PAINTING AND SCULPTURE
71
further observed that shadows cast on a wall by Calder's mobiles
are apt to he more dramatic than the works themselves, and like
paintings, tend to discard a sense of actual scale; when in motion
even the newer province of the cinema seems invaded here.
That in the last decade painting and sculpture should have
tended to fuse I find entirely in keeping with the natural growth
of the modern concept. The decisive innovation that differentiates
modern art from all that preceded is a novel relation to "life."
Instead of an illustration of life or reflection of life in the world
outside we have seen that the non·ohjective painter creates a living
unity,-an object that, through an adjustment of sensibility and
tension, can become an organism in its own right. Cubism de·
livered the first push in this direction, then retraced its steps and
re·incorporated it with the external world. The constructivist and
abstract artists took up where the cubists had left off and the break
has become firmly established. It was natural that in their desire
to create the living
thing
the painters should have moved toward
sculpture, in which the basic properties stem from the object to
begin with. The painted Construction, which represents the most
conscious attempt to seal this fusion tightly, was quite naturally
hom of this period.
The constructivist tendencies threw up a wall of resistance
to assert their objectivity. The more recent abstract exhibitions
(we are of course now limited to what we can see in the western
hemisphere) have divulged, I think, a re·opening of the picture.
surfaces, and a new clarity in the exposition of painting and sculp–
ture on their own terms. It may he that the recent external events
have demanded a return of the painter-touch and of a world where
the spectator can enter at least a little way. There is much to he
assimilated before we can see to what extent, if at all, the painter
can re-open his fabric to shapes of the world outside without dis–
turbing the terrible concentration and organic life of the new
conception; and how far the sculptor can enclose himself again
within the clear limits of the new materials at his command.
