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Brownell, W. C. (William Crary), 1851-1928

"French Art Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture"

The one interests you by his intelligent
mastery of convention, by the tact and taste with which he employs in
voice, carriage, facial expression, gesture, diction, the several
conventions according to which ideas and emotions are habitually
conveyed to your comprehension. Salvini, Coquelin, Got, pass immediately
outside the realm of conventions. Their language, their medium of
communication, is as new as what it expresses. They are inventive as
well as intelligent. Their effect is prodigiously heightened because in
this way, the warp as well as the woof of their art being expressive and
original, the artistic result is greatly fortified. Given the same
model, M. Rodin's result is in like manner expressly and originally
enforced far beyond the result toward which the academic French school
employs the labels of the Renaissance as conventionally as its
predecessor at the beginning of the century employed those of the
antique. "Formerly we used to do Greek," says M. Rodin, with no small
justice; "now we do Italian. That is all the difference there is.


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