Читать книгу Greek Sculpture - Edmund von Mach - Страница 4

Even the most extreme type of materialists admits that a world of bare facts and dry bones is uninteresting and unnecessary. Thoughts that come in evening’s stillness are real, and few men faced with a forest’s majestic solitude remain indifferent; they come away awed by greater forces beyond the reach of their eyes. Such observations are as true of one’s most familiar surroundings as of the rare moments in every one’s life. Our friends mean more to us than the mere pleasure we obtain from observation. In fact, we seldom examine them truly. One glance suffices to relate their presence, and after this first glimpse our enjoyment becomes almost entirely psychical.

This does not, however, exclude enjoying the physical pleasure in seeing them, particularly if their body lines glide easily and rhythmically over our eyes. What holds true for friends is also true of lesser-known persons, even strangers. Seeing them means a great deal more than seeing a table or a chair, for these objects generally suggest nothing beyond what is actually seen. No thoughtful person can see an individual without coming – to some extent – in contact with his personality. Thus, a picture provoking admiration for its perfect technique is valuable as a work of art only if it conveys an idea. An object’s external appearance may appeal to us visually, but its spiritual essence must strike our imaginations. This vision is a purely physical faculty; the imagination, a noble acquisition of humanity. Enjoyment of one is not, however, wholly independent of the other, for the intricacies of human nature are such that it is impossible to say where the one begins and the other ends. The artist, therefore, must consider both, and since his appeal to the imagination is made through the senses, he must studiously avoid all friction with them. This is perfectly in keeping with the experience of great poets, who cannot successfully transmit their thoughts unless they refrain from offending the ear by harsh cadences.

Crouching Venus, Roman copy after a Greek original from the 1st-2nd century B. C. Marble, h: 96 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Statue of Dr. Sombrotidès, Megara, c. 550 B. C. Marble, h: 119 cm. Archaeological Museum, Syracuse.

Calf Bearer (Moschophoros), Acropolis, Athens, c. 560 B. C. Marble, h: 165 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

Silenus with the Infant Dionysos, Hellenistic copy after a Greek original from the 4th century B. C. Marble, h: 190 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

That the Greek sculptors worked along these lines is clear, for many peculiarities of their art find their explanation only if this is understood. The Greeks always had in mind the nobler side of man, although they were well aware that to impress this noble side required a certain sacrifice in gratifying man’s physical nature. A work of art fails to carry its message if unpleasant to look upon. To credit the ancients, on the other hand, with a logical interpretation and knowledge of all the principles which they followed, is a mistake; the most refined people do the proper things unconsciously.

Modern artistic standards vary; the observer’s individuality is often overpowered by the individuality of the artist, and the complexity of modern times has forced claims of simple human nature into the background where it’s almost forgotten. In antiquity these claims were of great importance. Before attempting, therefore, to judge the allowances made to them by the Greeks, it is necessary to see what they are.

Often at the unveiling of commemorative statues one hears comments that the sculptor had done well in capturing the characteristic pose of the dead and that the statue looked just like the person it commemorated; one could almost believe one saw the man himself; in short, the statue was a great work of art. The statue may indeed be a great work of art, but not for these reasons, for most of them are applicable to any fine figure in the Eden Musée,[4] where wax policemen guard the entrance and waxen smiths work the bellows.

Few people would be willing to call such figures great works of art. The average wax figure, while it accurately reproduces the material body of a person, disregards his personality. It momentarily tricks vision, and makes no appeal to man’s higher faculties; as a suggestive work of art it fails. If a man wants a physical momento of his friend, he places a statue or a bust of him in his study, not a wax figure. A good portrait is better than a photograph, though the latter is generally a more accurate copy of the material body. Neither the photograph nor the wax figure transmits the spirit of life primarily representing the man. Art seeks the man, with all his thoughts, not a mechanical reproduction of his body’s lines. The sculptor works in stone or bronze, and the questions arise: Does he have the means at his disposal to satisfy the requirements of art? What are these means?

Apollo and Marsyas, statue base, Mantinea, c. 330–320 B. C. Marble, h: 97 cm. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

The first question may unhesitatingly be answered in the affirmative; for the Greek sculptors, and some great men after them, have demonstrated the existence of such means. The second question is less readily answered, because the means are not only different for different subjects, and different according to the various standards of the ethnic group, but also so subtle that they can hardly be expressed in words – they must be felt. It is therefore not only impossible, but also perhaps needlessly presumptuous, to enumerate all the means at the disposal of the sculptor – for who would dare to prescribe to the genius of a great artist? However, it may be profitable to point out certain things the Greeks avoided in meeting the claims of an art that appeals to human nature. The near total absence of subjects taken from inanimate nature is one of the most noticeable traits of Greek sculpture. The principle: sculpture ought to represent nothing but living things. Says Ruskin:[5] “You must carve nothing but what has life. “Why?” you probably feel inclined to ask. “Must we refuse every pleasant accessory and picturesque detail and petrify nothing but living creatures?” Even so: I would not assert it on my own authority. It is the Greeks who say this, and be assured whatever they say of sculpture is true!”[6] He and most art teachers let the matter rest there. But this is neither wise nor just. Unless a man sees the correctness of a principle he ought not to accept it, not even on the authority of the Greeks. Fortunately for us it is not difficult to see why the Greeks avoided inanimate matter in sculpture, for the principle which guided them in this respect is at the very foundation of their art.

Since a work of art may be considered nonexistent unless beheld by human eyes, the danger is ever present of having the spectator’s consciousness centred in his purely physical faculty of sight. To avoid this the Greeks made use of certain devices or “conventions,” that satisfied the claims of vision without curtailing the scope given over to the higher human faculties of thought or imagination. Reproducing the mental image of the object rather than the object itself achieved this. Care was taken, however, that the reproduction should be neither so completely like the original as to challenge, after the first momentary deception, immediate comparison, nor so unlike the original that it should fail to bear strong points of resemblance; in both cases eyesight would have rendered this disproportional.

The sculptor, it may be remarked by way of digression, must observe these principles much more carefully than the painter, because painting, which is restricted to two dimensions – whereas all objects of nature have three – does not run the danger of deceiving our vision. Sculpture, representing not only the object’s appearance, but also its bodily form, may easily make such a forceful appeal to vision that it fails to attain its goal.

By representing inanimate objects in corporal form the sculptor must confront practically insurmountable obstacles. Generally speaking, such objects offer little inspiration in appealing to man’s nobler self; thus, their pure and simple form convey importance. But since they are represented in full bodily form, even the slightest deviation from their actual appearance attracts notice – here there is no work of art because there is no appeal to the imagination. On the other hand, the very excellence of a truthful representation challenges the vision to make a comparison – again there is no work of art. Only when living people are represented does the specific character, not its outer form, attract attention. This appeals to vision through the higher mental faculties, for consciously or not, we tend to read character in human bodies; and this cannot be done by the merely exercising vision. For this reason, viewing the statue of a man makes eyesight less consciously active than the imagination. The best art ceases to be an interesting visual object altogether, making its appeal immediately to the imagination. Artists at all times have striven to accomplish this. The realistic reproduction of nature never does it; neatness of workmanship alone is useless in this respect. Like the Greeks, only those paying full attention to the peculiar needs of physical human nature achieve it. Impossible in sculpture – unless living creatures are represented.

Contrast enhances the idea of life. The ancient Greeks, therefore, introduced as accessories lifeless objects into their compositions. Ruskin states the principles governing the use of such secondary subjects: “Nothing must be represented in sculpture external to any living form which does not help to enforce or illustrate the conception of life. Both dress and armour may be made to do this and are constantly so used by the greatest, but, “Ruskin adds, using an instance of modern sculpture, though his inferences are equally true of Greek art,” note that even Joan of Arc’s armour must be only sculptured, if she has it on; it is not the honourableness or beauty of it that are enough, but the direct bearing of it by her body. You might be deeply, even pathetically, interested by looking at a good knight’s dented coat of mail, left in his desolate hall. May you sculpture it where it hangs? No; the helmet for his pillow, if you will – no more.”

But how can such a helmet be sculptured, or how must the armour be treated if the hero has it on? Shall we represent it as accurately as possible? Suppose we do, and suppose the statue we make is of bronze; then there is no reason why the result should not be a second armour so much like the one the hero wore that our vision is deceived into seeing the armour itself. But how about the person that wore it? His bronze statue reproduces the sculptor’s mental image of his personality – it cannot be the man; the quality of the accessory is different from that of the figure itself.

The one is what it appears to be; the other cannot appear to be what it is meant to represent, because the contrast between the real armour and the man’s lifeless form awakens the thought that he is not real. “But,” an objector exclaims, “if the armour shouldn’t be made just like its prototype, the sculptor surely ought not carve it altogether unlike it.” Certainly not; if he did, its being too little like a coat of mail would immediately attract the spectator’s attention, and his ever alert vision would overplay the work’s true purpose.

How fully the Greeks appreciated these details is perhaps best illustrated in the draperies of their statues, which always appear real without being correct. Nobody has yet been able to demonstrate from the statues the accuracy of this theory on ancient costumes gleaned from the study of literary descriptions and vase paintings. The painters often attained a fairly accurate rendering of the garment, the sculptors never. They not only took great liberties with those pieces of drapery they represented, but even omitted entire garments. A statue of Sophokles, now in the Lateran Museum, for instance, is represented as wearing only the outer costume or overcoat, while it is well known from literature that gentlemen never appeared in public in quite so scanty attire. With one or two exceptions, the warriors from the pediments of the temple of Aegina, are completely nude; they have gone into battle with helmets on their heads and shields on their arms, but without a single piece of fabric. The Greeks never entered battle in this way, either at the time the marbles were carved, or at the time the statues commemorate, or at any other time. Such a partial or complete omission of the cloth can hardly be explained as the unconscious reproduction of a mental image; while the actual treatment of the drapery, as it appears, for instance, in the Nike of Paionios or on the Parthenon frieze (Illustration 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), probably is more or less unconscious. Many modern writers use the word “elimination” in speaking of Greek drapery; but this is a mistake, because elimination implies the studied omission of details, and cannot account either for the omission of entire garments or the unconscious treatment of actually sculptured costumes.

The eclecticism in Greek drapery may be called one of the devices or “conventions” of Greek sculpture, and may serve to prove that such conventions do not hold good for all times. When Greenough[7] carved his large statue of George Washington in the national Capitol, he omitted the drapery on the upper part of the body, obviously with the intention of drawing the observer’s attention away from the dress to the person who wearing it. In this respect he clearly followed the practices of the Greeks, in particular the pattern set by Phidias in his colossal Zeus in Olympia. The Greeks might omit drapery with impunity, for they were as a race intensely fond of the nude. Greenough, imitating them in the face of pronounced racial and religious prejudices against the nude, committed the unpardonable mistake of copying not the spirit of a past art but its accidental expression. Instead of accomplishing his end by omitting the drapery, he achieved the opposite, for the cloth is “conspicuous by its very absence.”

The same considerate spirit which prompted the Greeks to deviate from nature in representing drapery shows itself also in their treatment of rocks, trees, and the like in marble reliefs. Marble is rock, and nothing is easier than to reproduce the rock accurately, so that the result is not only a picture of the rock, but really a second piece of rock. If this had been done, for instance, on the marble base from Mantinea, the contrast between the actual rock and the representation of Apollo sitting on it would have deprived the god of all semblance of reality. Similar observations may be made with the trees on the frieze of the Athena-Nike temple in Athens, or the stepping-stones on the frieze of the Parthenon.

These instances suffice to show the general attitude of the Greek sculptors towards the public. The public – and of course artists belong to the public – are not automatic inspection machines, but rather human beings, complex and inconsistent creatures. Entitled to consideration, they received it at the hands of the ancient artists.

Moreover, the Greeks gladly gave it; to them, making allowances for the frailties of human nature was not an irksome duty but a welcome privilege that enabled them to introduce into their art a human element of great variety and inexhaustible possibilities.

Kouros, Agrigente, c. 500–480 B. C. Marble, h: 104 cm.Archaeological Museum, Agrigente.

The Kritios Boy, Acropolis, Athens, c. 480–470 B. C. Marble, h: 116 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

Head of a Blond Youth, c. 485 B. C. Marble, h: 25 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

Kore 680, Acropolis, Athens, c. 530–520 B. C. Marble, h: 114 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.