Lions Crushing Serpents

IT IS APPARENT, at first sight, that this exhibition is strange. Eighteen statues of Diana standing on one toe and holding a crossbow, eight busts of Benjamin Franklin, 23 plaques of Robert Louis Stevenson, 20 lions crushing 20 serpents--they all seem redundant, somehow. They are not; each sculpture is in some way different from its partner. But they differ in very subtle ways--in the lie of the mane on the lion's neck, in the direction Franklin happens to be looking. Jeanne Wasserman and the staff of the Fogg set up this exhibit to explore these changes; a very well-trained eye is necessary to find them.

The variations in these works aren't due to he whims of a sculptor, but to the techniques used in the foundry of the man who cast them. These works are not pieces of marble carefully carved by one person, they are bronze and plaster versions of a work originally done in wax or clay, and then used to make a mold. With the help of elaborate measuring devices, a work could be (legally or illegally) copied in marble or clay. Sometimes the original artist supervised the reproduction process. In other cases he did not participate at all or the works were cast after his death. This all adds up to a wide discrepancy in quality from piece, to piece, and arguments about quality are the lifeblood of art historians.

This is an exhibition for scholars. It deals only with six sculptors and ten works--a highly specialized sample of the art of sculpture between 1778 and 1914, The differences between works are minute, and either an expert's eye or the $35 catalogue is needed in order to recognize the differences between one "Lion Attacking a Serpent" made from a plaster mold, and another made from a gelatin mold. Each mold makes a particular kind of scratch on the surface of the piece, which an uninitiated viewer can easily overlook.

Many of these pieces--especially Carpeaux's "Lion Crushing a Serpent" and Rodin's "Man With a Broken Nose"--succeed in all their versions because the original forms built by the artist are still so strong. Others, like Daniel Chester French's (the man who sculpted John Harvard) oversentimentalized "Memory," have little artistic merit either in their original or successive states.

IF THE EXHIBIT raises obscure questions of quality, it also brings up, and illustrates, problems of a more universal nature. The major question is whether this can be considered a work of art, an original work of art, this thing probably never touched by the artist whose name it bears. The market for sculpture in the 19th century was huge. The rising bourgeoisie wanted art and culture in their homes and their lives, and the major patrons of sculpture shifted from governments to businessmen. The demand was there, the technology was available to reproduce these pieces in large numbers and the artists cashed in. This social process made woodcuts popular in the 16th century, and would do the same for photography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At first glance, this array of copies cannot compare with the unique, original and personal objects which have always been treasured.

However, these copies have probably reached more people than the unique works ever did. The Ben Franklin in the Fogg show has been a model for coins and postage stamps, and plastic statues of Rodin's "The Kiss" have been sold in mail-order catalogues. The purpose these sculptures serve in disseminating a knowledge of art over a large area makes up for any lack of artistic merit.

If statues made by foundry-workers are called art, then the role of the artist becomes unclear. Until the Renaissance, artists were craftsmen, then they became humanists, today they are celebrities. Janet Cox, the editor of the show's excellent but outrageously expensive catalogue, likes to draw a parallel between this collection and the pieces by the late sculptor David Smith which critic Clement Greenberg recently took it upon himself to repaint. Each of the statues in this show was similarly refinished when it came from its mold--the caster added details, smoothed the finish, destroyed the mystique of the artist.

Metamorphoses in 19th-Century Sculpture suggests several issues: the value of mass-produced art, the necessity of uniqueness to artistic success, the mystique of the individual artist; but the notes on the display cases neither raise nor explore them. These problems intrigue the interested observer without a connoisseur's eye, and the show frustrates him by avoiding them.