at should be.
Well, the experiment has failed. Archaeology is the most delightful of
pursuits, but it is not particularly conducive of good art. The German
professor, who knows the most about Phidian sculpture, is as far as
his youngest pupil from being able to produce anything Phidian, but,
of course, this is not a fair example. The German professor does not
profess to be a sculptor. Let us say then, that that sculptor now
alive who knows the most, theoretically and historically about Greek
art, is as far as his most ignorant contemporary and rival from having
Greek methods of work. This is a safe proposition. I do not know who
he is, nor can any one tell me. It is not a question of men, but of
principles. The study of the monuments of art is one thing, their
analysis, their criticism, their comparison, is one of the most
attractive, the most fascinating, the most stimulating, the most
absorbing of studies, one that I shall never cease commending in the
most earnest way to all those persons to whom scholarship is dear and
to whom it is a question of recommending a study which is worthy of
their most earnest and hearty devotion, but it is not the study of
practical art, that is another and a very different thing.
The way to make good sculpture is to let the youth thumb and punch and
dabble in wet clay, and see what he can make of it; and the way to
make a painter is to give the boy now a burnt stick, and at another
time a pin and a back of a looking-glass, and see what he can
delineate with such materials as these and with all other materials
with which a line can be drawn. To look at the world, and what it
contains, and to try and render what is suggested to him,--that is the
training for the artist, and it has more to do with our beloved study
of archaeology than if they were not concerned with the same subject.
This, I say, has been proven. Sad experience, the waste of forty years
of work, disappointment and despair, have taught some of our artists
what others did not need to learn,--that the way to succeed was not
through study of the past. The artist has no primary need of
archaeological knowledge; the archaeologist has no need of any fact that
the artist can furnish him with.
Suggestions; yes! Each side can furnish the other with suggestions in
abundance, and suggestions which each can immediately profit by. An
able artist, if a fellow of modesty and frank speech, can hardly talk
without giving the student o
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