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PARTISAN REVIEW
reader with hints of grave intellectuality. The relations between sculp–
ture and architecture, and between sculpture and painting; the impact
of science, and the conflict of art and technology; the enormous influ–
ence of anthropology, and consequently the violent role of primitive
art
in modern sculpture; and- the whole play of social forces on the isolated
artist-these and other crucial aspects of the subject are hinted at and
swiftly dropped. Except for some commonplace observations on "the
speed and fluidity of the industrial age," there is almost no effort to
cope with the social nature of art or with its role in our culture.
It
is
a discussion which actually contributes to the isolation of the arts. Mr.
Ritchie's charge against the sculpture of Richard Lippold (his boldest
insight in the book), that it shows "a lack of human involvement," is
precisely the charge one must make against his book.
Nevertheless, the extraordinary vitality of sculpture in our time
asserts itself in this book, and especially the vitality of American sculp–
ture of the last few years. (Mr. Ritchie's closing paragraphs, in which
he abandons his categories to discuss the contemporary scene, are much
more to the point.) One has a firmer impression than before, for ex–
ample, that the achievements of European and American sculpture are
somehow different, despite their connections; that our sculpture has per–
haps freed itself from the domination of European art in a way which
painting has not yet been able to do.
The reason for this will be seen, I think, in the artist's relation
to the museum. The revival of sculpture in Europe at the turn of the
century was an affair of the museum. ("I have invented nothing; I
only rediscover, and it seems to be new because the aim and the
methods of my art have in a general way been lost sight of," Rodin
said.) The museum itself was becoming a crossroads of world culture,
but it still kept art at a sufficient remove from the life of society to
perform with complete success its task of incubating a new art. More–
over, the museum was not only the incubator; it had also become the
destination of art. Thus the painting and sculpture of, say, Matisse are
museum pieces not only in the sense of their excellence, but also in
the sense of their
raison d'etre
in our culture. (Even Matisse's chapel
strikes one more as a Matisse museum than as a religious structure.)
They are intended to be looked at in the way all the significant art of
our century is intended to be looked at-the museum way.
If
this observation seems at first to express a truth too obvious and
superficial to need saying, the juxtaposition of Matisse's sculpture with
the works of David Smith or Theodore
J.
Roszak assures one of the
need to say it. In the art of these sculptors something quite different
is at work. It is an art which looks terribly confined in the small area
