But one may well urge the compensating worth which sculpture will
always possess of recalling men to a sense of the value and beauty of
the individual as such, especially in an age like our own where they
tend to be forgotten.
The principles that apply to the use of historical, literary, and
symbolic themes in painting hold with increased force in sculpture.
We must admit the right of the sculptor to illustrate simple and
well-known historical or fictitious situations. At the same time,
however, we must remember that a work of this kind is subject to a
twofold standard: first and indispensable, the sculptural, is the form
animate and beautiful; then, are the life and action appropriate to
the idea? The first is alone absolutely unequivocal. The second, on
the other hand, is largely relative; for unless the sculptor has carried
out the idea in so masterly a fashion that we can think of no other
possibility--as Phidias is said to have done with his statue of
Zeus--there must always be something arbitrary about any particular
representation. This arbitrary element is increased in symbolic
sculpture. You can perhaps depict an actual or fictitious human
situation by means of sculptured bodies and make your image seem
inevitable; but how can you make bodies the vehicles of abstractions?
Moreover, sculpture is a realistic art; it presents us with the
semblance of living forms, and if these forms are monstrous or are
shown accomplishing impossible things, they cannot escape a certain
aspect of the ridiculous.
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