SPECTRUM
JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR
GOES OUT OF TOWN TO FIND A TECHNICOLOR DISPLAY OF THE SCULPTOR ' S ART The major holidays, whether Christmas/New
Charles C o rdier' s lewess of Algiers, with its pano ply of colo urs in the dress of the wo man, could be a bystand er in either version of The Ten Commandments, so little did DeMille' s view of things di verge fro m the High Victorian througho ut h is life. The very idea of portrayin g an Old Testament character or a temptress from An cient Egypt seems to have driven Vic torian sculptors to a frenzy of amazing Tec hnicolo r.
Year or Summer, are generally a signal for all interesting exhibition activity to ce ase for the duratio n, or at least to move o utside Lo ndon. Whether on the principle that 'nobody is in town', or the assumptio n that any substantial ex hibition strains the mind above and beyond the call of ho liday duty is not clear. H owever, it comes as no surprise that all the notable shows which o pen at the end of the year do so well outside the metropo lis. In the case of The
creator of Eros, even went in for what h as always see med to me the ultimate sculptural (lim -o ff, the chriselephantine. This curious form invo lves the creatio n of figures made primarily of bronze (vety likely glid ed) , but with the exposed flesh re presented hy carved ivory. I mu st admit that my aversion has less to do with the material used (no use cryi ng ove r bng dead elephants) th an with the unhea rahly coy style in which it is used by so me currently very fas hi,m able sculptors. I cann o t beli eve that Chiparius , fo r instance, the Llltimate putve yo r of expe nsive kitsch, at present cllmm ands higher prices than hi s conte mpora ry Rodin, whom no o ne douhts to be among the greatest of sculptors. Howev er, this show does offer exam ples of the techni que put to gOl,d usc by true artists like Gilhert and G oscom be Jo hn.
Colour of Sculpture, newly arrived in Leed s from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam , there may also be in play the faint notio n that sculpture is a little cold and unwelcoming for the depths of winter. But surely not - no t this sculpture anyway. The point is, that we generall y think of sculpture as hard and pure and sto ne-coloured, which frequ ently means the chilly (o r soapy) white of marble. But histOrically, classical and mediev al sculpture was generally painted in bright hues, and it is o nly time which has uncolo ured it. When John Gibson first exhibited his Tinted Venus in the 1850s, the sensuo us effect of this return to nature created a sensatio n . A s the century wore on, more and mo re sculptors co ttoned o n to the idea of c,:, I" ur. as lI'ell as experimenting mo re and more " de l,. with o ther materials than those (raditl e-nall\' employed by the 'serious' sculpture. Ins tead of Carrara marble o r tOffee coloured bra n: e, they were liable to break out into brightl\' gla:ed ceramic, coloured glass particularly that kind known as pate-de- verre, which is produced by grinding uniformly coloured glass to a po wder, then mixing the colo urs toge ther, melting them and moulding the material into clo ud ily polychro mati c shapes - painted pl aster, o r exot ic mixtures of stone and metal and such o rganic substances as ivo ry. Seeing the Leeds exhibition will gi ve many people a co mpletely new perspective on ' ~ulpture. A number of the pieces belo ng o:sv lutel y to the world of Cecil B DeMille:
Tinted Ve nus by John G ihson (ahove) , and Sud anese in Alge ria n Dress
hy Clwrks-Hem,-Joseph Cordier
At this period, towards the end of the nineteenth century, sculptors of the utmost respectability did not hesitate to do things which at any Other time would have been looked upon as too practical or tOo kitsch. C amille Claudel, fo r instance , wanting to embody the idea of Lost in Thought, unashamedly made it into a son of lamp, so that the fo reground fi gure of a yo ung wom an, her hands raised above her head to rest on a mantelpiece, kneels gazing into the fire, and is illuminated from the fireplac e by the warm glow of a tinted lightbulb. Alfred G ilbert,
Undeniably the sculptor introduces variegated colo ur only at hi s (or her) peril. But in the right hands the effec t can be, as the Restoration critic OIdmiringly o bserved of Wren's St Paul' s, ~ w ful , gaud y and artificia l. What better to brighten lip a chill winter in Le eds ) •
The C olour of Sculpture is at the H enry Moo re Institute, Leeds (0113 246 9469) until April 6.
MARCH 1997
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