Antique Torso
Bibliothèque Nationale
“Without doubt the Greeks with their powerfully logical minds instinctively accentuated the essential. They accented the dominant traits of the human type; nevertheless they never suppressed living detail. They were satisfied to envelop it and melt it into the whole. As they were enamoured of calm rhythms, they involuntarily subjected all secondary reliefs which should disturb the serenity of a movement; but they carefully refrained from entirely obliterating them.
“They never made a method out of falsehood.
“Full of respect and love for Nature, they always represented her as they saw her. And on every occasion they passionately testified their worship of the flesh. For it is madness to believe that they despised it. Among no other people has the beauty of the human body excited a more sensuous tenderness. A transport of ecstasy seems to hover over all the forms that they modelled.
“Thus is explained the unbelievable difference which separates the false academic ideal from Greek art. While among the ancients the generalization of lines is totalization, a result made up of all the details, the academic simplification is an impoverishment, an empty bombastry. While life animates and warms the palpitating muscles of the Greek statues, the inconsistent dolls of academic art look as if they were chilled by death.”
He was silent for a time, then—
“I will tell you a great secret. Do you know how the impression of actual life, which we have just felt before that Venus, is produced?
“By the science of modelling.
“These words seem banal to you, but you will soon gauge their importance.