DECORATIVE SCULPTURE Under the general heading of decorative sculpture is included all sculpture made primarily as decoration or part of an architec tural scheme, or which is so designed as to fit into an architectural setting, or which, though not designed for any particular place, is yet so considered in its form relationships and harmonies of line and mass, that it becomes an abstraction in form of the object or subject represented. Thus it may be a work created in the artist's studio of the expression of some sculptural idea or emotion alone. It may be a large or a small work, a "Perseus Decapitating the Gorgona" by Cellini, a "Narcissus from Pompeii," or a small sculptured work from the Orient. It is rather a question, in the broadest sense, of the consideration of the subject of decorative sculpture, that it is the treatment of the form of the subject represented, the formalization or conventionalization of natural forms, rather than a strict reproduction of the forms of nature themselves that renders sculpture decorative. Thus it follows that all good sculpture is in a certain sense decorative, or at least has a large percentage of this decorative element in its conception. This discussion, therefore, does not involve so much a classification of a certain kind of sculpture as it does an element which should be present in all good sculpture. The sculpture of the Egyptian monument depicting gods, men and beasts is always fundamentally decorative. Each line and form is conceived in its relationship to those about it and to the architecture on the surface of which it is placed. It becomes at a distance a pattern taking its place in detail on the mass of the architecture, yet it may be emotional and dramatic in its intent, depending upon the imagination and the vigour of the sense c f visualization of the artist. So, too, with the architectural sculpture of the Greeks. The pedimental groups and the frieze of the Parthenon are so beautifully proportioned to the architectural setting as to become an essential part of the architecture itself, and withal, a nobly expressed idea of high emotional quality, combining a spiritualized representation of natural forms such as has hardly been known in art. Gothic art
(q.v.) is always decorative, whether it is of carved stone panels, tympana or figures of a 13th century cathedral, or the deli cately chiselled bronze or ivory statuette. With Chinese sculpture (q.v.) it is practically the same and the carvings of primitive people are a formalized and therefore decorative representation of the chosen subject-matter.