From about 185o many apparently new qualities were intro duced into sculpture besides the "modele a la boulette." Some were qualities derived from the study of ancient works and the effect of time and weather on the materials used in their con struction. Other qualities grew out of the general expansion of the fields of science, art and literature. At that time all things seemed possible. There was a spirit of exploration and adventure abroad as well as an interest in the past. Men turned their minds eagerly to the past to discover many forgotten beauties. Greece and the Renaissance were no longer the whole of antiquity. Dis satisfied with the art of the academies and the failure of anything resembling a genuine tradition, men turned hopefully for aid to the whole field of the past , in all times and places, instead of the strictly limited fields they were taught to venerate; they sought for aid and inspiration in the Gothic, the Romanesque, in India, China and Archaic Greece, which, until then, were unknown or forgotten. A general expansion followed. It was realized by some that there were principles and laws underlying the practice and theory of the arts wherever and whenever found. The Ger man sculptor, Adolf von Hildebrand (q.v.), attempted to formu late and state a number of these fundamental laws in his book The Problem of Form in Painting and Sculpture. It has had a great and beneficent effect on the understanding of the arts of painting and of sculpture. Alongside of this attempt to understand and use the principles found in the arts of the past there grew up a desire to imitate. Sculptors and painters strove to work in the spirit and manner of different periods. They tried to give the accidental and picturesque effects of time and weather on bronze, stone, and wood to new work. They attempted to become recon structors as well as restorers.
Those eager spirits who looked to the future attempted to use the results of science and observation in creating a new art. The outstanding scientific contribution was in the realm of optics; the most fruitful of results was Prof. Rood's book on the colours of the spectrum as applied to the art of Painting. It was this book which determined the course of development of the Impressionistic school led by Claude Monet. In its preoccupation with light it had a great influence on certain sculptors. They were no longer content to get effects of colour in their work by the age-old methods, but tried to achieve effects of light and colour by methods more appropriate to painting. The Italian Rossi carried this to extreme, as did Rodin. They tried to obtain colour not only by depressions and projections and the use of ornament, but attempted, by their modelling, to get the effects of light as it not only revealed but obscured the actual form. Hollows were deepened to obtain strong dark effects, and filled up to create surfaces which would reflect the greatest amount of light. Details were accentuated and suppressed for the general effects of lumi nosity. There are things by Rodin and by Rossi which approach nearer to the paintings of Carriere than to any sculpture of the past.
Sculpture became sketchy and impressionistic for the first time. Such works often had great charm. Effects were attempted in sculpture which had never been thought possible before. But the movement passed; it was an interesting but rather futile experi ment. One of the results of the study of the arts of the past has been a renewed interest in the theory and practice of working directly in the material in which the work is to be completed. A
cult has grown up of the "taille direct"; it has been elevated into a slogan of almost hieratic import. It has become so important in the minds of some of the practitioners that they would never think of working otherwise. It has become not only necessary that every stroke of the chisel be delivered by the sculptor him self, but has even gone so far that no model can be used except the living model. The block of stone or piece of wood must be attacked direct. Whole figures are cut out of the hardest and most obdurate materials without a preliminary study in plastic form being made. It is insisted that all the great works of the past were so made. Along with this has grown the belief that all work should be cut in place. It is maintained that the unity of the architecture and sculpture in the great monuments was so obtained. Much is to be said for this theory and practice. It results in a much more intimate contact between the artist and his work and, what is of much more importance, in a greater respect for the material in which the work is done. There is less of a tendency toward attempting to do in stone or wood those things which are perfectly possible and proper in bronze. Generally, a greater sense of mass is achieved, or perhaps, not so much achieved as retained. There is more of the feeling of the block in the finished work. With the Egyptians, their practice of cutting their work out of the hardest of stones (granite, basalt and diorite) with primitive tools undoubtedly determined the style of their sculpture. If the sculptor has to cut incisions in a material almost as hard as the tools he is working with, he will cut them no deeper than is necessary, and he will cut no more material than is essential to the finished statue. That some pieces were cut directly in the stone without preliminary studies and models is hardly borne out by historic facts. Too many sculptors' models in chalk stone and other easily worked materials have survived from Egypt. We seem to have no authentic plastic models of the archaic or classic age of Greece. On the other hand, consider the pediment figures and the frieze from the Parthenon; it is incon ceivable that they were cut "in situ" without very complete preliminary models. The frieze was perhaps worked from a finished drawing, but even that is very doubtful, as a study of the relief indicates. It is interesting to note that the pediment figures were not cut in place but were carved and finished on the ground and then hoisted into position. As proof of this, one need only glance at the backs of the figures which went against the wall of the buildings. It is assumed by some archaeologists that the Greeks followed, generally, the practice of carving their statues directly out of the stone block; the reason given was that they knew so well their "canon" and what was to be done that they just went ahead. In the case of men doing "school pieces," this was undoubtedly so; but the creation of an original work was a totally different matter and it is just as likely that the architects of the Parthenon, Ictinus and Callicrates, went ahead without plans for their great building, as to think that Phidias carved the frieze without knowing beforehand what he was doing. The frieze, by the way, shows distinctly the carving of a number of different workmen.