Читать книгу Greek Sculpture - Edmund von Mach - Страница 5

The personal influence of the Greek artists upon their communities was great, although it is not often touched upon in ancient literature. This influence was due to the artists feeling themselves one with the public. They rarely, if ever, believed themselves set apart as a class, distinct from the laymen. Such a view, however, has often since prevailed. When Michelangelo carved the tombs of the Medici and therein gave a mystic expression to his ideas of liberty, these thoughts were to him exclusively his own – too high, too good to be shared by the common populace – and yet they were the very thoughts in which this populace began to delight. When an artist’s genius grapples with the unexpressed phantoms of new ideas, and after patient meditation realises them on canvas or in stone to the extent of transforming the haziness of the notions into appealing clarity, he may indeed be forgiven if he takes a too exalted view of his achievements and believes that he and his fellow-artists are of nobler timbre than the general public.

Such a view is erroneous and contrary observations anyone can make. For instance, it is not rare for two men, under widely different conditions and far apart, to discover an original idea simultaneously; even more often it occurs that several people are concurrently engaged in the solution of identical problems. One might say then, that the idea is the active force, urgently clamouring for expression; the artists – poet, sculptor, painter, sage – are willing tools. The thoughts themselves are products of past and present intellectual life, the artists’ and laymen’s common inheritance. Mistaken is the belief that only the man possessing refined skills of expression can receive this inheritance; on the contrary, he is often the very one who by his neglect of an education and his thoughtless application to manual dexterity forfeits his birthright.

The world of thoughts with which we come in contact today is vastly greater than at any other time. In antiquity an Aristotle could without presumption claim to be master of everything, and even in the sixteenth century of our era Scaliger[8] could enjoy a similar reputation; today this is out of the question for anyone. Thoughts and intelligence representing property of the community have multiplied at such a tremendous rate that no one lifetime suffices to comprehend it all. Coupled with this increase in the world of thoughts, it seems the individual has developed the ability to master them even without finding visible or audible expressions. Ruskin once said he could imagine the time when the human race would have advanced so far that it could realise noble thoughts currently expressed in art without art. Humanity has already made a tremendous step in this direction. Religious thoughts in many denominations are independent of pictorial aids. The Roman Church still clings to them, as does the Lutheran, and to some extent the Protestant Episcopal; but denominations owing their origin to more recent centuries have entirely discarded them. No examples taken from religious practices are altogether fair, because too much sentiment is involved and too little unbiased human nature. But, even after due assumptions, the progress from the Roman Church, conservatively adhering to the traditions of the past, to the modern Protestant churches is too striking not to serve as an illustration that the human race has grown to realise – that is, to possess thoughts never expressed.

Kore 685, Acropolis, Athens, c. 500–490 B. C. Marble, h: 122 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

Whatever vistas these considerations may open for the future no individual today, and certainly not humanity as a whole, has attained the state of mind prophesied by Ruskin. If true today, this was infinitely more so of the people in Greece in antiquity. Their world of thoughts was simple; even their philosophers, whose teachings are admired today, shared this blessing of comparative simplicity; and the fundamental ideas contained in the great Greek tragedies are far removed from confusing complexity. According to their own ideas, the Greek people were autochthonos – sprung from the soil where they lived – without more than a few centuries of history. We know that the Greeks were mistaken – that beyond the dark middle ages of Greece lay the Mycenaean Age, a long forgotten civilisation of glory and splendour, and that even the Mycenaean Age was conceivably not the first advance in humanity’s progress. In any event, the past was blotted out, its memory erased. Step by step the Greeks had to make their move forward, unaided, just as if they truly had sprung from the soil. No thoughts of distant ancestors had been recorded, and the few fabulous ruins spared from the storms of prehistoric events were mistaken for remnants of a race of giants. The discoveries in Mycenae and on Crete have brought to light objects of art demonstrating a splendidly aesthetic character and an unusually refined power for pleasure. Perhaps the historic Greeks from their distant ancestors, unknown to them, inherited these traits and that this accounts to some degree for the unparalleled and rapid artistic advances that occurred when they again “found their footing.” In any case, each thought expressed became a new idea, and was greeted with that admirable delight accompanying every fresh achievement.

The Greeks’ wonderful skill and great simplicity, acquired slowly and painstakingly by most of us today through liberal education, can make one forget that the Greeks were a primitive people. Like all primitive people they constantly strove to more fully realise their thoughts. Once a thought came to life, its quintessence, at least at first, represented nothing but that one definite concept. The statue of the god Apollo today cannot be observed without immediately seeing in it all the changes which the conception of that deity underwent in subsequent ages, especially in the process of comparing it with the one God whose religion was destined to supplant the cheerful, and once helpful, trust in the Olympic Pantheon. Consequently, for the modern beholder the existing statues of ancient gods are largely symbolic, whereas for the original Greeks they were expressive of definite thoughts. Ancient Greek artists gave concrete shape to the mental images or ideas of their people; they could do so because they themselves were of the people.

This explains why the ancient artists were not set off as a class; being gifted with the power of expression did not exempt him from close association with the public. Some excerpts from later Roman writers might seem to contradict, but it should be remembered that the Romans were given clear class distinctions. This paucity of references towards separation between Greek artists and their public can argue against such a division. To fulfil their calling the Greek artist had to be the wide-awake children in his time. Sometimes, especially towards the end, we find a revisiting of the past, although never to the extent of forgetting the present and its special claims. The Olympian Zeus by Phidias was commonly believed to be the most complete realisation of noble thought; many statues were carved under its influence, but not one instance of slavish imitation is known during the centuries intervening between its erection in the fifth century B. C. and the end of Greek art.

Nike, balustrade, Temple of Athena Nike, Athens, c. 420–400 B. C. Marble, h: 101 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

In all probability not one of the best Greek statues was meant to represent a thought of which the artist believed himself to be the inventor or sole possessor prior to completing his statue. This does not at all detract from the artist’s importance, for he was the first to seize upon this particular aspect of the idea and the only one to give it a visible shape. It is this bodily expression, which enabled his fellowmen to share with him an accuracy of conception that without his aid would have been difficult to attain.

This and similar considerations, based on ancient history, cannot form a sound basis for discussion of principles governing relations between modern artists and their public. Conditions today differ too greatly to permit exact parallelisms to be drawn between ancient and modern art. Then again, no student of art and life can help but be impressed by a certain incongruity. Despite superior skill modern artists as a class do not seem to be altogether successful. This difficulty lies not so much with them as artists but with the public of which they are a part and from which they draw their knowledge, if not their inspiration; in any event, it remains the raison d’être of their inspiration. Today’s public no longer consists of a well-educated minority and a captivating family past, but practically the entire populace. This audience forms a heterogeneous and often discordant whole. In reaction, some good men, imbued with admiration for the noble relics of the past, genius-like, although perhaps unaware of certain of its sordid conditions kindly removed from view in intervening centuries, are sounding an improbable retreat. Humanity’s march moves forward. Although we may learn a once successful spirit, in each case its correct application must be the creation of new conditions in keeping with the modern times.

Sculptors in Greece worked for their people. They knew intimately the foibles of their nature, and endeavoured to meet their needs. Abstract reasoning and wilful perseverance are subjective. They therefore often avoided unintelligible interpretations of nature. “As a thing appears to me, so it is,” was their motto. But this “me” did not mean the artist as an individual, but the artist as the representative of the people. As such he gladly placed his superior skill and his clearer perceptions at their service. What he carved was not unknown to them, for, if they had done nothing more, they at least felt the justice of the thoughts he expressed. It is a great thing to be an individual artist; like the Greek sculptor, it is a greater thing to be the exponent of his people’s best ideas.