IV
The major heroes of sculpture may well receive the tribute of shrine or exedra or canopy, but what of the more numerous lesser heroes? In avoiding a commonplace rendering, the imaginative sculptor has other avenues of escape beside those offered by the architect, sometimes gloomily called by unbelievers in collaboration the sculptor’s evil genius. A first aid is the impressionist manner, used by O’Connor in his Worcester Soldier, and in his masterly statue of General Lawton at Indianapolis. In these works the modeling is fluid, the planes vibrate in light; we feel the happy absence of a sample-card arrangement of buttons; no one could for a moment say, Here are two more triumphs of bronze tailoring. Already in some of our new War memorials, our sculptors are making use, but not always the best use, of broad simplifications of mass and surface. They are showing us young heroes of the Argonne not cap-a-pie in their uniforms, (no one asks that) but with torn tunics, if any, and with riven flesh. Rodin and the grand old Bourgeois de Calais are indirectly responsible for some of these compositions. But will these bronze pictures of human agony long satisfy the human heart? Have such memorials the permanence of spirit we implore, or are they big bronze studies that are really almost as far from the heroic greatness of the Bourgeois de Calais as from the unpretending littleness of a Rogers group, say the Wounded Scout in the Swamp?
The answer depends entirely upon the artist. We have no right to dictate his manner, but we demand that beneath the manner there shall be sound construction as well as feeling: we ask also a knowledge of ensemble, of silhouette. The impressionist style is a fine instrument in the right hands. But in the hands of mediocrity, this style of sculptural language performs the third and most regrettable function of all language, that of concealing the lack of thought. The result is what Mr. Grafly might well call “union-suit sculpture.” Between the Devil of a prosaic literalness of rendering, and the deep sea of a sloppy and would-be poetical impressionism, the genius of the sculptor is our only salvation. Impressionism ill-handled will not save from the commonplace either a group or a figure. While the problem of the portrait statue remains as difficult as it now is, one is glad to see that of late committees are turning toward other ways of perpetuating the memory of greatness. Here in New York, the Pulitzer Memorial in the Plaza has taken the form of a fountain, surmounted by a figure of Abundance, the last work from the hands of Karl Bitter; and the Straus Memorial is a fountain, in which the chief motive is a reclining figure of Contemplation, at the head of a large pool. Other cities also have their successful memorial avoidances of the “iron photograph,” as the darkened bronze effigy has been called. A distinguished example is Daniel French’s Du Pont fountain in Washington, made to replace a portrait statue. Mrs. Whitney’s Titanic Memorial, a memorial for many rather than for one, is admirable in its sincere originality of inspiration.
At least one thing could be done which is now left undone by most of the City Fathers in our land. Under the direction of Municipal Art Commissions, bronze statues could be cleaned; not polished until they are a glittering congeries of high lights, an effect heartily detested by sculptors, but cleaned reasonably, with a decent regard for the opinions of those who made them. Is it not a singular superstition that a statue once placed should never be touched by the hand of cleanliness, but should suffer in silence whatever indignities the soot and the birds and the climate heap upon it? Again, in a country in which gold is said to be no rare possession, this metal, properly toned, could often without prohibitive expense be used to dignify our statues, and prevent dark oxidization. And this would be done, if we of today cared as much about art as we do, let us say, about advertising. Future civilization will probably have a place for a new profession, that of the well-trained custodian of statues. The first attempts in this work will not in the nature of things be as destructive as were the labors of the old-time picture-restorer, so-called, a personage long reviled for his ignorant or dishonest acts, but now becoming extinct. And what a boon it would be if this statue-custodian of the future, with a body of intelligent criticism behind him, could be depended upon for judicious removals as well as for faithful guardianship! This liberating thought is brought to the attention of all Municipal Art Commissions.