Part 19
Mysticism and sexual psychopathy in the choice of themes; Impressionism and incidental eccentricities in technique; overstepping the limitations of his art, have made Rodin the great man of the fellows who for some two decades have set the fashion in art and literature. By these three peculiarities, to which he owes his spurious celebrity, he will be ruined as an artist, whatever the success he owes to puffing may be. And that is lamentable, for Rodin is a genuinely gifted sculptor, who created beauty when he did not yet think himself bound to work out of gratitude to the “young” journals. Unfortunately, it is extremely improbable that he will now find his way back to that simplicity and naturalness in which salvation is alone attainable. There is no return from Montmartre, not, at any rate, for an old man who has climbed this height and accepted with passionate earnestness all what he saw and heard there in advanced years. Young people who are still capable of change, in many cases awake from the idle dream of Montmartre æstheticism. Nature does not vouchsafe to the old to begin a new life.
XIV
RESURRECTION
BARTHOLOMÉ
I do not want to speak of Tolstoi’s novel, but of a work of art—great, at any rate, materially, as a statue—which every pilgrim to Paris will, I suppose, wish to see, viz., the monument which Bartholomé dedicated “To the Dead,” and which is to be seen in the cemetery of Père Lachaise.
It is interesting in so many aspects that one might devote to it a monograph as thick as a book, which would send out suckers over the whole domain of æsthetics and the history of art. Never do I feel so painfully the inadequacy of a short essay as when I proceed to handle a subject so rich in connections. It is impossible to exhaust it in this form, and it is painful to leave it as a fragment. One appears limited, whereas one is only restricted. We must satisfy ourselves with indications which will easily be looked upon as superficial, though they are merely terse. What is thought out as a proof takes the form of mere assertion, and in cases where we should like to convince, we must think ourselves successful, when we have incited the reader to kindly co-operation—which, however, goes for the most part its own way.
This pious ejaculation will make it easier for me to accommodate myself to the conditions which have been imposed on the short essay.
Works of sculpture in public places, which are neither monuments nor ornamental buildings, viz., such as are not intended to call to mind special events or particular individuals, are something novel in the development of high art. Antiquity knew only monumental creations which had their origin in patriotic sentiments. We have to bear in mind that religion in ancient communities constituted a part of patriotism, for there were no gods for mankind in general, but only gods for a
## particular people or a particular state. When Socrates had to drain the
cup of hemlock, it was not because he had sinned against Olympus, but because he had given offence to Athens in the person of her tutelary divinities. The Battle of the Giants and the Frieze of the Parthenon, the Pallas Athene of the Acropolis and the Olympian Zeus, were felt, by those who gazed on them and for whom they had been wrought, as images from the past and present of their race. Even the “Laocoon” and the “Farnese Bull” were so regarded: a distinction between the legends of their race and accredited history, nay, between theology and politics, did not exist in the consciousness of the multitude at large, or even in that of the select few. The god made of ivory and gold was the public worship of a living being who was invested with high rank in the commonwealth, and the Olympian victor to whom a statue was erected entered into mythology as a comrade of Hercules, Theseus, and Perseus.
Religious art was the only public art known in the Middle Ages. If material political interests swayed the minds of communities in Pagan times, when the nations became Christian the supersensual, _i.e._, the salvation of the soul, became the great concern of the individual as of the community. Patriotism disappeared from the domain of emotion; what took its place—the pride of town, or class, or guild—was merely delight in material possession, or, if you like, a sort of vulgar dignity without any ideal background. Faith was their only sentiment, piety the artist’s sole impulse from which genuine creations could spring. It followed, therefore, that religious art—the only monumental art then in existence—attached itself to sacred places, and subordinated itself to them as really mere accessory decoration. Without resting on architecture, sculpture stood on its own feet only in the Stations of the Cross on Calvaries, but, even in this case, it had no object of its own, but served a definite purpose of worship. The beginnings of a public art which grew out of an abstract thought of the community—one not of a religious but of a temporal, of civic nature—are scanty and dim. As forerunners of such an art we can claim the Roland Pillars of the Free Towns—the symbol of their civil and criminal jurisdiction—with their indistinct, historical background of dim memories of Charlemagne as the legal source of municipal liberties, and perhaps also the Byzantine Lion of Brunswick.
The Renaissance was the first to create a monumental art that was to serve no practical, religious, or dynastic purpose, but one purely æsthetic, from which people looked for no strengthening of ecclesiastical views, no increase of authority and, through that, of power in a prince or government, but looked, in fact, only for delight in beauty. Renaissance art, I admit, rich and free as its development was, also remained thoroughly under the influence of mediæval traditions, and knew no other range of themes than those derived from the Bible and Classic mythology. Even worldlings among the artists, who had outgrown religious ideas, drew at least their stories from the New and, even more commonly, from the Old Testament, or from pagan mythology, which was familiar only to the educated, and to the multitude at large was meaningless, and devoid of life. A scholastic pedantry hung about such works as Benvenuto Cellini’s “Perseus,” for instance, which prevented the masses from appreciating them fully. It was not, however, done from haughty disdain, for monumental art—the art of the streets and squares—appeals indeed to the masses. The modelling, on the one hand, of what is purely human, which appeals to feelings in every human heart, and is, therefore, understood by every man; on the other hand, of a subject, well-defined in time and place, which must be familiar, at any rate, to contemporaries and residents: this degree sculpture attained only gradually and late. The Goose-man of Nuremberg and the Brussels Mannikin are instances of local Realism; Tadda’s “Justice” at Florence and Michael Angelo’s “Pietà”—these in spite of their religious relations are examples of universal human Idealism. It is characteristic of the timidity of sculpture, even in its proud epoch of the Renaissance, that it dared not cast itself adrift from presenting what was of immediate utility. It thought it needed an excuse for stepping out into the market-place before all the people. It found it fairly in supplying towns with water. It created fountains. These are the first and, for a long time, the only monumental works which were suggested neither by religion nor by loyalty to some dynasty; which aim neither at immortalising the memory of a particular event, nor at refreshing the schoolboy knowledge of the more liberally educated, but embody, without any pre-possession, a purely artistic conception of form fulfilled and animated with subjective emotion. The stages of development of the monumental fountains, which pretend to be mere sports of untrammelled fancy on the artist’s past, extend to the present day, in the latest phase, in which the fountain is not really intended to distribute water, like Sluter’s “Fount of Moses” at Dijon, or Jean Goujon’s “Fontaine des Innocents” in Paris, but uses the water only as a decorative element, as Donner’s fountain in the market-place of Vienna, or Reinhold Begas’s Neptune fountain in the Berlin Schlossplatz.
We must come down to the last century to find at last a monumental art of universal feelings or thoughts, still, for the most part, modestly cringing under the protection of architecture, as groups on pediments of palaces, theatres, and exhibition-buildings, and taking possession of the public square in full independence only in the last decades. Historical works, even of an universal, impersonal sort, such as the numerous war-memorials in Germany and France, the _risorgimento_-monuments of Italy, the patriotic battle-memories in Switzerland—do not come under consideration here, but only abstract works such as Bartholdi’s “Freedom enlightening the World,” at New York, or Dalou’s “Republic as the Protector of Labour and Culture,” in the Place de la Nation, at Paris.
Even these works still continue to show a birthmark, which betrays their origin from the sculpture of purpose, for Bartholdi’s gigantic statue is a lighthouse, and Dalou’s “Triumph of the Republic” belongs to the fountain series.
On the other hand, Bartholomé’s “Memorial to the Dead” is as free from every idea of commonplace utility as any mouldings for the rooms of a house. It originated in the artist’s emotion, and had, at its birth, no other purpose than that of relieving its creator by the gratification of an impulse. What was to become of the work after it was finished is a question Bartholomé probably never asked himself at all. Perhaps he resigned himself to the thought that it would pass a pensioner’s existence in some museum or other. In any case, carelessness as to what use would be made of it left him entire freedom as to the form it should take. And now he had the unexpected happiness of the work being purchased by the city of Paris, and placed in Père Lachaise. This has been the first instance, as far as I know, of a purely subjective, monumental work capturing a public position without this being justified by a practical service to the community, without embellishing a building, without satisfying any religious need or patriotic feeling, without immortalising any historical reminiscence, without glorifying any event or individual, but basing its claim to the grateful attention of the people at large only on the grounds that it attempts to embody in beauty an elemental emotion alive in the masses, that is to say, a real, common interest of moral order. The work may become the starting-point of a new monumental art, which will set itself the hitherto unknown task of presenting, with the authority of great sculpture, moods and views of the world, viz., the spiritual conditions common to a people, of interpreting them to that people, and of fixing them for history.
With all its novelty, Bartholomé’s work is, notwithstanding, not without organic connection with the historical development of art. There is no virgin-birth in art. Every work has a pedigree. Bartholomé’s art is allied to the Campo Santo art of the Middle Ages, from which it borrows thoughts of consolation and promise. It nevertheless exhibits a daring progress when it has emancipated itself from the architecture of gateways, outer walls, chapels, etc., and forced its way in independent form, complete in itself.
The street of tombs opens at the main entrance of Père Lachaise, and leads to a gently rising hill, the declivity of which Bartholomé’s masterpiece occupies. It displays the irregular, decorated side of a two-storied stone building of ancient Egyptian architecture of the simplest lines. A high door opens in the middle of the upper story, into the shadowy depth of which a naked man has entered. Him follows hesitatingly, with her outstretched right hand grasping his shoulder and seeking support, a young woman, the lines of whose profile, from her mouth distorted with fear down to the soles of her feet that detach themselves reluctantly from the ground, express a horror in presence of the unknown.
Towards this Gate of Death move, on the right and left, groups, each of seven persons, whom the artist has striven honestly, yet without real success, to fashion in various shapes. At the first hurried glance, the two processions appear to be variously moved; but on looking more closely into them, we recognise an uniformity which proves a striking poverty of imagination. On the left, hard by the Gate of Fate, a young woman is sitting on a stone-bench without support, with her countenance concealed by her hands. She cannot make up her mind to rise from where she is resting, in order to take the last step. A second woman is visible in a similar irresolute attitude, in weak relief on the wall. Cowering behind the two, kneeling quite low, so that the thighs lie in parallel lines over the legs, a naked man seems to be whispering words of encouragement into the ear of the seated woman. Then follows a woman sunk on her knees as if crushed, who hides her face like the first with a somewhat different movement, and behind her a man standing, but bending down to her, and addressing words of consolation. Last of all, another woman sitting down, whose dishevelled hair is streaming over her countenance, and, behind her, a man standing upright, likewise as a consoler. Thus is repeated on this side the theme of the despairing woman and the calm, comforting man. On the right side the invention is somewhat richer. Close to the door stands an old man—decidedly the most expressive figure in the whole composition—clinging tightly to the door-posts; and with his head and the upper portion of his body bent forward, he tries to get a terrified glance at the awful mystery, ere he pulls himself together for entering. To his group belongs a woman stretched on the ground with her face pressed in her hands before her; another folding her hands in prayer, and a half-grown girl shrugging her lean shoulders in terror. There follows a second group of three figures—a woman with dishevelled hair, bowed low to the ground; a crouching man supporting her and preventing the feeble figure from sinking down completely; and a young woman who kneels on one leg, turns her back to Death’s portal, and glances back on life as though she still hoped for deliverance.
The lower story shows, through the front-wall, which is removed to its full extent, the interior of the vault into which the upper Gate of Death seems to lead down. On a mattress-like couch rest, side by side, the naked bodies of a man and his young spouse; across their bodies is laid their little one year old child; in the background is visible in low relief on the wall a winged angel with outstretched arms, who looks down lovingly on the three quiet sleepers. With a _naïvité_ which does not rise above the puerile method of the _quattrocentisti_, of making their figures express themselves by means of legends issuing from their mouths, Bartholomé writes on this wall beneath the angel the sense of his allegory: “They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”
Above all, the artist deserves the respect that is due to long and earnest effort. We have here before us a work of ten years’ labour, executed with composure, inspiration, and conscientiousness. He who can do that, of him one may say, without the slightest suggestion of irony: “With his talent, however applied, the man is certainly a character.” Many details of the monument, nevertheless, prove that Bartholomé is not only a character, but also a man of talent. The husband and wife turn their quiet faces to each other in the rest that is in the grave, and lay their hands one upon the other; and this movement is so tender and sincere that it makes a deep impression. It really expresses in sculpture the love that endures beyond the grave. It is the solitary true emotion in the whole work; for he whose eyes grow moist at the sight of the dead child with the sweet little baby limbs, will say to himself that his emotion is not of an æsthetic nature, is not evoked by the means of art, but is the purely physical reaction of a human heart from a cruelly painful impression, in which no artistic element or inspiration is mingled. The woman who enters Death’s portal a prey to horror exhibits graceful lines, and the old greybeard who timidly peers into it is cleverly conceived and accurately represented.
Beside these excellent details, many middling and absolute weak ones disturb us. The dead husband in the grave has an Aztec face of repulsive ugliness, which is not called for by any artistic considerations. The attitudes of many figures, especially those squatting or cowering, are in bad taste. A primary personage—the man who has stepped into the Gate of Death—stalks bending forward with head bowed down and the muscles of his back contracted, like one who is hauling with all his might. It is a matter of surprise that the tow-rope with which the vessel is dragged is not to be seen. I cannot prove it, but I am convinced that Bartholomé has formed this man, not after a model, but from what he recollected of a hauler by Constantin Meunier. I have already called attention to the monotony of the group _motifs_. The whole conception of the composition, at any rate of the upper story, is an echo of Canova’s monument to Maria Christina at Vienna, with the further development that Bartholomé shows the subterrestrial and supernatural continuation of the theme which Canova carries only as far as the entrance to the realm of shades, leaving what follows to the pious belief of the spectator. The weightiest objection which must be made to the work as a whole is its offensive lack of repose. All the individual details are, with few happy exceptions, realistic, whilst the effect of the whole composition moves in extreme unreality. How has Bartholomé’s most original artistic instinct not preserved him from trying to present a wholly ideal dogma with the most vulgar, petty realism? Simple mediæval sculptors might work thus. In our contemporaries we do not believe in simplicity, and therefore the discord between idea and form has a jarring effect.
The most ideal dogma that Bartholomé preaches is, however, that of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body; for his monument can mean only that, if it means anything at all. It is conceived as a consolation to the sorrow-laden who form the last escort to a dear one that is dead, or are making a pilgrimage to the grave of one they loved. And what consolation has he to offer them? See, he says, in the figures on the upper story, the sorrow with which men approach the gates of shadow-land. Why this faint-heartedness? Why this timorous shrinking from the terrors of death? Death has no terrors. It is entering into peace and the fulfilment of a high promise. And he shows, in the lower story, the gentle, blessed rest the dead enjoy who there slumber until their resurrection, watched by their guardian angel, who awakes them at the appointed hour, and convey their immortal souls to their divine destination.
That is the cosmic view held by an artist on the threshold of the twentieth century. Holbein and his predecessors in painting the Dance of Death were men who believed in Christianity, but the only consolation that they offered mortals was this: Don’t bewail your mortal lot, you share it with Pope and Emperor. The path from the Rationalism of this exhortation to the mysticism of Bartholomé’s dogma is called by the decadents Progress.
The decadents are consistent when they call Bartholomé a modern, one of the most modern, and hail his work as the art of the future. It is logically on a line with the “progress” and “modernism” of a Huysmans, Maeterlinck, Bourget, and other New Catholics. But what is to be said about the city of Paris having this unctuous work erected in Père Lachaise? Had the Moscow Duma done it, everybody would have found it natural. But the Paris Municipal Council! This society of boasting freethinkers which has banished the Cross from the schools and churchyards, hounded the Sisters of Mercy from the hospitals, has the dogma of the Resurrection preached officially!
That is the highly interesting ethical side of this work. It reveals monumentally the confusion in the donkey-heads of the self-styled freethinkers. That they should decree the honour of a public site to a composition of a dogmatically religious character is proof of crass ignorance of their own standpoint, or else of their hypocrisy. I prefer to assume it to be their ignorance.
XV
JEAN CARRIÈS
The little palace, the charming edifice which was already attractive as the abode of the Dutuit collection, has received a new value and consecration. A room has been opened in it, in which a great artist reveals himself, whose acquaintance, though not indeed quite exhaustively, but nevertheless very profoundly and familiarly, can be made only here in the wide world. This artist is Jean Carriès, who died in 1894, at the early age of thirty-nine, after a marvellously planned life. To this pattern life, as expressive as any whose story Vasari has told, belonged a patron who kept what is vulgar away from him, who saved him from care and anxiety, who made his mind easy as to his influence on contemporaries and posterity, and, to a certain extent, symbolically personified his fame for him. This useful part was played by a certain Herr Hoentschel, who acquired most of Carriès’s works. He has now presented them to the City of Paris, and, by so doing, rendered the opening of the Carriès Museum possible. In return his name has been engraved in letters of gold on the marble slab which declares the purpose to which the room has been assigned, beside that of his trusted artist—no mean satisfaction to a high-aiming ambition.
Carriès was the son of a poor artisan of Lyons. He seemed destined, as he thought, to follow his father’s avocation; but the fairies had conferred gifts on the proletarian’s child in his cradle: sense of beauty and power of design. He was for a short time apprenticed to an artisan; then he taught himself to be an artist. He pursued no beaten tracks, and could follow no guides. He was left to his own sense of locality for finding out a path, and he made wide _détours_, but, nevertheless, raised himself safely to the highest peaks. Phenomena delighted him as form and colour. His pleasurable sensations sufficed to impel him to utterance in sculpture and painting; he satisfied his delight in form by modelling in clay, his delight in colour by enamelling.