File:Art and criticism - monographs and studies (1892) (14598010219).jpg

Identifier: criticismmo00chil (find matches)
Title: Art and criticism : monographs and studies
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Child, Theodore
Subjects: Art criticism
Publisher: Harper
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO

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deringlyamong the marvels of the Gothic and the Renaissance periods,enjoying even the dainty realism of the Japanese. And withall these various masterpieces in our memories, shall we acceptthe dicta of those who maintain that the art of Phidias is thebeginning and the end of sculpture ? Shall we admit that thesole aim of sculpture is to reproduce the human figure in itsideal perfection, purged of all that belongs only to the individ-ual, of all the accidents, feelings, and actions of a special mo-ment, reduced, in short, to a type, to a majestic abstraction ?For the Greeks who lived an outward life this ideal was suffi-cient. The climate, the morals, the religion, and a thousanddetails of the life of ancient Greece inclined the taste of thesculptors towards athletic and voluptuous forms, and led themto prefer the expression of the vegetative life of a typical vig-orous body to the expression of the moral life of a special soul.To this preference we owe the frieze of the Parthenon, the
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MEDITATION.—By M. Paul Dubois. MODERN FRENCH SCULPTURE. 231 Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the Venus of Syracuse, im-mortal monuments of athletic crace and radiant visual beauty.But it is absurd to tell us that the limits and laws of sculpturewere eternally fixed by the Greeks, and that if we will sculpwe must follow the example of Canova and Thorwaldsen, andcarve images of Psyche and Apollo to the end of time. Thereign of Greek sculpture ended when people ceased to goabout half naked, and when bodily vigor and beauty became asecondary thing. In the same way epopee disappeared withthe age of individual heroism: epic poetry and artillery are in-compatible. The torso of many a headless and legless Greekstatue is magnificent beyond a doubt, but it requires a tech-nically educated eye to feel its beauty. The expression of theBelvedere Apollo is full of serene majesty, but do not affect toadmire it if you do not really feel its charm. We modern menare not bound to admire all the Greek

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