70
PARTISAN REVIEW
move around, as much a part of the world as any statue; they
remain the strongest examples yet conceived of painting projected
as sculpture. Previously the sculptural traditions had presented
fonns
inside
the painting realized in sculptural tenns. But Mon–
drian gives us a thing in itself,-and here we have something
entirely new, a fragment of the modem world, concise, compact,
and complete. I do not infer that Mondrian is the only one to
propose the new conception; he has merely presented it
with
the least compromise and perhaps the sharpest sensibility.
Arp
(whose work in actual sculpture has been considerable) is always
established as a true sculptor, even in his paintings and papier–
colles; while Mir6, on the other hand, so profoundly influenced
by Arp in regard to shape and contour, is just as emphatically
the painter, opening up his alluring world even when building
an object out of stones and shells. It is in this respect that he is
surrealist, for Surrealism depends for its very existence on itii
ability to
transport
the spectator.
The contemporary sculptors curiously parallel Mondrian's
direction in reverse. The Italian Futurists made a deliberate at·
tempt to coordinate figure and hackground,- as they themselves
put it "to throw the figure open like a window and make part of
it the surroundings in which it exists." Lipschitz and Pevsner
have similarly opened up their sculptures as if to enclose the
surroundings, while Gaho's transparent materials, instead of "re–
fusing" the spectator likewise seem to lure him in. Ben Nicholson's
reliefs, which appear to stem from Mondrian, are often projected
in reverse; they are actual reliefs, in three-dimensions, hut touched
as th&ugh a painter were intent on removing them from the realm
of sculpture. Nicholson's recent
paintings
do not partake of such
a surface, and seem to offer much flatter resistance than his reliefs.
It is Calder's mobiles, however, that offer the most complete ex–
ample of sculpture in terms of painting. Every emphasis is
against
three-dimensional form and is in fact directed toward rhythm
and away from fonn altogether. Calder moreover bears a relation
to the art-fbrm he approaches which appears no less internal than
that of Mondrian. The latter, as we have seen, does not "shape"
sculpturally, as did the Renaissance painters, hut achieves a sculp–
tural entity; while Calder in no sense exhibits the painter's touch
but opens up for us the spatial content of the painter. I have
