But fancy the
Luxembourg Gardens without "The Four Quarters of the World supporting
the Earth." Parisian censure of his exuberance is very apt to display a
conventional standard of criticism in the critic rather than to
substantiate its charge.
Barye's place in the history of art is more nearly unique, perhaps, than
that of any of the great artists. He was certainly one of the greatest
of sculptors, and he had either the good luck or the mischance to do
his work in a field almost wholly unexploited before him. He has in his
way no rivals, and in his way he is so admirable that the scope of his
work does not even hint at his exclusion from rivalry with the very
greatest of his predecessors. A perception of the truth of this apparent
paradox is the nearest one may come, I think, to the secret of his
excellence. No matter what you do, if you do it well enough, that is,
with enough elevation, enough spiritual distinction, enough
transmutation of the elementary necessity of technical perfection into
true significance--you succeed. And this is not the sense in which
motive in art is currently belittled.
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