The Schism, parts 3763 - 3766

 3763. What Ivan heard was this: “These equestrian statues that grace the squares and parks of our great cities have only one purpose, and that is to glorify the institution of Monarchy, of absolutist government. The idiots who create these things probably never think to themselves that the personages they depicted were not great at all but were truly a burden to mankind.”

 3764. “They are obsessed with the realism of the details of their works, and pride themselves that a horses hoof is anatomically correct, or that a cape or a boot is rendered accurately down the eyelets and stitches, and all the time they never stop to consider that the entire construction is an embarrassing falsehood.”

 3765. “Oh, for the day when these monstrosities can be torn down, along with the odious institutions they represent.”

3766. In Ivan’s entire life never had he heard the works of his father or his grandfather criticized. There was criticism in his father’s workshop however but it was always of a certain type. Often a model in clay was set up on a revolving stand, and both the students and the master were invited to offer criticism of the work. These criticisms were often harsh and emotionally devastating.

The Schism, parts 3759 - 3762

 3759. What Ivan overheard had a profound effect on him and I will be so bold as to state that just a few sentences, overheard in passing, created a bridge that brought him from one existence into another state of being.

 3760. Before I tell you what those sentences were, I want to justify the above statement by saying that it is indeed possible for words overheard by accident to change a person’s life, but certain prerequisites need to be present. The principal requirement is that the person whose life is to be changed, must be one in whom there is a great desire for change. It must be a person who is on the edge of a precipice and ready either to plunge off or be saved. Such was the state of mind on Ivan.

 3761. He was looking for a reason to reject everything he had ever learned. He wanted to reject his father, and his grandfather, and all his family’s grand traditions. He longed to heap scorn on all revered and respected works of art, and find some way to cast them all into a trash heap in his mind.

3762. But in Ivan’s mind there was no such set of ideas to accomplish such a revolution, but the words he heard in passing that morning were like a manifesto uttered by a worker in an factory worker’s meeting; a few simple words that suddenly light the flame of the dream of a world revolution.

The Schism, parts 3755 - 3758

 3755. Ivan accepted his position as simply a helper in his father’s atelier, and outwardly he was a model of obedience and industry, but inside he was consumed with anger and envy. He was envious of the strangers his father brought into the shop, who worked long hours for free, glad to be able to find out the secrets of the art. Those young men looked forward to careers as the makers of grand monuments.

 3756. Ivan was sent out of his fathers shop on an errand. He had to purchase a quantity of lead to be used in the casting of small figures from wax molds. On his way home he stopped for a few moments to admire an equestrian statue that had recently been unveiled in a nearby square.

  3757. The horse and its rider was a work created by his grandfather, and it had been recently restored by his father. Ivan’s entire family was deeply proud of the work, and it was often brought up in conversation when the family got together to tell stories of their exploits.

3758. Ivan had the good fortune that day to overhear a conversation by some particularly educated men who were standing nearby engrossed in a debate about the merits of his family greatest accomplishment.

The Schism, Parts 3751 - 3754

3751. Ivan had the advantage of a childhood immersed in the procedures of the sculpture studio, but it was no advantage to him. He was like the tone deaf offspring in a composer, or an illiterate child of a Professor of Literature.

 3752. Even though he was handicapped when it came to carving figures in stone or modeling a head in wax or plaster, he still had sufficient ambition to desire to create works of art. He worked very hard at everything he did but the works he produced were painfully awkward. It was as though he could not see a piece of sculpture as a whole and all at once.

 3753. He might craft a head for example and one eye would be larger than the other, and the mouth and the chin could look like they belonged to a head half the size of the skull and the forehead. In short, he could see the parts clearly, but the whole he could not see at all.

 3754. When his mistakes were pointed out to him he saw his errors instantly and set to work to correct them but the corrections were just as ridiculous as the original work and so he was relegated to the status of permanent helper in the studio, even though his father was a renowned creator of monuments.

The Schism, parts 3747 - 3750

 3747. Attempting to turn a modern work into an ancient fragment is bound to fail for this simple reason; an artwork is what it is, nothing more and nothing less, regardless of what anyone says. What the forgoing statement means you will have to figure out for yourself.

 3748. The piece of sculpture purchased for Harriet on her birthday was the occasion for a party and to complete the guest list it was thought fitting that some artists they knew should be invited in the hopes that the conversation might turn on questions of art and culture. Harriet’s husband knew one painter and one sculptor and invited them both. Before I tell you about the dinner party I have to say something about the sculptor.

 3749. The sculptors name was Ivan Ivanovitch. Since his patronymic was Ivanovitch we know that his father was also named Ivan. His grandfather was also an Ivan. The name Ivan is so common in Russia that it is a substitute for everyman, just as John Doe represents everyman in English.

3750. Ivan’s father was a sculptor and so was he grandfather. Both of those men were still alive when he attended Harriet’s dinner party as a representative of the creative and artistic intelligentsia of the time, but for all his inherited background and qualifications he was not particularly suited to the task.

The Schism, parts 3743 - 3746

3743. First of all it was very smooth, shiny, and pure white. You would think that if it was white and shiny it would appear to be more valuable and also more sought after as a collectable work of art, but just the opposite was the case. For some reason the best and most valuable marble sculpture is always dirty, dingy, yellowed and chipped, and even damaged.

 3744. Not only is it desirable for old sculpture to be damaged and dirty, it is best if there are even parts missing and sections broken off altogether. Since this is so, shiny, pure white, smooth and faultless works in marble look cheap and lacking in a certain seriousness. This fact has led many an artist in the past to bury their works in the ground for a period of time, and then dig them up again with the hopes of improving their appearance, or rather, of ruining their appearance in a desirable way, which ever you prefer.

 3745. Those artists who bury their sculptures in the ground in the hopes of making them look more antique are often disappointed with the results of the resurrection of their creations. They had hoped that the simple addition of accelerated aging would have turned their inadequate forms into something rich and strange, but find instead that the work remains uninspired, if it was uninspired when it was buried.

3746. It is then that they resort to desperate measures and picking up a hammer begin to smash away at their work in the mistaken belief that the damage they inflict will finally transform some inadequate piece of sculpture into a ruin that will move a viewer to a poetic moment in which they find themselves transported to some ancient place and time.

The Schism, parts 3739 - 3742

 3739. Harriet’s husband purchased a new piece of small sculpture for her birthday. It was an extravagant purchase and the first real Italian work in her collection. She had hoped for some small piece from the Italian Renaissance even if it was by some unknown master, or even unsigned, but that is not what she received. 

 3740. Harriet’s husband was a Philistine, even though he could quote the poetry of Browning on occasion. To him the works of the Renaissance and the works of the Baroque masters were one and the same. He could not distinguish the difference between the twisting, intertwined figures of Bernini from the stiff figures on the portals of medieval cathedrals.

 3741. For him a figure in stone was like any other figure in stone, and if it had eyes, nose and a mouth, plus a mantle to cover the body, it was a thing of wonder and magic. So it was no wonder that he mistook a small marble figure probably by a follower of Canova, for a work of some High Renaissance master.

 3742. The work was crafted by a person with a name with a vowel at the end. The figure was a naked man holding a sword aloft, and striking a pose reminiscent of the Greek heroes just before they smite something. It was different from ancient Greek works of a similar subject in many particulars.