TEER TANT BOX Page Seven

Sculpture

Extracts From A LECTURE GIVEN BEFORE THE B. C. Art LEAGUE
By Mr CHARLES MAREGA

Ob HAT is Sculpture? Sculpture is the expression of ideas through the
medium of solid form, and is of many materials. Sculpture may be
said to be “emotion in being,’ while a Spanish writer has called it

“crystallized poetry”. Sculpture may or may not result in the production of
beauty, although the finest sculpture throughout the ages has often produced
beauty as its final accomplishment. Beauty, however, is relative to one’s ideas
and the country in which one is born. Standards of taste vary also with races
and time, and to-day we have the Cubist, the Futurist, and many other
revolutionary movements to remodel our ideas, if we judge by some of their
works.

The function of sculpture is to bring the divinity nearer to man. It was the
privilege of sculpture to perpetuate the memory of heroes and of noble deeds; to
embody in beautiful forms the vague and eternally human syntheses of the poets;
to transport vulgar facts into radiant spheres of art.

The real growth of sculpture begins when the craftsman recognizes the limits
of his material and his imagination commands the expression of ideas. Whereas
hieroglyphic inscriptions formerly helped to elucidate a portrait or a scene, now the
creative artist endeavours to imbue his work with qualities that shall say more than
that this represents a man; and out of his effort arises a more imaginative artistry,
whereby with the emphasis of this, and the neglect of that, over-accentuation of
certain features and the repression of others, one is led to think of ideas pertaining
to the sculptured figure and its tune, quite as much as of the figure itself. Always,
however, the limitation of the material itself sets barriers, and the varying qualities
of wood, stone, marble or bronze demand their special treatment for the best
result to be obtained. The painter may give us pleasing, if vague, representations
of objects which, with their beautiful color, become interesting, apart from the
objects represented. The sculptor, working in solid form, has no such illusive
means to hand, but has only the power, inherent in himself, to give life and ideas
to inanimate clay or stone.

Sculpture was originally a builder’s craft, although the idea can no longer be
maintained that sculpture is only to be produced in connection with architecture.
Sculpture has now become a separate art with ideas and ideals of its own. It must
remain, however, a builder’s craft; the corporate life of towns and cities demands
this, and it is strange to find that ancient and modern artists, equally successful in
producing the separate statue in the round, both, pari-passu, recognize this.

How old is Sculpture? Art History tells us that at a period nearly 3,000 years
B. C., the Assyrian and Egyptian artists were producing great sculptural works.
That Assyrian and Egyptian art has influenced all ages from the Greek to the
modern time is not at all surprising when we see from their architecture what
masters they were in construction and design,—in the former how profoundly
substantial, and in the latter how simple and grand.

When we come to the Greeks, I cannot but make straight way for the figures
of the Parthenon. The figures which adorned the pediment of the most beautiful
work of antiquity ever accomplished are in most instances fragments, mutilated