The Eighteenth Century
The eighteenth century is the exaggeration of the sixteenth. Our elegant houses, our houses in the style of Louis XV and Louis XVI have always the Gothic line with its proud, graceful air. Without moldings, without ornaments, their beauty lies in their very lack of ornaments, in their nudity. But what proportions they have! The finest of the fine!
The eighteenth century is considered too frail, too affected. It is, on the contrary, full of life and strength. It possesses admirable sculptors: Pigalle, creator of that immortal masterpiece, the tomb of Marshal Saxe; Houdon, whose busts to-day are bought for their weight in gold without even then bringing their proper price. There were thousands then, the whole rank and file of the trade, who created marvels, with a sureness of hand accustomed to every difficulty. The outline of a table, of a chest, was as much considered as that of a statue. For that matter, what difference did the dimensions of a work make? It was the modeling that counted. The peasant himself sat down in a well-made chair. Artists and artisans had a taste, an alert grace, and a dexterity sufficient to fit out the whole world; but their dexterity was based on a foundation of intelligence as an ornament is based upon a building. The dexterity we possess nowadays is nothing but mockery, a kind of banter that touches everything without discernment; it kills force.
The Louis XV and Louis XVI styles possessed grandeur. We call it the art of the boudoir, but the boudoir of that period had a nobility like that of those white and gold salons where the seats are disposed with dignity like persons of quality. The music had the same character; the dances also, the dances, those charming scenes in which men and women with the natural spirit of play threw themselves into the cadence, translating it with the eloquence of youth. The dance—that was architecture brought to life.
The eighteenth century was a century which designed; in this lay its genius. Nowadays people are searching for a new style and do not find it. Style comes unawares through the concurrence of many elements; but can we achieve it without design? To-day we design no longer and our art, which is altogether industrial, is bad. The central matter in art is the nude, and this we no longer understand. How can we be expected to have art when we do not understand its central principle? The minor arts are the rays that go out from the center. When I draw the body of a woman I rediscover the form of the beautiful Greek vases. Through design alone we arrive at a knowledge of the shading of forms. The forms that delight us in the art of past centuries are nothing but those presented by living nature, those of human beings, animals, verdure, interpreted by men of supreme taste. The art that people are struggling to discover to-day might be deduced from my sculpture and my drawings, for I have always drawn with passion. The quality of my drawing I owe in large measure to the eighteenth century. I am nothing but a link in the great chain of artists, but I maintain the connection with those of the past. At the Petite Ecole they made us copy the red chalks of Boucher and the models of flowers, animals, and ornaments. They were Louis XVI models, very well executed; they certainly gave me a little of the warmth of the artists of that period. In my youth I made drawings by the hundreds, by the thousands. At the Petite Ecole we were badly placed, badly lighted by poor candles; when we touched them we made them sticky with the clay with which our fingers were covered so that they were worse than ever afterwards. It did not matter; we were working according to the right principles.
To-day the Petite Ecole is entirely in the power of the larger school, that of the Beaux-Arts. Far from learning one gets spoiled there for the rest of one’s life. One copies the antique, but one copies it badly.
I am speaking with the experience of a genuine artistic life. There was a time when I never talked; to-day I hold forth! If I am understood it will not have been in vain. But how much effort it will take to reestablish truths which are so self-evident, so obvious, so fundamental that one is ashamed to repeat them so many times! Nevertheless they are essential. The public is a thousand miles away from them, the public, by which I mean the general taste. If it does not become enlightened, art will disappear. Observe its attitude before the works of the new school, before the pictures of those who call themselves cubists: sarcasm, anger. These artists show us squares, cubes, geometrical figures colored according to their own ideas. They name them: Portrait of Mme. X. or Landscape. This exasperates the public. What does it matter? Is it good? That is the whole point. Is the ornament well treated? That is the capital question, the only one that is not discussed. Their canvases are combinations of color recalling mosaic or even stained glass. We have accepted many other things; we have accepted the green or rather the violet women of our later salons, and women with wooden heads, but we do not wish to admit the squares of the cubists. Why? They are not portraits, we say. They are not landscapes. So much the better! They are something else. What does it matter if the artist has deceived himself knowingly or wilfully on a matter so insignificant as the subject? It is ornamental, that is enough. They are curious, these quarrels that break out, these sects that are created for reasons like this—for a sock put on inside out! Ignorance inflames the passions. There are struggles whose aim is great; others that appear useless have their use perhaps.
It may be that this slackening of taste and knowledge is necessary. Perhaps it is a period of transition, a fallow period required by the intelligence like that required by a soil that has been productive for too long. If ignorance is prolonged it will mean that the history of France is ended; it will mean the annihilation of the Celtic genius which has fertilized Europe for two thousand years. We shall become like Asia. Roman art declined for four or five centuries after Augustus. With us the decadence has only been going on for a hundred years. During the present war marvels have been destroyed. Formerly, even during the religious wars, the monuments were spared; it is for this reason that France is still so rich. When stone is no longer respected, it means decadence. The cannon turn up the earth like a plow, leveling everything. This war appears therefore like an explosion of barbarism; at bottom it indicates a latent state of soul which has been shaping itself since the beginning of the nineteenth century. During this period the world has ceased to obey the law of beauty and love; it has lived for nothing but business. What is the leading idea that has precipitated the nations against one another? Trade: the desire, the longing to make more money than one’s neighbor. Trade is the anxious care of people who think of nothing but their own petty welfare; it is not the basis on which is founded the grandeur of peoples. It alone regulates at present the relations between things. The war is nothing but the consequence of such habits and their natural conclusion.
Do you ask me what will spring out of the conflict? I am not a prophet. I know only that without religion, without art, without the love of nature—these three words are for me synonymous—men will die of ennui. But nothing easily resigns itself to death. An outburst of courage has just transfigured the world. Can we preserve this courage during peace? The patience of the soldier, the patience of the trenches surpasses in sublimity the virtue of the ancients. Will it produce a rebirth of intelligence? Shall we have, in study, the force of soul that we have had in the great struggle? That is the question. Of course the stupid, the ignorant will not suffer any transformation through the war; but men of character will be reinvigorated by the hardships of the military life; we have recaptured patience and we have yet to learn what we can expect from this virtue. Genius is as much character as talent. If we have men of force in this country where taste is a natural gift, it seems to me impossible that this force will not quicken the gift and develop it and that we shall not have once more an era of beauty.
AUGUSTE RODIN.