And accompanying this supreme
motive and effect is a delightful grace and winningness of which few
sculptors have the secret, and which suggest more than any one else
Clodion's decorative loveliness. An even greater charm of sprite-like,
fairy attractiveness, of caressing and bewitching fascination, a more
penetrating and seductive engagingness plays about Carpeaux's "Flora," I
think, than is characteristic even of Clodion's figures and reliefs.
Carpeaux is at all events nearer to us, and if he has not the classic
detachment of Clodion he substitutes for it a quality of closer
attachment and more intimate appeal. He is at his best perhaps in the
"Danse" of the Nouvel Opera facade, wherein his elfin-like grace and
exuberant vitality animate a group carefully, and even classically
composed, exhibiting skill and restraint as well as movement and fancy.
Possibly his temperament gives itself too free a rein in the group of
the Luxembourg Gardens, in which he has been accused by his own admirers
of sacrificing taste to turbulence and securing expressiveness at the
expense of saner and more truly sculptural aims.
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