Rodin's no more resembles
the contortions of the Dresden Museum giants than it does the composure
of M. Delaplanche. The _baroque_ is only violent instead of placid
commonplace, and is as conventional as any professor of sculpture could
desire. Expression means individual character completely exhibited
rather than conventionally suggested. It is certainly not too much to
say that in the sculpture of the present day the sense of individual
character is conveyed mainly by convention. The physiognomy has usurped
the place of the physique, the gesture of the form, the pose of the
substance. And face, gesture, form are, when they are not brutally
naturalistic and so not art at all, not individual and native, but
typical and classic. Very much of the best modern sculpture might really
have been treated like those antique figurines of which the bodies were
made by wholesale, being supplied with individual heads when the time
came for using them.
This has been measurably true since the disappearance of the classic
dress and the concealment of the body by modern costume.
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