sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon and the Italian ‘Antonio Ganova may be compared with the most import= ant painters. Thus, the seventeenth century was the last great age of sculpture before the twentieth century and then principally in the person of the Baroque sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini. In the United States, with the excep- Won of one or two artists of originality, such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens (see fig. 2.54), sculptors were secondary figures until well into the twentieth century. ‘When we consider the dominant place that sculpture has held inthe history of ae from ancient Baypt until che seven teenth century of our era, this decline appears all the more rematkable. Tt was not for want of patronage. Although the cightecath century provided fewer largé- public commis- sions than the Renaissance or the Baroque period’, during the nineteenth century mountains of sculptural monuments ‘roweled the parks and public squares, and adorned archi- tecture, By this time, however, academic classicism had achieved such a rigid grip on the sculptural tradition that it ‘as virtually impossible fora sculptor 10 gain a commission ‘or even to survive without conforming, The experimental painter could usually find a small group of enlightened pri- vate patrons, but for the sculptor the very nature of the ‘medium and the tradition of nineteenth-century sculpture asa monumental and public arcmade this difficult. Aftr the eighteenth century, the, center for sculpture in western $Burope shifted from Italy to Paris, due in part to techno- innovations and new sources for patronage, and the French Romantic period produced several saulptors of note, such as Carpeaux and Barye. (Paris was to remain Europe's major center of art from around 1720 to 1920, when other ‘centers emerged in the more pluralistic adventures of mod- cenism.) This geographical sift was accompanied by atend- ency of artists to turn away from the preferred Neoclassical technique of carving marble to the practice of modeling, plaster and wax. These materials could cacry the inflection, of the artist's hand and serve as means to make the work reveal the process ofits own creation, ‘The models could then be cast in permanent form, in bronze. "The basic subject for sculpture from the beginning of time until the twenticth century had been the human figure. It isin terms of the figure, presented in isolation ‘or in combination, in aetion or in eepose, that sculptors hhave explored the elements of scalpture—space, mass, volume, line, texture, light, and movement, Among these eloments, volume and space and their interaction have traditionally been a primary concern, Within the develop- ment of classical, medieval, or Renaissance and Baroque sculpture we may observe progressions from static frontal- ity to later solutions in which the figure is stared as 2 complex mass revolving in surrounding space, and inter penetrated by it. The sense of activated space in Hellenistic, Late Gothic, and Baroque sculpture was often created ‘through inereased movement, expressed in a twisting pose, extended gesture, or by a broken, variegated surfice tex- ture whose light and shadow accentuated the feeling, of transition or change. The Barogue propensity for space, movement, and spontaneity was part of the nineteenth- century sculptural tradition, 9798 One of the most conclusive symptoms of the revival of sculpture at the turn of the century was the large number of important painters who practiced sculpture—Gauguin, Degas, Renoit, and Bonnard among them, ‘These were fol lowed alittle later by Picasso, Matisse, Amadeo Modigliani, ‘André Derain, Umberto Boecioni, and others. The Painter-Sculptors: Dau Degas, and Gauguin ‘The pioneer paintersculptor of the nineteenth century was Flonoré Dauinie (se chapter 2). His small caicatral busts were created between 1830 and 1832 t0 lampoon the eminent politicians of Louis Philippe’s regime. Daumier could not resist mocking the apelike fearures of he Comte de Kératry (8g, 6.1), for he was not only a gov cemment official, but an art etic a8 wel. These satisical sculptures anticipate the late works of Auguste Rodin in their expressive power and the directness of cheir deeply modeled surfaces. Daumies’s Rutspoil (Shairy rat”) of 1851 is not based on an actual person but isa personifca tion of all the unscrupulous agents of Louis-Napoléon (later Napoléon IiD), The arrogance and tawdry clegance aze subtly communicated through the figure’s wwisting pose and the fluttering flow of clothing, counterpoised by the bony armature of the figure itselé Out of fear’ chat it would be destroyed by the very forces it saitized, the clay figurine was kept hidden ntl afer Dauinier's death, shen, like the carer busts, it was cast in bronze, 6.1. Honoré Deumier, Comte de Katty [The Obsequiows Grol, e. 1893. Bronze, 44 x 5M x 3M (12.4 x 13.3 x 8.9 on), Hirshhoon Museum ond Seulpture Garden, Smithsonian Insituton, Washington, D.C. CHAPTER 6 THE ORIGINS OF MODERN SCULPTURE “The sculpture of Daumies, now much admized, was a private art, like known or appreciated until its relatively recent “discovery” Tike Daumier’s, the sculpture of Edgar Degas (ce chapter 2) was lite known co the sculptors ofthe firs modern generation, for mostof i was never publicly exhib ited dating his Hime. Degas was concerned primary ‘with the traditional formal problems of sculpture, such a the continual experiments in space and movement repre sented by his dancers and horses. His posthumous brosze casts retain the immediacy of his original modeling mater ial, pigmented wax, which he built up over an armature, hayer by layer, to a richly articulated surfice in which the touch of his hand is dicecly recorded, While most of his sculptures have the quality of sketches, Little Dancer Fourteen Tears Old (ig. 6.2) was a fll realized work that was exhibited at the 1881 Impressionist exhibition, the only time the artise showed one of hs sclptures. By com- bining an actual tor, sain slippers, and real hai with more 6.2. Edgar Degas, litle Dances Fourteen Yeors Old, 1878-6" Wax, hat, nen bodice, sain ribbon and shoes, asin 18 ‘wood base, height 39° 99.1 crt) without bose. Collation Mi and Ms, Pout Metion, Uppervile, Virghia.traditional media, Degas created an astonishingly modern oject that foreshadowed developments in twentieth century sculptae (sce fit, 24.76). ‘Like Degas, Paul Gauguin (see chapter 3) was a painter with an often unorthodox approach to materials. Through- put bis career he worked in a diverse range of media Yo addition to making paintings, drawings, woodcuts, ‘etchings, and monotypes, he carved in marble and wood and was one of the most innovative ceramic artists of the prneteenth conta: His largest work inthis medium, Oviri (fig. 6.3), was exccuted during a visit to Pais between two ‘Tahitian sojourns. The ttle means “savage” in ‘Tahitian, a term with which Gauguin personally identified, for he + lator inseribed “Oviti” on a self-portrait. The mysterious, ug-cyed woman crushes a wolf beneath her feet and 6.3 Paul Gauguin, Ovi, 1894, Patially lozed slonoware, 29% x 7% x 108 (24.9 x 19.1 x 27 em, Muséo d Orsay, Pris. clutches a wolf cub to her side. Whether she embraces the cub or suffocates itis unclear, though Ganguin did refer to baer asa “mmurderese” and a “cruel enigma.” The head was perhaps inspired by the mummified skulls of Marquesan. chic, while the torso derives from the voluptuous figures, symbols of fecundity, on the ancient Javanese reliefs at Borobudur, in Southeast Asia, of which Gauguin owned photographs. In his turing to non-Western sources and his determination to create an image of av, primitive power, Gauguin anticipated some of the abiding concerns of Buropean and American artists in the twentieth century (dhe influence of Affican art on Matisse and his contem- ppotaries is discussed in chapter 7). When it was exhibited in Paris after his death in 1906, Oviri made a significant impact on, among others, the young Pablo Picasso, An Art Reborn: Auguste Rodin Tk was the achievement of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) to rechart the course of sculpture almost singlehandedly and to give the art an impetus that led to & major renaissance, There ig no one painter wo ‘ccupies quite the place in modern painting that Rodin Gn chim in modern sculpture. He introduced modem ideas into the wadition-bound form of figural public sculp cure. Unlike avant-garde painters such as Gaugain or Van Gogh, however, Rodin became an admired and respected public fgue, thus helping to draw modem art into the cultural mainstream. Early Career and The Gates of Hell Rodin began his revolution, as had Courbet in painting (see chapter 2), with a reaction against the sentimental idealism ofthe academicians. His Man with the Broken Nese (Gig. 6.4) was rejected by the offal Salon as being offen- sively realistic on the one hand and, on the other, 5 an unfinished flagment, a head with its rear portion broken avway, Rodin sought the lkeness rather than the character of his model, a poor old man who frequented his neigh bbothood. ‘This carly work was already mature and accom- plished, suggesting the intensity of the artis’s approach to his subject as well a his uncanny ability t exploit simula neously the malleable properties of the orginal clay and the lightsiturated tensile strength ofthe final bronze material Rodin’s examination of nature was coupled with a re-examination of the art of the Middle Ages and the Remissance—most specifically, of Donatello and Michelangelo, Although much academie seulptare pid ip service 10 the High Renaissance, it was viewed through centuries of imitative accretions that tended to obscure the ‘unique expression of the old masters, Rodin was in posses sion of the fill range of historical seupeual forms and techniques by the time he returned in 1875 fiom a bret boat formative visit to Ttaly, where he studied firsthand the work of Michelangelo, who, he sid, “liberated me fom academician.” CHAPTER 6 . THE ORIGINS OF MODERN SCULPTURE 99