Читать книгу Émile Gallé - Émile Gallé - Страница 7

It is not without regret that I see those of our contemporaries who love the manifestations of life and movement in art, the naive impression of the artist looking for man and the unrealised idea in the depth of the works, and, disdainful of the view, are dilettanti of the vision and retain towards modern porcelain, as it seems, nothing but the material and the decorative use, a restriction, which is, to my mind, going too far.

Blaming modern porcelain for aloofness, for anaemia in its assignment, cannot be, because of such and such a work, a reason for any misunderstanding about contemporary porcelain because this ostracism should then also wrap up, for the same reasons, the old ones, and with them the cold whiteness of the lily, the fragile grace of the corollas.

Coldness, eh! Is it not the core reason of the snow to be white, of the glacier to be blue? And I would say, red and sumptuous splendour of your chimney flames, Mr Lauth, the ignition of your nasturtiums, of your pelargoniums, Mr Deck, are they polar shows?

“Porcelain, they say, lacks a mysterious facet.” There is, gentlemen, a kind of marine shell called porcelain, they so resemble yours. How mysterious is the glazing, without the aid of fire, this enamel so white, so pure, so hard! In fact, the translucent shells that you retrieve from your ovens do not differ to the eye nor to the touch, from the enigmatic porcelain of the sea. In short, here is the mystery!

And the reddening that arises from a thick cover, call for a reducing atmosphere, do they not offer the beloved depths, where the mystery is sleeping? Admittedly, nobody will blame me for being a materialist, but I admit that the soft beauty of white, old, fine china and the attractiveness of a modern paste seem to stand on their own. Their caresses are also suggestive. Because, the love of work, the love of nature, the love of one’s dreams is only varied modes of the infallible spell: love.

Also, when I think about porcelain with such partialities of the decoration, I do think to myself. No, the decor of the porcelain is not a dry subject for the avid artist to add to the simple delight of the senses, nourishing the mind.

White nymphs, modern porcelains are ready today, under the skilful hands of the successors of Ebelmen and of Salvetat, to surrender to the caresses of a rejuvenated ideal. So many artists, so many of our contemporary poets, intellectual workers, are willing to move these daughters of your eves, so that they go in the world to conquer souls! […]

Dragonfly cup, 1887. Clear glass with partial black overlay and marquetry, height: 22 cm, diameter: 13.3 cm. Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris.

Tall vase with grass decoration, 1884–1889. Glass, gilt, cylindrical swirled vase with a crimped rim, height: 44.5 cm. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk (Virginia).