“If you have a strong conviction to do it your way, do it: you are right. A few words about the craft of the sculptor

Available in formats: epub | PDF | FB2

Pages: 424

The year of publishing: 1983

The collection contains archival materials about the work of the outstanding Russian sculptor. In this book, for the first time, the epistolary legacy of A.S. Golubkina is presented in full: in the first part, the sculptor’s letters from the 1880s to 1927 are published. The second part contains the book "A few words about the craft of the sculptor" about the problems of the art of the sculptor. In it, in addition to professional advice novice sculptors, extremely sincerely reflected and artistic outlook great true artist. The third part publishes the memoirs of people who knew Anna Semyonovna Golubkina, enriching knowledge with new information about her life and work. The collection includes memoirs by S.S. Golubkin, E.M. Glagoleva, A.P. Svirin, M.F. Kokoshkina, V.F. Ern. N.G. Chulkova, O.V. Kipriyanova, M.Ya. Artyukhova, S.R. Nadolsky and others.

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The remarkable Russian sculptor Anna Semyonovna Golubkina was born on January 28, 1864 in the city of Zaraysk b. Ryazan province. Her grandfather, a former serf, and her father were engaged in gardening. The family was large, and the childhood and youth of A.S. Golubkina were difficult. Only twenty-five years old, she was able to come to Moscow and enter the "Classes of Fine Arts" to the sculptor S.M. Volnukhin, who appreciated her passionate desire for art and discovered a great original talent.

In 1891 A.S. Golubkina goes to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture to the sculptor S.I. Ivanov, whom she considered her first teacher. Three years later, leaving the school, she entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and studied with the sculptor V.A. Beklemisheva. For a year, the academic routine becomes unbearable, and A.S. Golubkina travels to Paris to improve her skills with meager funds, where she uses the advice of a famous French sculptor O. Rodin. Returning to Moscow, A.S. Golubkina successfully participates in many art exhibitions.

The works of A.S. Golubkina reflect an entire era and convey the typical features of real Russian reality. late XIX and the first quarter of the 20th century. Numerous works of the sculptor, made in marble, wood, stone and bronze, are in Tretyakov Gallery, in the Russian Museum and in many other museums of the country.

A.S. Golubkina was not only the largest Russian sculptor, but also an active revolutionary figure. She directly participated in the fight against tsarism and was repeatedly subjected to searches and arrests, and in 1907 she was put on trial for distributing the proclamations of the RSDLP and sentenced to imprisonment and a fortress.

In 1923, summarizing his twenty-five years of creative experience and teaching experience at the Prechistensky working courses and in the Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, A.S. Golubkina writes and publishes notes "A Few Words about the Sculptor's Craft", dedicated to her students and pupils, where she firmly, clearly and simply formulates her views on the work of a sculptor. This small but informative book is a significant contribution to the literature on the visual arts.

S. Lukyanov

I dedicate these notes to my students and students. They say that an artist needs to learn all his life. This is true. But to learn not proportions, construction and other things that are related to art in the same way as literacy is to writing, but another, real art, where the main thing is no longer study, but understanding and discoveries, large or small, embodied in images or not - it's all the same, but the artists know them and know their price...

In order to pass on to this real art, one must study well its handicraft part, which is very simple, entirely amenable to knowledge and calculation, and overcome by attention, assimilation of the order of work, restraint and discipline. It often happens that gifted people despair of their work, they clearly see that they have done something completely wrong, they do not know how and when the meaning of work is lost and how to get back on the road. Sometimes even the teacher will not be able to point it out, because a million mistakes have caught on to each other, so that there is not even a starting point for proofreading. Here it is already necessary to raise the question not of what should be done, but what should not be done in order not to fall into such impenetrable swamps.

Such confusion must inevitably happen to those who do not understand what is achieved in sculpture, who tries to take simple arithmetic solutions by feeling and, conversely, what is taken by feeling, dries up with diligent reflection and prudent copying. And because of this, such wonderful movers as feeling and mind are fruitlessly tired at work that is not characteristic of them.

For solid, definite and powerful work, everything that can be counted must be worked with the mind, preserving the freshness of feeling for that part of the work that cannot be counted and which is the most valuable in art.

A.S. Golubkin. Iron. 1897.

Feeling is always right, and it will always do its job admirably, unless you torture it by making it guess size or structure a thousand times in a thousand ways, something that mind and knowledge decide clearly and definitely with a little attention and restraint. With a reasonable distribution of forces, there is not much room for errors. You must always strictly monitor yourself so that in no case do what you probably don’t know, not to rush about at random, looking for one thing, losing another, destroying in this turmoil the most valuable thing that gives the artist his gift. One must be restrained, cautious and calm, as far as possible. The craft of a sculptor, if approached simply and seriously, with a simple life logic, can be mastered easily and quickly. And if you endure yourself for a while strict accountability, then you can soon get stronger in your work and consciously and confidently move forward.

To communicate this simple letter of craft and the order of work is the task of my notes. I will try to consistently state, starting with clay, everything that I consider necessary for beginners. Three grades of clay are used for sculpture: gray-green, gray-yellow and gray-white.

The first I consider the worst for sculpture, because it is difficult to foresee the model and my work in it, since that cold green color has nothing to do with the body. And the green statue is also unpleasant to see. It is best to avoid such clay: there is too much conventionality in it, it removes vitality and beauty. In addition to an unpleasant color, this clay has another drawback - this is its excessive oiliness and viscosity. Gray-yellow clay, on the contrary, is too dry, rough and sandy, although its color closely matches the color of the body. But she somehow vulgarizes the work both with her too material color and coarseness of consistency.

Gray-white, silvery clay is the best of all, both in its noble silvery color and in its exquisitely fine and noble texture. The disadvantages of yellow and green clay are completely absent. It has neither excessive fat content and viscosity of green, nor rough particles of yellow - it is thin, elegant and obedient. Finding and appreciating it is a great acquisition for an artist.

There is also red clay, but its shortcomings are the same as green clay, only, perhaps, even stronger. Maybe there are clays, the disadvantages and advantages of which are combined differently, but in Moscow, Leningrad, and Paris, I met clays of precisely these properties. If you have a taste for work and are not indifferent to the material, then you will choose clay in the same way that painters choose their canvases.

When soaking the clay, you should not pour too much water: the clay will be too liquid and will not soon be in time for work, and you will immediately begin to have an unpleasant discord with the material. In addition, clay from excess water becomes boring and monotonous. The best thing to do is to pour dry clay into a box or tub and pour enough water so that the clay acts as islands. Three days later, the clay is ready for work. At the first work, she is still not very obedient, but on the other hand she gives very interesting capricious samples of material (one should leave such an inviolable corner of unworked clay in the box - in case); then it becomes the most obedient material in the world, you just have to hold it properly.

Keep the clay in the box so that it does not lie flat, but that from the fact that you take it to work, unequal masses and wells would form. Then you will have at your disposal clay of every hardness, from the softest to the hardest.

With a truly in-depth attitude to work, your hand itself takes this or that clay, depending on the form that you are working on.

In order to maintain a constant living working moisture in the clay, it is not necessary to water it with water: the water flows too quickly, barely moistening the top layer, and forms mud at the bottom, which is also unnecessary. The best thing to do is this: during work, when you wash clay off your hands, thick water is formed with pieces of clay; this water must be thrown out on those places that begin to wither. This liquid clay does not go down as easily as water, keeps the top layer at the desired softness, and the bottom does not soak unnecessarily. By doing so, you always have the entire live scale at hand.

The clay must have three times as much as is needed for the work undertaken, so that there is an abundance to choose from. This luxury is easy to afford.

Clay must be treated with respect: do not stain it, do not throw it on the floor, do not allow litter, and after molding, carefully select all pieces of gypsum from it. If there are too many of them, then it is best to throw away this clay completely, because these pieces of gypsum interfere with work, appearing in the most critical places.

Besides, mottled sloppy clay is an unnecessarily nasty thing. Live working clay is a great beauty; to treat her carelessly is the same as trampling flowers.

Maybe you think these are small things. Perhaps they will say that there is no need to give great importance such a transient material as clay, in which not a single thing remains. May be so. But careful attitude to clay is very important for learning and gaining confidence in the possibility of achievements. In terms of its flexibility, clay does not give you any obstacles at all, and if you master the form at least once and learn from experience that you can take it, then you will no longer obey any material, be it wood, marble, etc.: you will approach it. with your requirements and achieve the vitality that you need and that you managed to take in clay. But not everyone and not always have to do monumental things, but for the body and portrait, clay is certainly of great importance. There are little things that annoyingly interfere, and there are little things that please, and there is no need to miss in sculpture all that good that can be taken from it.

The sculptor's work begins with frame. Before starting his work, the sculptor needs to foresee it on the machine, determine its size, weight, movement, and, in accordance with all this, build a frame, which must be so thought out and provided for that it no longer seems to exist during work: neither bend nor oscillate. nor should he perform. Until you make the frame properly, this should be taken as a rule. - it is better not to start work, because an unsettled frame directly opposes work. The pile of Sisyphus was better, because there the stones fell in one direction, here you often see something terrible: a worker grabs a vacillating place, squeezes it, trying to strengthen it with clay, the other part falls, the fifth of all these corrections is spoiled, the seventh is corrected in a different size , everything is displaced and slips out of both hands and consciousness ...

You can not do it this way. And what is most surprising of all is that years have been working in this way and they do not realize that it is unacceptable to give power over the work to blind material. About Sarah Bernhardt, once the newspapers enthusiastically announced that in order to support her work, she put scissors and something else in it ... It is simply indecent for a sculptor to listen to such things. The reason I am talking about this incident with Sarah Bernhardt is that it is very common to hear such stories from beginners, especially from their admirers, as proof of the ardor and originality of the artist. But in fact, this anecdotal originality means simple ignorance and inability and indicates that neither one nor the other has a clue about it. What is work.

For beginners, and not only beginners, but even for those who have worked for several years, but have not taken the craft properly into their own hands, the frame is some kind of living enemy that opposes them. They complain about him: he went out, does not hold, swings, etc., as if the worker himself did not arrange all this. Don't complain, but be ashamed of it. And some are so submissive that it happens that with one hand a person holds on to his work so that it does not sway, and with the other he works dully. And there are many such unfortunate sculptors. And such an aimless, senseless, confusing struggle with some piece of iron takes days of the week, years, when it is so easy to put an end to this humiliating mess once and for all and make the frame firmly and deliberately.

And now one obstacle will be overcome, and the work will immediately become more stable, both literally and figuratively.

In addition to strength, the frame must be made so that it does not protrude from the clay. After all, you are making a living body: is it tolerable that sticks, nails, wires, etc., crawl out of it from everywhere .. All this interferes with the integrity of the impression and accustoms to conventionality in work, teaches you to put up with other shortcomings ( "no matter what").

You must treat your work as if it were living nature, and it is unacceptable to tolerate stakes and nails in it (after all, this is living!). Of course, sometimes for some reason it is impossible to hide this or that part of the frame, but then you consciously allow it to come out, and exactly in the place that you will determine for this as less important. This a big difference with when the frame comes out where it wants and how it wants. We often see that the frame climbs simultaneously from the head, from the chest, from the back, from the legs ... And a person fights with all this, as if in a dream. Why is this needed? One must dominate the work, and not be its slave.

Sometimes a person even does not suit himself properly: either he is low, and the worker crouches in every way, or so high that the sculptor piles up on something, stretches, barely reaching with his hand. This is unacceptable. In no craft you will find good master with bad tools, and one has only to look at the tools of the worker to determine what he himself is worth as a worker. It is necessary to arrange everything for work in such a way that you can only rejoice.

Once you have the frame and clay ready, you must prepare yourself for work. You should never start work thoughtlessly, and therefore on the first day it is better not to work, but to try to think over the model properly: to feel its movement, character, beauty, discover its advantages, and reconcile its shortcomings in character. In a word - to assimilate nature and get a burning interest in it. If you can't find anything interesting in nature, then it's not worth working. It will not be work, but a sluggish exercise, which, not illuminated by a lively interest, only tires and extinguishes the artist. It is better to wait for another model, then you will feel the full burden of such unemployment and, so that this does not happen, you will again try to better understand, consider and think about the being standing in front of you.

If you look with a desire to understand, then there will always be something interesting in nature, and often completely unexpected and pointing. I will be told that the ability to see is innate and does not depend on us. But I probably know that the ability to see can develop to great penetration. We do not see much only because we do not demand this ability from ourselves, we do not force ourselves to consider and understand, perhaps, or rather, we do not know what we can see.

Having mastered the nature, you must consciously determine and keep the size of your work in the intended size and not allow it to grow at will. Having considered and decided all this, you no longer proceed unconsciously, but with some serious decisions, and your dominance over the work has increased, although you have not yet touched it.

The next day, and if you have time, then on the same day - all the same, you just need to remember that it is unprofitable to rush - so, the next day you will check your yesterday's impression and start working with more confidence. With calculation and care, you begin to cover your frame with clay and do it in such a way that the frame does not come out anywhere and does not remind you of yourself during the entire continuation of the work. It is necessary to wrap tightly only around the frame, reinforcing with crosses so that it does not fall off. Light lining makes it possible to take thin and elegant places by pressure, which will never be possible with densely killed clay, since by pressing on one place, the hand sticks out the clay into another, and the clay that suddenly jumps out can confuse your plan.

Dried places are best cut off and remade with fresh clay. However, you can work with dense clay, and dry, and whatever you want. Never go against your taste; the main thing is the assimilation and transmission of form and essence.

When applying clay, it is necessary to take as wide as possible movement. The movement is most thoroughly comprehended if you yourself take the pose of the model and try to understand and feel it in yourself, then you will clearly feel what bones and muscles form this pose and how, and then, looking at nature, give your work the widest, fullest and most free movement. There is no danger of making the movement too strong, because works in the sense of transmitting movement always suffer from a lack and incompleteness of it, and not vice versa.

And if you apply clay (according to movement, of course) and take two or three proportions a day, then you have done a lot, a lot. Your day was not wasted, like the one who made almost the entire figure. Not only has he gained nothing, but he has lost a great deal, he has wasted the freshness of the impression of nature, he has made confusion out of mistakes and will unconsciously search for the same proportions and relationships that he had to establish at first, and in this search he will destroy the most precious thing - the living impression.

When you install proportions, then do not mark them with a line or a careless touch, but, having decided them so seriously that you vouch for them, mark them really, lively: this is exactly the knee standing like this, or this is the shoulder in such and such a turn . You don’t even need special efforts, the hand will do it itself, but you don’t need to deliberately force it to do it badly and for a while. I'm not saying that you need to immediately make a shoulder or something else. Not at all. And, you never have to do anything. It is only necessary that each touch on the clay be real, serious, truthful, and the work will be done by itself. Do not just irresponsibly tear, scratch, crush and grab. After all, nothing in life is done in order to redo it. Approach sculpture with this simple logic of life, and you will see that the task is simplified, and the work will not go out of your control.

Further: the proportions must be firmly established at the very beginning of work and set so that later it remains only to take care of them and not knock them down. Without having thoroughly decided the proportions, it is impossible to take a step further, because if you decide them carelessly, then you will obviously waste your receptivity, strength and tire your attention in vain. You need to learn how to take accurate and correct proportions, firstly, for the sketches that you do, they will no longer be "done" and lead you into bewilderment, but you will do them yourself firmly and consciously; secondly, you develop an eye and a habit of quickly grasping the essential and understanding the work. And most importantly, having studied the proportions, you get out of their power and get the freedom to take them in the spirit of your task, which is absolutely necessary as soon as school studies end and the independent work(who is strong enough and understands this, he can work school studies like this, but usually it comes later).

Combinations of proportions are still little developed. The same face, with the same resemblance, depending on the proportion, becomes large or insignificant, and the figure is small or large, to the point of deception. Pay attention to the proportions of teenagers, people and animals. Compare Michelangelo's "David" and the children of "Laocoon".

As for the ingenious freedom of proportions and relationships, I will point to the "Venus de Milo", "Tomb of the Medici" by Michelangelo, "Citizens of Calais" by Rodin. I will not talk about them, I only point to them, and there let everyone look and understand this great music. Of course, these are great works, and they are a distant example for us, but also for us, simple artists, it is necessary to acquire the courage and freedom to take the proportions we need ourselves, because you can never find a model that would fully correspond to your idea. Even the same model will not be the same in different time and in different moods, and one must be skillful and free in order to take from nature in its entirety what she has only as a possibility. You have probably seen the magnificent figures of talented speakers and lecturers. In a different setting and in a different mood, you won’t recognize them, you won’t believe your eyes whether they are the same people.

It is clear that when working with such a person, you must find other proportions and relationships. These are the proportions of his spirit, and you will find them in him. This requires firm knowledge, which gives you the courage not to submit to the correctness of proportions and relationships that are incorrect in the essence of the spirit. This can never be done by one who has not studied them. Even if he wants to break them, he will be attached to them and will never break them in the spirit of the work. Hence, all the works of sculptors who are not strong in the sense of the school, who want to show freedom in their work, are so powerless and lethargic.

If someone wants to completely get out of the power of proportion, having studied them, he can do this by working for a month or two like this: sketch a sketch, give movement, outline the proportions by eye and then check by measuring with a compass, and break; then give nature another pose, outline again, measure and start again new job After working in this way for a month or two, you will immediately learn to take movement and proportions correctly and you can already think about their highest correctness.

By the way: never one should not work with compasses, they can only check what is still subject to breaking, otherwise independence, caution and decisiveness are weakened.

Now we need to say a little about technique. Techniques, except for their own, everyone, for real, should not be. Since everyone has their own hands, eyes, feelings, thoughts, not similar to anyone else, then the technique cannot but be individual, unless an outsider, depersonalizing, is intervened in it. An example of such a pure direct technique is the work of children. They convey material and form in a way that only very great masters can do. For example, they made a goose: a massive goiter, wide belly plans, fluffy ankles, dry wing feathers are taken to perfection, even color is conveyed. Such a magnificent technique can only be explained by the continuity of feeling, thought and hand. And it is found either at the heights of ignorance or at the heights of knowledge. In the first - Not yet doubts about the correctness, in the second - not anymore his. And the whole middle is drowning in doubts and mistakes.

The unconscious immediacy of ignorance cannot be sustained for long. Even children very soon begin to see their mistakes, and that is where their spontaneity ends. By the way, it must be said that children do not know at all what they are doing, they do not know what is bad and what is good; if they do not take the work in time, there will be nothing left of it. And mistakes for all great technique they have such that the goose turned out to be on four legs, and the cat, if he changed his position, blurred into a cake.

Self-taught people also lose in school in the sense of sincerity and spontaneity and complain about the school that it has killed it in them. This is partly true; before school, there was something peculiar in their work, and then they become colorless and stereotyped. On this basis, some even deny the school. But this is not true, because all the same, self-taught people eventually develop their own pattern and, to tell the truth, a very nasty one. The cautious modesty of ignorance turns into the glibness of ignorance, and even with such a flowering of complacency that there can be no bridge to real art.

You see that there is no way back to unconsciousness and immediacy, and we, willy-nilly, will find ourselves in this sad middle, full of mistakes and doubts, from which we must free ourselves and strengthen ourselves, at least enough to say: I This I think it's true, I So Want.

The artist will be big or small - no technique will add or subtract anything to him - it's all the same. What matters is the artist's attitude to work, to art. Here he is reflected in his entire work, down to the slightest remote thought, and any deliberateness, lies and pursuit of success are just as much a failure in his work in which they are applied. And vice versa, of course. Revealing the idea of ​​essence by recreating the main thing in its entirety and ignoring the details of real everyday life, of course, is not a lie, but supreme realism. Art accepts even a mixture of diverse forms. That's not what we're talking about here. You will then see all this for yourself.

I continue with technology. Partly the same process of loss of integrity and immediacy occurs with sculptors.

Everyone knows that in the beginning, that is, when one works directly with feeling, the work is more original, more interesting, more vital. Mistakes are not yet so noticeable, but a person cannot completely ignore them, because contradictions begin in the work that require reconciliation. A person immediately begins to replace these mistakes with others. Of course, to replace others, otherwise how would it happen that a person works, for example, a head for a month, and sometimes three, and more, whereas if his every touch on the clay was true, then ten or fifteen minutes would be enough, to touch every place at work. Clay, as a material, presents no obstacles - where did the artist use a month or more? It is here, in these thousands of unnecessary touches, that both vital technique and feeling leave. The fewer these senseless touches, the better the work, and the first condition for this is to never touch the clay without feeling and deciding what and how to do it. If it is necessary to remove, then one must be fully aware of what and how to remove, and when removing, one must be as careful as if under this extra layer there was a living body that cannot be damaged. If you need to add, then feel what size and density you need to take a piece of clay, and carefully place it. restoring shape.

You don't even have to take special care to take the clay exactly; we have a sense of size and heaviness, and the hand itself will do this. It is not necessary to exaggerate the significance of this caution, you just need to be careful - do not tear and miss, irresponsibly reducing, and not smear a hundred times in the same place, increasing the shape. Even if you are wrong. - better time make a mistake than a hundred (what a hundred - a million times, probably); I'm not talking about that. what you do right away, but about making each of your touches responsible.

By not trying to decide right away, you agree in advance to these thousands of mistakes. Why is this? If you immediately put a lot or a little, then at least you see what is taken wrong, smearing it a hundred times in the same place, when and where will you stop? It is in this very place that the dull indeterminacy of the work is hidden and their monotonous weariness starts up, which discolors and devalues ​​everything.

You just need to approach the work, with a simple life logic. Neither a carpenter, nor a locksmith, nor a tailor cuts material without thinking, and no one does anything in order to immediately redo it. And none even the most little student will not begin to add or subtract without realizing why and how much he needs to subtract, add. And we ourselves in life never act so strangely in anything as in sculpture. For example, if you need to go somewhere, because we will always figure out the shortest path. If we turn to the sculptural work of the majority, then we get the impression that we, wanting to get somewhere, rush into the first alley that comes across; if it does not lead to the goal, then in another, in the tenth, in the thirtieth, etc. Such a Penelope technique, when a worker removes and applies clay a million times, is possible where there is no real stone sculpture. Except for clay, which endures everything (after all, even clay is tormented), it is impossible to work in any material without calculation. If you work like this on marble, then only dust would remain from it. And one must think that where marble is used, the calculation is kept as it should be. It's the same with the tree. The logic is the same for everything.

From all the foregoing, I hope, they will not conclude that it is necessary to work quickly. On the contrary, the one who does not think works very soon. Usually he has everything ready in one session, and then endless alterations begin. It does not matter at all how the work is going - soon or slowly. The only important thing is to keep yourself up to date all the time and not give place to a single unfelt or unreasonable touch. Most of beginners, and not just beginners, works almost without taking their hands off the clay. Is it right? How can a man do anything thoroughly if he goes on unconsciously crumpling his work? In order to decide anything, one must consider, compare, think over, and not only cannot one work without taking his hands off, but it is even necessary to move away from work; and only when you clearly see and you undoubtedly want to correct this particular part in this way and not otherwise, then only you should work with your hands.

When solving one part, one should consider the general and other parts. In most cases, beginners work like this: they make one side, turn the model and calmly start working on the other, without connection with the rest, as if the piece that the person is working on is one and he has the task. And the further such work goes, the greater the discord of the parts worked apart becomes. The worker tries to reconcile them. There are new and new parts with their requirements. There is no plan, no sure foothold; how to fix work? The worker no longer knows and does not feel clearly; it just seems to him. You should never lower yourself into this "seems". You always need to know and feel what needs to be done, or wait for this feeling to appear, otherwise you will indifferently knit a stocking that you will call sculpture.

Although even with an unaccountable way of working, in the end it is a habit. But skill is the grave of art; painters have known this for a long time, but we have not yet.

Technique should also include the ability to find and preserve the good in one's work. This is just as important as being able to see your mistakes. Maybe this is good and not so good, but for this time it is the best, and it must be preserved as a stepping stone for further movement. And you don't have to be ashamed. the fact that you admire and appreciate well-taken places in your work. This develops the taste and finds out your inherent technique as an artist. If you treat everything that you do equally, then there will be nothing to rely on; one indifferent correctness will not give a good movement forward. There is nothing to be afraid of stopping complacency, because what is good now, in a month may be no good. So you've outgrown it. It seems to me that indifferent dry correctness is more likely to lead to limited complacency. After all, if you rejoice in your good, the bad will seem even worse to you, in which there is never a lack. You just have to remember that this bad thing must be endured until you clearly understand what and how to replace it with. It will show you what needs to be done.

Perhaps it is appropriate to say here sculptor's vision. It consists in the fact that the person en face determines the depth of the depressions and the height of the bulges and, almost unable to cope with the profile, probes the forms with the eye. Every sculptor must consciously develop such a view. The habit of drawing and painting makes beginners stray for a long time to work on the plane. Sooner or later, the eye nevertheless gets used to measuring depth and convexity and understanding the play of surfaces; but this, if you do not pay attention, will be very slow and stupid. In the work of the figure, this shortcoming is not yet as conspicuous as in the work of the head, when it makes itself felt by flat wooden plans. Sometimes years go on like this. It is necessary to realize and deepen this feeling of the surface in oneself.

Now regarding the tools: the most best tool when working on clay - hand. Just do not work with any one part of the hand, but you need to extract all the tools from it, there are a lot of them all there. You can have two or three stacks to correct an unfinished shape or for inanimate material - like clothing - and that's enough.

The old highly respected professor Sergei Ivanovich Ivanov said: "Feel this place." Top Artists The French know and appreciate this feeling. great artist Rodin demanded a sense of the material. The statues of the Greeks and Romans are full of this feeling. You will not find a single good statue without this feeling of living spiritualized matter, and the less this feeling, the worse the work. It's so obvious that you can theorize, argue, prove endlessly, and yet you won't get away from this simple truth.

All these values ​​of feeling cannot be preserved if one does not take care of one's work. They do not come to an understanding of this soon, and some never come. Of course, you can work whatever you want, you just don't need to mechanize your work. One must thoughtfully, carefully discover life in clay: if you find it in clay, you will find it in any material.

Workshop A.S. Golubkina

Technology can also include workshop mood. In France, the workshops are solemnly quiet during work. And if you really go deep into the work, then you will appreciate the value of this silence. Where they work with concentration and seriousness, nothing should disturb the mood. Knocking, talking, self-willedness of models, the arrival of strangers, etc. absolutely not allowed. If you want to work, but you do not know exactly what and how to do it, then it is better to refrain from working until it becomes completely clear what needs to be done. Otherwise, an unconscious touch will confuse the work, and it will be more difficult to figure it out. In general, the less manual work, the better. If you feel lethargic and good wishes there is no work, then go and look at the work of your comrades and carefully analyze them. We learn a great deal from our comrades both from their virtues and from their mistakes. Thinking over the work of your comrades, you increase your experience and seem to be conducting several studies at once instead of your own. It's very developing. With a complete unwillingness to think or work, it is best to go home, because this is already overwork, which there is no need to increase. Wishing to overcome overwork, you support it, and it can take hold of you for a long time and be further intensified by the fact that work in such a state is depressing. It is at this time that people fall into despair. Yes, such a mood is harmful for comrades.

In particular, hasty, business-like running "for a minute" harms the mood of the workshop. The best thing to do is stay away from it. Everyone must preserve the working spirit of comradeship.

Proportions are followed by study designs, the lack of which affects the general disorder of the figure structure: the muscles are transmitted by meaningless tubercles and out of place, the bones are dislocated or broken. The worker sorts it all out somehow, not understanding what he is doing, and such work as a sketch is completely useless: the worker has not learned anything and has not said anything firmly and confidently.

To stand on the solid ground of knowledge of construction, it is necessary to rely on anatomy, which artists are not very willing to decide on. And this is because in the study of art we approach any given nature exclusively from the side of form, life, material, and anatomy presents nature to us in a form in which we cannot accept it. Drawings and books on anatomy remain in the memory as mere ballast, they cannot be connected with nature, and this is not necessary. Plaster anatomical studies also give nothing; these are rough pieces on a distorted pose, what do they have in common with nature? And if you work a child or a woman, then you won’t find anything similar at all.

Not everyone can work on corpses. It is difficult, difficult, and yet these terrible, flaccid muscles are alien to that living, beautiful human body that breathes, moves and is constantly changing. All this is difficult to connect with what we are used to looking for when studying human body by nature. But there is one way of assimilation of the anatomical knowledge we need, in which they do not hurt our aesthetic sense, on the contrary. It is to approach anatomy only from the side of mechanism and movement, discarding everything else, and then all this, which seemed dead and unnecessary, begins to come to life in front of you with all its might. great wisdom and beauty of the human body.

To understand any machine, it is not enough to copy and copy it, it must be disassembled and reassembled, understanding each part, because there is neither a screw nor a recess without a special purpose. If you approach the structure of the human body in the same way, you will see such amazing wisdom and beauty of its structure that you will only regret that you did not know it before. From this side, the anatomy directly captures, and in order to see all this, you need to do an anatomical study yourself. Working with books, drawings, and other things disassembles a person, and a sketch collects, and when you begin to work on this sketch, you will see with your own eyes, you will, so to speak, feel all this splendor of wisdom, where a tubercle on some bone is arranged with the most amazing graceful laconism, so that from it a muscle begins, which has its own specific purpose, and on the other bone there is a specially arranged place to receive this muscle in an appropriate way. All this is so beautiful, elegant, expedient that you no longer memorize, but are surprised and rejoice. For example: the spring device of the foot, the block of the arm, the sensitively movable neck system, the massive columns of dorsal muscles, the thin and wide abdominal muscles that smoothly attach to the cup of the pelvic bone that flashes under the skin, or the lower leg and its slender bones with a base below and a capital above. .. Everything is so elegant, beautiful, generous. You will see for yourself.

And if you work it out, you will never forget it, and any violation of the structure will no longer be logical for you. It will not be taken low or high, but you will see that it is a torn muscle or a broken bone that should be on famous place and fulfill your purpose.

In order to study the structure of the human body in this way, you must do this: take wax or plasticine (preferably wax) of two colors and from wax of the same color, reading the anatomy and carefully examining the drawings (if possible, then better bones, but it is also possible according to the drawings), to fashion a small, about half a yard in size, skeleton, not even very carefully, only carefully performing the joints and attachment points of the muscles. Then you take wax of a different color and cover this frame first with the muscles of the third layer, which, although rarely visible, participate in the formation of form and movement. Then cover with a second layer, all the while attaching the muscles after careful reference in the book and drawings, and finally the last. It's strange, working without thinking at all about the artistic side of the matter, but trying to fulfill only, so to speak, the mechanics of the device, as a result you get a very strong and beautiful study. This points to the role of knowledge in art.

Many are afraid to be out of date, studying anatomy and, as they say, "butchering muscles." But, firstly, only those who do not know them well cut them, and, secondly, cowardice is always cowardice, whether before old traditions or before new requirements. Such a person will be forever driven by fears. True artist should be free: he wants to butcher, he wants not to butcher, this is his full will. And not being able, and even being a coward, is not fun.

However, all fears are from ignorance. If a person sharply outlines muscles and bones, then one can probably say that he does not know anatomy properly. Otherwise, he would have known that the muscles smoothly pass into the tendons and that the bones cannot come out so roughly, but are tied into a system and hidden by ligaments and muscles. I repeat, from anatomy we need to take only the device, leaving aside everything else, and then in nature you will no longer see anatomy, but your own construction of nature. When we studied, the professors said: learn anatomy and forget it. This means - know anatomy in such a way that it affects only confidence and freedom in work, but there is no trace of anatomy itself. In general, anatomy is remembered just where there is no knowledge of it.

So, to work constructively means to work in such a way that everything is stable, connected, strong, in place - this is the whole task of construction. By the way, if you do an anatomical study, it is better to do it with movement, then you will understand better and see more.

Relationship. Under this title, work is required to observe the correlation and correspondence of parts and the whole. This concept comes very close to proportions and is often confused with them. In France, this concept is defined by the word valeurs- cost and includes, in addition to compliance, the requirement of character, value and vitality of parts and the whole. Arms and legs are usually worked only as appendages, and this requirement causes them to independent living in connection with the whole. Without observing this condition, the work will be unsaid, and sometimes it is the limbs that characterize the figure most of all. Above are deeper concepts and combinations in this sense, but that is the artist's business, and not the educational part. School requirements, however, consist in the fullest possible correspondence between the measure of gravity and the nature of the parts in connection with the whole.

About movement. In part of the notes on the frame and proportions, movement was mentioned, but there it was said about its, so to speak, formal side: walking, sitting, turning, regardless of the method of manifestation. Now we have to talk about movement in its very essence.

A.S. Golubkin. Walking man. 1903.

Often, out of ten or fifteen sketches standing in the studio, not one hundred And t, although they are made quite correctly, but there is no real foundation in them, gravitating towards the earth and relying on it with all its weight. I remind you once again: in order to understand the movement well standing man, you need to feel this movement in yourself as clearly as possible, bring your bones into complete balance so that as little muscle power as possible is expended in a given position, you need to separate the muscles that support movement by feeling, and dissolve into a state of complete rest those that are not in motion participate, and thoroughly feel in oneself, in the model and in the work this four-five-pound heaviness, firmly pressing on the ground. If you understand this, then the sketch will stand.

You need to be even more thoughtful about the movement of the lying figure and feel more strongly the heaviness of the muscles that have surrendered to rest, otherwise the figure will never lie, but will look as if you worked it standing, and then laid it down.

A.S. Golubkin. Old age. 1898

Regardless of the posture, you will distinguish between a sick, resting and sleeping person. From this it can be seen that the muscles, powerless, tired, lazy, have different situation and therefore give different shape the same movement. All people see and know this difference in the movement of a sick, sleeping, lazy and tired person. Here you don’t even need some particularly subtle observation, but ordinary, universal, worldly, to which you need to elevate your own. It is even better to say - not to elevate, but to attract to work as the most precious. Movement, like a construction, must be felt within: the Assyrians and Egyptians conveyed a swift movement with motionless clothing. And the heads, beaten off from the statues of the Greeks, keep the movement of the whole. And so, in order to take this inner movement at least to some extent, one must want to make it - not to repeat the movement of the model, namely, to want, to feel, to seek, respectfully and vigilantly observing life. And the deeper you scoop, the more miracles you will see.

Another requirement must be made by the student; this requirement is to take the model in character: take its massiveness, flexibility, strength, etc. In addition to these main features, one must learn to guess in the model its individual character - style. Rarely there are contradictory models, so to speak; for the most part the body is very solid, as expressive as the face, and related to it in character. To take nature in character is a mandatory school requirement, and do not think to take character by simple copying: here you need to understand the essence of the model. The ability to distinguish and take on character will make you more knowledgeable, more experienced, broaden your horizons and serve for further work outside the school; then you can do every thing you have conceived in the style in which you want. Not in the style of a particular era, but exactly what you need. Don't think this requirement is very difficult. Just think about it, and you will immediately see some plus in the work, and that it is already taking on a different character, more reliable.

General. This part should have been placed at the beginning, but since it is not enough to do the general only at the beginning, but it is necessary to preserve it and carry it through the whole work from beginning to end, then all the same, after reading, you will attribute this to all moments of the work.

The concept of the general includes a lot for the artist, and for school work it sets the demand: to understand and work nature as one piece, inextricably linked, a monolith. Whatever you work on, you must not lose sight of the general and reduce everything to it. Next, we need to consider the facets of this general, its plans or planes, as they say differently, first the main ones, and then the secondary ones. If you work directly with planes, then the work will come out conditional, schematic: it is necessary that they be only inside as a base.

A.S. Golubkin. Slave (Fragment). 1909.

Consider, for example, a face. You will see that it all consists in fourteen main plans: one is the middle of the forehead with frontal tubercles, two planes from the frontal tubercles to the temporal bones, two are from the verge of the temporal to the zygomatic, two are from the zygomatic to the edge of the lower jaw, two are orbital, two - from the orbital to the nose and corner of the mouth, two - from the mouth to the zygomatic bone and masseter muscle, and one - from the nose to the end of the chin. And all human faces are always contained in these fourteen planes; only the shape of the plans changes, but not the border and not the number. You don’t have to be tied to these plans (the work will be sketchy), you just need to make sure that your modeling is within their limits (without losing sight of the general), and the more often you take these plans of each this person the harder the work will be. When working on marble, these plans are divided into secondary and tertiary ones, while in clay this is taken more widely - by modeling.

Each body can be disassembled in the same way. Such an analysis helps the development of the sculptor's vision, and in addition, work from solid material requires mandatory expansions on the plane.

Body parts. When you are working on a sketch, no matter how much time you have to work, it is still not enough for the limbs. Until you start working separately, you will never know them. And, meanwhile, you need to know them; arms and legs are as expressive as the face; until you work them, it doesn’t even occur to you how interesting they are in themselves and how important it is to be able to finish the figure with them. In order to put our knowledge in order in this respect, it is necessary to make several dozen separate studies of limbs.

Sculpt sketches of arms and legs should be of different sizes, in different turns and movements; You should not get carried away with details, you just need to take character and movement. Having done several of these studies of arms and legs, you will feel that you have taken them. Requirement material already a matter of a higher order, although, as you saw in the chapter on technique, there are almost always feelings of material and life at the very beginning of work, but all this is unconscious and incomplete, and in the concern for correctness is destroyed without a trace (often forever).

Now we must consciously present this demand to ourselves. This cannot be taught, but everyone must find, love and protect those places in their work where nature is reflected with greater force and vitality, and achieve this.

The artist cannot relate to nature indifferent: you always either like it or not. And you need to ask yourself the question of what you like in nature and what you don’t. On this question you will analyze it, and if you analyze many models in this way, you will have a good idea of ​​\u200b\u200bforms and beauty. There is beauty in deviations, but this is another matter - not school.

And the more models you make, the richer you become in terms of artistic experience. This is one of the reasons why I don't advise you to run the same model for a long time; another reason is that with the current three or four year course, working for two or three months on the same model, you run the risk of leaving school with fifteen or twenty sketches. What kind of experience will you bring to life? But you will have Russian sculpture in your hands. If you change the model weekly (as is done in France), you get about a hundred and twenty, and with such intensive work, the desire to work usually increases, and a person is not satisfied with one session, but takes two or three, and this in four years will be about four hundred. The difference in experience will be significant.

Calculate how many studies you will leave school with, and, according to this calculation, determine the time that each model should take from you. When studying, it is necessary to consistently take strongly contrasting models, for example, after a man - a woman, after an old man - a child, after a stocky one - flexible. This greatly contributes to the development of understanding. As for the head, I will only remark that one should never take picture models, i.e. such that as types were treated dozens of times. There is frivolity and a loss of the artist's dignity in this.

If you would like to do sketch, then you should never postpone: it will go away and go out; on the contrary, the more you do them, the more the imagination and desire to do them awakens. They develop the ability to think in images, taste, composition. There is no such sketch that would not serve both for the future and as an etude, even more than an etude. And the main thing is that later you will not do them: everyday work and practical considerations will be delayed. If you don’t really want to do it, then you have to force yourself. Sketches are essential.

bas-relief kind of like a drawing: it's like you're painting with clay, and the main task when working in bas-relief - everywhere to withstand the same size of cuts and perspective. Without this, a simple flattening will result, sometimes so strange that if the bas-relief figure is restored as round, then the head will be wider than the shoulders, and the width of the nose will be larger than the mouth. A good bas-relief requires very expressive modeling and a strictly consistent gradation of cuts, i.e. you take each place just as high on the terrain as it is closer to you, and vice versa, everything. what is further from you, do below.

Every sculptor needs to be able to mold, firstly, in order to be able to cast your own thing as a last resort, and, secondly, if you know this business, you can follow the casting and direct workers who often do the wrong thing, but you helplessly waiting to see what happens. And that comes out. that often your work is mutilated, or even completely lost. It is very easy for a sculptor to understand this matter. It is enough to look at how it is done once and mold a few things (of course, small ones at first).

One more piece of advice: don't let the moulders grease the mold with the so-called "grease" (a mixture of stearin and kerosene): it spoils the work terribly, but grease soap is better, i.e. soap foam, which remains on the brush when rubbed with soap.

Not for marble, nor for other materials a separate science is needed. As much as you know how to work in clay, you know how much in marble, and in wood, and in bronze. It is enough to see how they work on marble, and you can already work. From the habit of two or three weeks, you will not always hit the tool with a hammer, and then you get used to it. The rest will come with practice.

It is much more difficult to obtain and select marble. Marble with large grains is too rough, with fine grains it is somewhat deaf, there is little light in it. It is necessary to choose a medium, good warm color.

Large pieces should not be knocked down, they need to be sawn off to be used later. In completely solid marble, sometimes a so-called wormhole suddenly appears. It starts with a small dot - barely pass the needle! - and gradually expands to a cave the size of a walnut and more. Usually, hoping to clean it off, they begin to deepen this place, but further - even worse. The best thing, having met such a wormhole, is not to dig further, but, having melted borax in a teaspoon, putty the hole with it - and it will be completely unnoticeable.

Other stones from which one could work add almost nothing to the plaster, except for weight. Therefore, probably never found a stone sculpture at exhibitions. Sandstone still gives something, but very little. Beginners are seduced by alabaster with its softness and lively color, but in processing it is so vulgar that after much effort and labor it is always thrown away.

WITH bronze the situation is as follows: before casting from bronze, the caster casts our thing from wax. When casting from wax, everything softens too much, the eyelids become plump and thick, the eyes blur softly, the mouth too. In general, everything thin and sharp disappears, and we have to restore it on wax. For a good caster, the work does not change much, but still it is necessary to review and work through.

We also have to choose bronze and take part in the patina. That's all we have to do.

The best for a sculptor tree- birch, ash, linden. We, who live among large forests and trees, look for a tree and try to fit our thing there. This is not done abroad, they have long been gluing together bars of the same color and structure, approximately an inch and a quarter thick, and it turns out very well, because the wood is dried and matched completely as a whole.

Big trees always crack; of course, you can insert a rail, but on the figure it’s still nothing, but on the face it’s very annoying. S.T. Konenkov always works from the whole tree, but he has become so close to the tree that it seems that he does not work, but only frees what is contained in the tree. Beginners must be careful not to submit themselves to the tree. This sometimes comes out very ugly. Yes, finally, a thing can be conceived independently of the tree that comes under hand, and there is no point in squeezing it into a stump at all costs; it is better to resort to gluing than to disfigure the work. Gluing is easier than finding suitable tree, and you can not glue everything from the bars, but simply glue the missing piece - that's all.

All of the above is not at all necessary for you, and you should not blindly obey the notes. But if, while working, you see confirmation of what I said, then take it into your artistic experience. When you are told the way to somewhere, it often happens that all these paths, stations, etc. are mixed up in your memory; such complexity becomes scary. In fact, it's all easier. Go yourself, and when you go, you will see the signs indicated to you along the road and in this you will see confirmation of the correctness of your path. Maybe you will shorten this path somewhere, maybe make an interesting detour. IN good hour! It is necessary to be more calm about these requirements - they are not the most important. Everything will come in due time. Work more admiring than caring. The main and the best is ahead, while study is only to master one's own strengths, and much of this will have to be thrown away, just as textbooks are thrown away.

I repeat once again: take lightly all this study, it is not the main thing, and if you have a strong conviction to do something differently, in your own way, do it: you are right. But you will be right only if you really sincerely think and feel so. Only then will it be real truth which is dearest of all and which will affect the work with a new and living word.

With Rodin, they have an abyss, although Anna Golubkina called herself his Russian student, and he said that the student hands and feet molded by her were tres bien, and even went against the rules - he undertook to advise her, penniless. Rodin is festive, life-affirming and very civilized. Golubkina - wild, forest, gloomy, otherworldly. Rodin "everything will be fine, even if ...", she has "life - just a moment before the start of the main thing." Some of the works in her house-workshop are so uncompromising and "on the threshold" that it's chill on the skin. It seems that Golubkin's sculptures were sculpted by a fearless man, and Rodin's by a sophisticated woman.

You need to free yourself and get stronger, at least enough to say: I consider this to be true, I want it that way.

If you look with a desire to understand, then there will always be something interesting, and often completely unexpected and pointing. I will be told that the ability to see is innate and does not depend on us. But I probably know that the ability to see can develop to great penetration. We do not see much only because we do not demand this ability from ourselves, we do not force ourselves to consider and understand, perhaps, or rather, we do not know what we can see.

It often happens that gifted people despair of their work, they clearly see that they have done something completely wrong, they don’t know how and when the meaning of work is lost and how to get back on the road ... Such confusion must inevitably happen to those who make simple arithmetic solutions tries to take it by feeling, and vice versa, what is taken by feeling, dries up by diligent reflection and prudent copying. And because of this, such wonderful movers as feeling and mind are fruitlessly tired at work that is not characteristic of them. For firm, definite and strong work, everything that can be counted must be worked with the mind, preserving the freshness of feeling for that part of the work that cannot be counted and which is the most valuable ...

Nothing ever needs to be done. It is only necessary that each touch on the clay be real, serious, truthful, and the work will be done by itself. Do not just irresponsibly tear, scratch, crush and grab. After all, nothing in life is done in order to redo it.

One must dominate the work, and not be its slave ... Arrange everything for work so that you can only rejoice.

The ability to find and preserve the good in your work is just as important as the ability to see your mistakes. Maybe this is good and not so good, but for this time it is the best, and it must be preserved as a stepping stone for further movement. And do not be ashamed of the fact that you admire and appreciate the well-taken places in your work. It develops the taste. If you treat everything that you do equally, then there will be nothing to rely on; one indifferent correctness will not give a good movement forward. There is nothing to be afraid of stopping complacency, because what is good now, in a month may be no good. So you've outgrown it.

The bad must be endured until you clearly understand what and how to replace it with. It will show you what needs to be done.

If you want to work, but you do not know exactly what and how to do it, then it is better to refrain from working. until it becomes clear what needs to be done. Otherwise, an unconscious touch will confuse the work, and it will be more difficult to figure it out ... If you feel lethargic and there is no good desire to work, then go and look at the work of your comrades and carefully analyze them. We learn a lot from our comrades, both from their virtues and from their mistakes… It is very developing. With a complete unwillingness to think or work, the best thing is to go home, because this is already overwork, which there is no need to increase. Wishing to overcome overwork, you support it, and it can take hold of you for a long time and be further intensified by the fact that work in such a state is depressing. It is at this time that people fall into despair.

Regardless of the posture, you will distinguish between a sick, resting and sleeping person. From this it can be seen that muscles that are powerless, tired, lazy, have a different situation and therefore give a different form to the same movement. All people see and know this difference in the movement of a sick, sleeping, lazy and tired person. Movement, like a construction, must be felt within: the Assyrians and Egyptians conveyed a swift movement with motionless clothing. And the heads, beaten off from the statues of the Greeks, keep the movement of the whole. And so, in order to take this inner movement at least to some extent, one must want to make it - not to repeat the movement of the model, namely, to want, to feel, to seek, respectfully and keenly observing life. And the deeper you scoop, the more miracles you will see.

The main and the best is ahead, the study is only in order to master one's own strengths, and a lot of it will have to be thrown away just as textbooks are thrown away ... If you have a strong conviction to do something differently, in your own way, do it: you are right. But you will be right only if you really sincerely think and feel so. Only then will it be true truth, which is dearest of all and which will be reflected in the work both as a new and as a living word.

Anna Semyonovna Golubkina (1864-1927) - one of the largest Russian sculptors Silver Age. self-taught from peasant family, at the age of 25 she entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. She studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, took lessons from Auguste Rodin in Paris. She worked in plaster, bronze, marble, wood. About 1,500 exhibits are stored in the workshop house in Bolshoi Levshinsky Lane, including the famous sculptures "Birch", "Fog", "Old Age", "Iron", "Music and Lights Away", a bust of Leo Tolstoy, a collection of cameos and others.

For more details, see A. Golubkina "A few words about the skill of the sculptor" ( Soviet artist, 1983).

I dedicate these notes to my students and students. They say that an artist needs to learn all his life. This is true. But to learn not proportions, construction and other things that are related to art in the same way as literacy is to writing, but another, real art, where the main thing is no longer study, but understanding and discoveries, large or small, embodied in images or not - it's all the same, but the artists know them and know their price... In order to move on to this true art, one must study well its handicraft part, which is very simple, entirely amenable to knowledge and calculation and overcome by attention, mastering the order of work, restraint and discipline. It often happens that gifted people despair of their work, they clearly see that they have done something completely wrong, they do not know how and when the meaning of work is lost and how to get back on the road. Sometimes even the teacher will not be able to point it out, because a million mistakes have caught on to each other, so that there is not even a starting point for proofreading. Here it is already necessary to raise the question not of what should be done, but what should not be done in order not to fall into such impenetrable swamps.

Such confusion must inevitably happen to those who do not understand what is achieved in sculpture, who tries to take simple arithmetic solutions by feeling and, conversely, what is taken by feeling, dries up with diligent reflection and prudent copying. And because of this, such wonderful movers as feeling and mind are fruitlessly tired at work that is not characteristic of them.

For solid, definite and powerful work, everything that can be counted must be worked with the mind, preserving the freshness of feeling for that part of the work that cannot be counted and which is the most valuable in art.

Feeling is always right, and it will always do its job admirably, unless you torture it by making it guess size or structure a thousand times in a thousand ways, something that mind and knowledge decide clearly and definitely with a little attention and restraint. With a reasonable distribution of forces, there is not much room for errors. You must always strictly monitor yourself so that in no case do what you probably don’t know, not to rush about at random, looking for one thing, losing another, destroying in this turmoil the most valuable thing that gives the artist his gift. One must be restrained, cautious and calm, as far as possible. The craft of a sculptor, if approached simply and seriously, with a simple life logic, can be mastered easily and quickly. And if you endure yourself for some time in strict accountability, then you can soon get stronger in your work and consciously and confidently move forward.

To communicate this simple letter of craft and the order of work is the task of my notes. I will try to consistently state, starting with clay, everything that I consider necessary for beginners.
Three grades of clay are used for sculpture: gray-green, gray-yellow and gray-white.

I consider the first one the worst for sculpture, because it is difficult to see the model and your work in it, since that cold green color has nothing to do with the body. And the green statue is also unpleasant to see. The best thing to avoid such clay: too much in it a lot of conventionality, it removes vitality and beauty.In addition to an unpleasant color, this clay has another drawback - this is its excessive oiliness and viscosity.

Gray-yellow clay, on the contrary, is too dry, rough and sandy, although its color closely matches the color of the body. But she somehow vulgarizes the work both with her too material color and coarseness of consistency.

Gray-white, silvery clay is the best of all, both in its noble silvery color and in its elegant, fine and noble texture. The disadvantages of yellow and green clay are completely absent. It has neither excessive fat content and green viscosity, nor coarse yellow particles; she is thin, graceful and obedient. Finding and appreciating it is a great acquisition for an artist.

There is also red clay, but its shortcomings are the same as green clay, only, perhaps, even stronger. Maybe there are clays, the disadvantages and advantages of which are combined differently, but in Moscow, Leningrad and Paris I met clays of precisely these properties. If you have a taste for work and are not indifferent to the material, then you will choose clay in the same way that painters choose their canvases.

When soaking the clay, you should not pour too much water: the clay will be too liquid and will not soon be in time for work, and you will immediately begin to have an unpleasant discord with the material. In addition, clay from excess water becomes boring and monotonous. The best thing to do is to pour dry clay into a box or tub and pour enough water so that the clay acts as islands. Three days later, the clay is ready for work. At the first work, she is still not very obedient, but on the other hand she gives very interesting capricious samples of material (one should leave such an inviolable corner of unworked clay in the box - in case); then it becomes the most obedient material in the world, you just have to hold it properly.
Keep the clay in the box so that it does not lie flat, but that from the fact that you take it to work, unequal masses and wells would form. Then you will have at your disposal clay of every hardness, from the softest to the hardest.

With a truly in-depth attitude to work, your hand itself takes this or that clay, depending on the form that you are working on.

In order to maintain a constant living working moisture in the clay, it is not necessary to water it with water: the water flows too quickly, barely moistening the top layer, and forms mud at the bottom, which is also unnecessary. The best thing to do is this: during work, when you wash clay off your hands, thick water is formed with pieces of clay; this water must be thrown out on those places that begin to wither. This liquid clay doesn't sink down as easily as water and keeps the top layer at the desired softness and the bottom layer doesn't soak unnecessarily. By doing so, you always have the entire live scale at hand.

The clay must have three times as much as is needed for the work undertaken, so that there is an abundance to choose from. This luxury is easy to afford. .

Clay must be treated with respect: do not stain it, do not throw it on the floor, do not allow litter, and after molding, carefully select all pieces of gypsum from it. If there are too many of them, then it is best to throw away this clay completely, because these pieces of gypsum interfere with work, appearing in the most critical places.

Besides, mottled sloppy clay is an unnecessarily nasty thing. Live working clay is a great beauty; to treat her carelessly is the same as trampling flowers. Maybe you think these are small things. It may be said that there is no need to attach great importance to such a transient material as clay, in which not a single thing remains. May be so. But caring for the clay is essential to learning and gaining confidence in the possibility of achievement. In terms of its flexibility, clay does not give you any obstacles at all, and if you master the form at least once and learn from experience that you can take it, then you will no longer obey any material, be it wood, marble, etc.: you will approach it. with your requirements and achieve the vitality that you need and that you managed to take in clay. But not everyone and not always have to do monumental things, but for the body and portrait, clay is certainly of great importance. There are little things that annoyingly interfere, and there are little things that please, and there is no need to miss in the sculpture all that good that can be taken from it.

The sculptor's work begins with the frame. Before starting his work, the sculptor needs to foresee it on the machine, determine its size, weight, movement, and, in accordance with all this, build a frame, which must be so thought out and provided for that it no longer seems to exist during work: neither bend nor oscillate. nor should he perform. Until you make the frame properly, this must be taken for rule is better not to start work, because an unorganized framework directly opposes work. The pile of Sisyphus was better, because there the stones fell in one direction, here you often see something terrible: a worker grabs a vacillating place, squeezes it, trying to strengthen it with clay, the other part falls, the fifth of all these corrections is spoiled, the seventh is corrected in a different size , everything is displaced and slips out of both hands and consciousness ... This is not possible. And what is most surprising of all is that years have been working in this way and they do not realize that it is unacceptable to give power over the work to blind material. About Sarah Bernhardt, once the newspapers enthusiastically announced that in order to support her work, she put scissors and something else in it ... It is simply indecent for a sculptor to listen to such things. The reason I am talking about this incident with Sarah Bernhardt is that it is very common to hear such stories from beginners, especially from their admirers, as proof of the ardor and originality of the artist. In fact, this anecdotal originality means simple ignorance and inability and indicates that neither one nor the other has a clue about what work is.

For beginners, and not only beginners, but even for those who have worked for several years, but have not taken the craft properly into their own hands, the frame is some kind of living enemy that opposes them. They complain about him: he went out, does not hold, swings, etc., as if the worker himself did not arrange all this. Don't complain, but be ashamed of it. And some are so submissive that it happens that with one hand a person holds on to his work so that it does not sway, and with the other he works dully. And there are many such unfortunate sculptors. And such an aimless, senseless, confusing struggle with some piece of iron takes days, weeks, years, when it is so easy to put an end to this humiliating mess once and for all and make the frame solid and deliberate.

And now one obstacle will be overcome, and the work will immediately become more stable, both literally and figuratively.

In addition to strength, the frame must be made so that it does not protrude from the clay. After all, you are making a living body: is it tolerable that sticks, nails, wires, etc., crawl out of it from everywhere? All this interferes with the integrity of the impression and accustoms to conventionality in work, accustoms to put up with other shortcomings ("it's all the same - not that").

You must treat your work as if it were living nature, and it is unacceptable to tolerate stakes and nails in it (after all, this is living!). Of course, sometimes for some reason it is impossible to hide this or that part of the frame, but then you consciously allow it to come out, and exactly in the place that you define as less important for this. It's a big difference to having a carcass go where it wants and how it wants. We often see that the frame climbs simultaneously from the head, from the chest, from the back, from the legs ... And a person fights with all this, as if in a dream. Why is this needed? One must dominate the work, and not be its slave.

Sometimes a person even does not suit himself properly: either he is low, and the worker crouches in every way, or so high that the sculptor piles up on something, stretches, barely reaching with his hand. This is unacceptable. In no craft can you find a good craftsman with bad tools, and one has only to look at the worker's devices to determine what he himself is worth as a worker. Everything must be arranged for work in such a way as to only rejoice.

Once you have the frame and clay ready, you must prepare yourself for work. You should never start work thoughtlessly, and therefore on the first day it is better not to work, but to try to think over the model properly: to feel its movement, character, beauty, discover its advantages, and reconcile its shortcomings in character. In a word, to assimilate nature and get a hot interest in it. If you can't find anything interesting in nature, then it's not worth working. It will not be work, but a sluggish exercise, which, not illuminated by a lively interest, only tires and extinguishes the artist. It is better to wait for another model, then you will feel the full burden of such unemployment and, so that this does not happen, you will again try to better understand, consider and think about the being standing in front of you.

If you look with a desire to understand, then there will always be something interesting in nature, and often completely unexpected and pointing. I will be told that the ability to see is innate and does not depend on us. But I probably know that the ability to see can develop to great penetration. We do not see much only because we do not demand this ability from ourselves, we do not force ourselves to consider and understand, perhaps, or rather, we do not know what we can see.

Having mastered the nature, you must consciously determine and keep the size of your work in the intended size and not allow it to grow at will. Having considered and decided all this, you no longer proceed unconsciously, but with some serious decisions, and your dominance over the work has increased, although you have not yet touched it.

The next day, and if you have time, then on the same day - all the same, you just need to remember that it is not profitable to rush - so, the next day you will check your yesterday's impression and start working with more confidence. With calculation and care, you begin to cover your frame with clay and do it in such a way that the frame does not come out anywhere and does not remind you of yourself during the entire continuation of the work. It is necessary to wrap tightly only around the frame, reinforcing with crosses so that it does not fall off. Light lining makes it possible to take thin and elegant places by pressure, which will never be possible with densely killed clay, since by pressing on one place, the hand sticks out the clay into another, and the clay that suddenly jumps out can confuse your plan.

Dried places are best cut off and remade with fresh clay. However, you can work with dense clay, and dry, and whatever you want. Never go against your taste; the main thing is the assimilation and transmission of form and essence.

When applying clay, it is necessary to take the movement as widely as possible. The movement is most thoroughly comprehended if you yourself take the pose of the model and try to understand and feel it in yourself, then you will clearly feel what bones and muscles form this pose and how, and then, looking at nature, give your work the widest, fullest and most free movement. There is no danger of making the movement too strong, because works in the sense of transmitting movement always suffer from a lack and incompleteness of it, and not vice versa.

And if you apply clay (according to movement, of course) and take two or three proportions a day, then you have done a lot, a lot. Your day was not wasted, like the one who made almost the entire figure. Not only has he gained nothing, but he has lost a great deal, he has wasted the freshness of the impression of nature, he has made confusion out of mistakes, and he will unconsciously search for the same proportions and relationships that he should have established at first, and in this search he will destroy the most precious, living impression.

When you set proportions, do not mark them with a line or a careless touch, but, having decided them so seriously that you vouch for them, mark them really, lively: this is exactly the knee standing like this, or this is the shoulder. in such a turn. You don’t even need special efforts, the hand will do it itself, but you don’t need to deliberately force it to do it badly and for a while. I'm not saying that you need to immediately make a shoulder or something else. Not at all. And, you never have to do anything. It is only necessary that each touch on the clay be real, serious, truthful, and the work will be done by itself. Just don't irresponsibly tear, scratch, crush and grab. After all, nothing in life is done in order to redo it. Approach sculpture with this simple logic of life, and you will see that the task is simplified, and the work will not go out of your control.

Further: the proportions must be firmly established at the very beginning of work and set so that later it remains only to take care of them and not knock them down. Without having thoroughly decided the proportions, it is impossible to take a step further, because if you decide them carelessly, then you will obviously waste your receptivity, strength and tire your attention in vain. You need to learn how to take accurate and correct proportions, firstly, for the sketches that you do, they will no longer be "done" and lead you into bewilderment, but you will do them yourself firmly and consciously; secondly, you develop an eye and a habit of quickly grasping the essential and understanding the work. And most importantly, having studied the proportions, you get out of their power and get the freedom to take them in the spirit of your task, which is absolutely necessary as soon as school studies end and independent work begins (who is strong enough and understands this, he can work school studies yes, but usually it comes later).

Combinations of proportions are still little developed. The same face, with the same resemblance, depending on the proportion, becomes large or insignificant, and the figure is small or large, to the point of deception. Pay attention to the proportions of teenagers, people and animals. Compare "David" by Michelangelo and the children of "Lao-coon".

As for the ingenious freedom of proportions and relationships, I will point to the "Venus de Milo", the "Comb of the Medici" by Michelangelo, "Citizens of Calais" by Rodin. I won't talk about them, I'm just pointing them out, and then let everyone look and understand this great music for themselves. Of course, these are great works, and they are a distant example for us, but we, ordinary artists, need to acquire the courage and freedom to take the proportions we need ourselves, because you can never find a model that would fully correspond to your idea. Even one and the same model will not be the same at different times and in different moods, and one must be skillful and free to take from nature in its entirety what it has only as a possibility. You have probably seen the magnificent figures of talented speakers and lecturers. In a different setting and in a different mood, you won’t recognize them, you won’t believe your eyes whether they are the same people.

It is clear that when working with such a person, you must find other proportions and relationships. These are the proportions of his spirit, and you will find them in him. This requires firm knowledge, which gives you the courage not to submit to the correctness of proportions and relationships that are incorrect in the essence of the spirit. This can never be done by one who has not studied them. Even if he wants to break them, he will be attached to them and will never break them in the spirit of the work. Hence, all the works of sculptors who are not strong in the sense of the school, who want to show freedom in their work, are so powerless and lethargic.

If someone wants to completely get out of the power of proportions by studying them, then he can do this by working for a month or two like this: sketch a sketch, give movement, outline the proportions by eye and then check by measuring with a compass, and break; then give nature another pose, again outline, measure, and again begin a new work. After working in this way for a month or two, you will immediately learn to take movement and proportions correctly and you can already think about their highest correctness.

By the way: you should never work with compasses, they can only check what is still subject to breaking, otherwise independence, caution and determination are weakened.

Now we need to say a little about technology.

Techniques, except for their own, everyone, for real, should not be. Since everyone has their own hands, eyes, feelings, thoughts, not similar to anyone else, then the technique cannot but be individual, unless an outsider, depersonalizing, is intervened in it. An example of such a pure direct technique is the work of children. They convey material and form in a way that only very great masters can do. For example, they made a goose: a massive goiter, wide belly plans, fluffy ankles, dry wing feathers are taken to perfection, even color is conveyed. Such a magnificent technique can only be explained by the continuity of feeling, thought and hand. And it is found either at the heights of ignorance or at the heights of knowledge. In the first there is still no doubt about the correctness, in the second - there is no longer any doubt. And the whole middle is drowning in doubts and mistakes.

The unconscious immediacy of ignorance cannot be sustained for long. Even children very soon begin to see their mistakes, and that is where their spontaneity ends. By the way, it must be said that children do not know at all what they are doing, they do not know what is bad and what is good; if they do not take the work in time, there will be nothing left of it. And for all their excellent technique, they make mistakes such that the goose ended up on four legs, and the cat, if he changed his position, spread into a cake.

Iron. Bronze. 1897. St. Petersburg, Russian Museum.

Self-taught people also lose in school in the sense of sincerity and spontaneity and complain about the school that it has killed it in them. This is partly true; before school, there was something peculiar in their work, and then they become colorless and stereotyped. On this basis, some even deny the school. But this is not true, because all the same, self-taught people eventually develop their own pattern and, to tell the truth, a very nasty one. The cautious modesty of ignorance turns into the glibness of ignorance, and even with such a flowering of complacency that there can be no bridge to real art.

You see that there is no way back to unconsciousness and immediacy, and we, willy-nilly, will find ourselves in this sad middle, full of mistakes and doubts, from which we must free ourselves and strengthen ourselves, at least enough to say: I consider this to be true, I want to .

The artist will be big or small - no technique will add or subtract anything to him - it's all the same. What matters is the artist's attitude to work, to art. Here he is reflected in his entire work, down to the slightest remote thought, and any deliberateness, lies and pursuit of success are just as much a failure in his work in which they are applied. And vice versa, of course. Revealing the idea of ​​essence by recreating the main thing in its entirety and ignoring the details of real everyday life, of course, is not a lie, but the highest realism. Art accepts even a mixture of diverse forms. That's not what we're talking about here. You will then see all this for yourself.

I continue with technology. Partly the same process of loss of integrity and immediacy occurs with sculptors.

Everyone knows that in the beginning, that is, when one works directly with feeling, the work is more original, more interesting, more vital. Mistakes are not yet so noticeable, but a person cannot completely ignore them, because contradictions begin in the work that require reconciliation. A person immediately begins to replace these mistakes with others. Of course, to replace others, otherwise how would it happen that a person works, for example, a head for a month, and sometimes three, and more, whereas if his every touch on the clay was true, then ten or fifteen minutes would be enough, to touch every place at work. Clay, as a material, presents no obstacles - where did the artist use a month or more? It is here, in these thousands of unnecessary touches, that both vital technique and feeling leave. The fewer these senseless touches, the better the work, and the first condition for this is to never touch the clay without feeling and deciding what and how to do it. If it is necessary to remove, then one must be fully aware of what and how to remove, and when removing, one must be as careful as if under this extra layer there was a living body that cannot be damaged. If you need to add, then feel what size and density you need to take a piece of clay, and carefully place it, restoring the shape.

You don't even have to take special care to take the clay exactly; we have a sense of size and heaviness, and the hand itself will do this. It is not necessary to exaggerate the significance of this caution, you just need to be careful - do not tear and miss, irresponsibly reducing, and not smear a hundred times in the same place, increasing the shape. Even if you make a mistake, it is better to make a mistake than a hundred (what a hundred - a million times, probably); I'm not talking about what you do right away, but about making each of your touches responsible.

By not trying to decide right away, you agree in advance to these thousands of mistakes. Why is this? If you immediately put a lot or a little, then at least you see what is taken wrong, smearing it a hundred times in the same place, when and where will you stop? It is in this very place that the dull indeterminacy of the work is hidden and their monotonous weariness starts up, which discolors and devalues ​​everything.

You just need to approach the work, with a simple life logic. Neither a carpenter, nor a locksmith, nor a tailor cuts material without thinking, and no one does anything in order to immediately redo it. And not even the smallest student will begin to add or subtract without realizing why and how much he needs to subtract, add. And we ourselves in life never act so strangely in anything as in sculpture. For example, if you need to go somewhere, because we will always figure out the shortest path. If we turn to the sculptural work of the majority, then we get the impression that we, wanting to get somewhere, rush into the first alley that comes across; if it does not lead to the goal, then another, the tenth, the thirtieth, etc. Such a Penelope technique, when a worker removes and applies clay a million times, is possible where there is no real stone sculpture. Except for clay, which endures everything (after all, even clay is tormented), it is impossible to work in any material without calculation. If you work like this on marble, then only dust would remain from it. And one must think that where marble is used, the calculation is kept as it should be. It's the same with the tree. The logic is the same for everything.

"Ivan Aivazovsky", 1898, National Gallery Armenia

From all the foregoing, I hope, they will not conclude that it is necessary to work quickly. On the contrary, the one who does not think works very soon. Usually he has everything ready in one session, and then endless alterations begin. It does not matter at all how the work is going - soon or slowly. The only important thing is to keep yourself up to date all the time and not give place to a single unfelt or unreasonable touch. Most beginners, and not only beginners, work almost without taking their hands off the clay. Is it right? How can a man do anything thoroughly if he goes on unconsciously crumpling his work? In order to decide anything, one must consider, compare, think over, and not only cannot one work without taking his hands off, but it is even necessary to move away from work; and only when you clearly see and you undoubtedly want to correct this particular part in this way and not otherwise, then only you should work with your hands.

When solving one part, one should consider the general and other parts. In most cases, beginners work like this: they make one side, turn the model and calmly start working on the other, without connection with the rest, as if the piece that the person is working on is one and he has the task. And the further such work goes, the greater the discord of the parts worked apart becomes. The worker tries to reconcile them. Here new and new parts come forward with their own demands. There is no plan, no sure foothold; how to fix work? The worker no longer knows and does not feel clearly; it just seems to him. You should never lower yourself into this "seems". You always need to know and feel what needs to be done, or wait for this feeling to appear, otherwise you will indifferently knit a stocking that you will call sculpture.

Although even with an unaccountable way of working, in the end it is a habit. But skill is the grave of art; painters have known this for a long time, but we have not yet.

Technique should also include the ability to find and preserve the good in one's work. This is just as important as being able to see your mistakes. Maybe this is good and not so good, but for this time it is the best, and it must be preserved as a stepping stone for further movement. And do not be ashamed of the fact that you admire and appreciate the well-taken places in your work. This develops the taste and finds out your inherent technique as an artist. If you treat everything that you do equally, then there will be nothing to rely on; one indifferent correctness will not give a good movement forward. There is nothing to be afraid of stopping complacency, because what is good now, in a month may be no good. So you've outgrown it. It seems to me that indifferent dry correctness is more likely to lead to limited complacency. After all, if you rejoice in your good, the bad will seem even worse to you, in which there is never a lack. You just have to remember that this bad thing must be endured until you clearly understand what and how to replace it with. It will show you what needs to be done.

Perhaps it is appropriate to say about the vision of the sculptor. It consists in the fact that a person en face determines the depth of depressions and the height of bulges and, almost unable to cope with the profile, probes the forms with the eye. Every sculptor must consciously develop such a view. The habit of drawing and painting makes beginners stray for a long time to work on the plane. Sooner or later, the eye nevertheless gets used to measuring depth and convexity and understanding the play of surfaces; but this, if you do not pay attention, will be very slow and stupid. In the work of the figure, this shortcoming is not yet as conspicuous as in the work of the head, when it makes itself felt by flat wooden plans. Sometimes years go on like this. It is necessary to realize and deepen this feeling of the surface in oneself.

Now regarding the tools: the best tool when working on clay is the hand. Just do not work with any one part of the hand, but you need to extract all the tools from it, there are a lot of them all there. You can have two or three stacks to correct an unfinished shape or for inanimate material - like clothing - and that's enough.

The old highly respected professor Sergei Ivanovich Ivanov said: "Feel this place." The best French artists know and appreciate this feeling. The great artist Rodin demanded a sense of material. The statues of the Greeks and Romans are full of this feeling. You will not find a single good statue without this feeling of living spiritualized matter, and the less this feeling, the worse the work. It's so obvious that you can theorize, argue, prove endlessly, and yet you won't get away from this simple truth.

All these values ​​of feeling cannot be preserved if one does not take care of one's work. They do not come to an understanding of this soon, and some never come. Of course, you can work whatever you want, you just don't need to mechanize your work. One must thoughtfully, carefully discover life in clay: if you find it in clay, you will find it in any material.

The mood of the workshop can also be attributed to the technique. In France, the workshops are solemnly quiet during work. And if you really go deep into the work, then you will appreciate the value of this silence. Where they work with concentration and seriousness, nothing should disturb the mood. Knocking, talking, willfulness of models, the arrival of outside visitors, etc. are absolutely not allowed. If you want to work, but you do not know exactly what and how to do it, then it is better to refrain from working until it becomes completely clear what needs to be done. Otherwise, an unconscious touch will confuse the work, and it will be more difficult to figure it out. In general, the less manual work, the better. If you feel lethargic and there is no good desire to work, then go and look at the work of your comrades and carefully analyze them. We learn a great deal from our comrades both from their virtues and from their mistakes. Thinking over the work of your comrades, you increase your experience and seem to be conducting several studies at once instead of your own. It's very developing. With a complete unwillingness to think or work, it is best to go home, because this is already overwork, which there is no need to increase. Wishing to overcome overwork, you support it, and it can take hold of you for a long time and be further intensified by the fact that work in such a state is depressing. It is at this time that people fall into despair. Yes, such a mood is harmful for comrades.

In particular, hasty, business-like running "for a minute" harms the mood of the workshop. The best thing to do is stay away from it. Everyone must preserve the working spirit of comradeship.

The proportions are followed by a study of the construction, the lack of which is reflected in the general disorder of the structure of the figure: the muscles are transmitted by meaningless tubercles and out of place, the bones are dislocated or broken. The worker somehow settles all this by sight, not understanding what he is doing, and such work as a sketch is completely useless: the worker did not learn anything and did not say anything firmly and confidently.

To stand on the solid ground of knowledge of construction, it is necessary to rely on anatomy, which artists are not very willing to decide on. And this is because in the study of art we approach any given nature exclusively from the side of form, life, material, and anatomy presents nature to us in a form in which we cannot accept it. Drawings and books on anatomy remain in the memory as mere ballast, they cannot be connected with nature, and this is not necessary. Plaster anatomical studies also give nothing; these are rough pieces on a distorted pose, what do they have in common with nature? And if you work a child or a woman, then you won’t find anything similar at all.

Not everyone can work on corpses. It is difficult, difficult, and yet these terrible, flaccid muscles are alien to that living, beautiful human body that breathes, moves and is constantly changing. All this is difficult to relate to what we are used to looking for when studying the human body by nature. But there is one way of assimilation of the anatomical knowledge we need, in which they do not hurt our aesthetic sense, on the contrary. It is to approach anatomy only from the side of mechanism and movement, discarding everything else, and then all this, which seemed dead and unnecessary, begins to come to life before you with all the great wisdom and beauty of the structure of the human body.

To understand any machine, it is not enough to copy and copy it, it must be disassembled and reassembled, understanding each part, because there is neither a screw nor a recess without a special purpose. If you approach the structure of the human body in the same way, you will see such amazing wisdom and beauty of its structure that you will only regret that you did not know it before. From this side, the anatomy directly captures, and in order to see all this, you need to do an anatomical study yourself. Working with books, drawings, and other things disassembles a person, and a sketch collects, and when you begin to work on this sketch, you will see with your own eyes, you will, so to speak, feel all this splendor of wisdom, where a tubercle on some bone is arranged with the most amazing graceful laconism, so that from it a muscle begins, which has its own specific purpose, and on the other bone there is a specially arranged place to receive this muscle in an appropriate way. All this is so beautiful, elegant, expedient that you no longer memorize, but are surprised and rejoice. For example: the spring device of the foot, the block of the arm, the sensitively movable neck system, the massive columns of dorsal muscles, the thin and wide abdominal muscles that smoothly attach to the cup of the pelvic bone that flashes under the skin, or the lower leg and its slender bones with a base below and a capital above. .. Everything is so elegant, beautiful, generous. You will see for yourself.

And if you work it out, you will never forget it, and any violation of the structure will no longer be logical for you. It will not be taken low or high, but you will see that it is a torn muscle or a broken bone, which should be in a certain place and fulfill its purpose.

Ostrovsky

In order to study the structure of the human body in this way, you need to do this: take wax or plasticine (preferably wax) of two colors and from wax of the same color, reading the anatomy and carefully examining the drawings (if possible, bones are better, but it is also possible according to the drawings) , to fashion a small, about half a yard in size, skeleton, even "and not very carefully, only carefully performing the joints and attachment points of the muscles. Then you take a wax of a different color and cover this skeleton first with the muscles of the third layer, which, although rarely visible, but in forms and movements are involved in the formation. Then cover with a second layer, all the while attaching the muscles after careful references in the book and drawings, and finally the last. Strange, working without thinking at all about the artistic side of the matter, but trying to do only, so to speak, the mechanics of the device, as a result you get a very strong and beautiful study.This indicates the role of knowledge in art.

Many are afraid to be out of date, studying anatomy and, as they say, "butchering muscles." But, firstly, only those who do not know them well cut them, and, secondly, cowardice is always cowardice, whether before old traditions or before new requirements. Such a person will be forever driven by fears. A real artist should be free: he wants to cut, he wants not to cut, this is his full will. And not being able, and even being a coward, is not fun.

However, all fears are from ignorance. If a person sharply outlines muscles and bones, then one can probably say that he does not know anatomy properly. Otherwise, he would have known that the muscles smoothly pass into the tendons and that the bones cannot come out so roughly, but are tied into a system and hidden by ligaments and muscles. I repeat, from anatomy we need to take only the device, leaving aside everything else, and then in nature you will no longer see anatomy, but your own construction of nature. When we studied, the professors said: learn anatomy and forget it. This means - know anatomy in such a way that it affects only confidence and freedom in work, but there is no trace of anatomy itself. In general, anatomy is remembered just where there is no knowledge of it.

So, to work constructively means to work in such a way that everything is stable, connected, strong, in place - this is the whole task of construction. By the way, if you do an anatomical study, it is better to do it with movement, then you will understand better and see more.

Relationship. Under this title, work is required to observe the correlation and correspondence of parts and the whole. This concept comes very close to proportions and is often confused with them. In France, this concept is defined by the word valeurs - value and includes, in addition to conformity, the requirement of character, value and vitality of parts and the whole. Arms and legs are usually worked only as appendages, and this requirement calls them to an independent life in connection with the whole. Without observing this condition, the work will be unsaid, and sometimes it is the limbs that characterize the figure most of all. Above are deeper concepts and combinations in this sense, but that is the artist's business, and not the educational part. School requirements, however, consist in the fullest possible correspondence between the measure of gravity and the nature of the parts in connection with the whole.

About movement. In part of the notes on the frame and proportions, movement was mentioned, but there it was said about its, so to speak, formal side: walking, sitting, turning, regardless of the method of manifestation. Now we have to talk about movement in its very essence.

Often, out of ten or fifteen sketches standing in the studio, not one stands, although they are made quite correctly, but there is no real foundation in them, gravitating towards the earth and relying on it with all its weight. I remind you once again: in order to understand the movement of a standing person well, you need to feel this movement in yourself as clearly as possible, bring your bones into complete balance, so that as little muscle power as possible is expended in this position, you need to separate the muscles that support the movement by feeling, and dissolve into a state of complete rest those who do not participate in the movement, and thoroughly feel in yourself, in the model and in the work this four or five pounds of heaviness, firmly pressing on the ground. If you understand this, then the sketch will stand.

You need to be even more thoughtful about the movement of the lying figure and feel more strongly the heaviness of the muscles that have surrendered to rest, otherwise the figure will never lie, but will look as if you worked it standing, and then laid it down.

Regardless of the posture, you will distinguish between a sick, resting and sleeping person. From this it can be seen that muscles that are powerless, tired, lazy, have a different situation and therefore give a different form to the same movement. All people see and know this difference in the movement of a sick, sleeping, lazy and tired person. Here you don’t even need some particularly subtle observation, but ordinary, universal, worldly, to which you need to elevate your own. It is even better to say - not to elevate, but to attract to work as the most precious. Movement, like a construction, must be felt within: the Assyrians and Egyptians conveyed a swift movement with motionless clothing. And the heads, beaten off from the statues of the Greeks, keep the movement of the whole. And so, in order to take this inner movement at least to some extent, one must want to make it - not to repeat the movement of the model, namely, to want, to feel, to seek, respectfully and vigilantly observing life. And the deeper you scoop, the more miracles you will see.

Another requirement must be made by the student; this requirement is to take the model in character: take its massiveness, flexibility, strength, etc. In addition to these main features, one must learn to guess in the model its individual character - style. Rarely there are contradictory models, so to speak; for the most part the body is very solid, as expressive as the face, and related to it in character. Taking nature in character is an obligatory school requirement, and do not think of taking character by simple copying: here you need to understand the essence of the model. The ability to distinguish and take on character will make you more knowledgeable, more experienced, broaden your horizons and serve for further work outside the school; then you can do every thing you have conceived in the style in which you want. Not in the style of a particular era, but exactly what you need. Don't think this requirement is very difficult. Just think about it, and you will immediately see some plus in the work and that it is already taking on a different character, more reliable.

General. This part should have been placed at the beginning, but since it is not enough to do the general only at the beginning, but it is necessary to preserve it and carry it through the whole work from beginning to end, then all the same, after reading, you will attribute this to all moments of the work.

The concept of the general includes a lot for the artist, but for school work it sets the requirement: to understand and work on nature as one piece, inextricably linked - a monolith. Whatever you work on, you must not lose sight of the general and reduce everything to it. Next, we need to consider the facets of this general, its plans or planes, as they say differently, first the main ones, and then the secondary ones. If you work directly with planes, then the work will come out conditional, schematic: it is necessary that they be only inside, like a sub-foundation.

Consider, for example, a face. You will see that it all consists in fourteen main plans: one is the middle of the forehead with frontal tubercles, two planes from the frontal tubercles to the temporal bones, two are from the verge of the temporal to the zygomatic, two are from the zygomatic to the edge of the lower jaw, two are orbital, two - from the orbital to the nose and corner of the mouth, two - from the mouth to the zygomatic bone and masseter muscle, and one - from the nose to the end of the chin. And all human faces are always contained in these fourteen planes; only the shape of the plans changes, but not the border and not the number. You don’t need to be tied to these plans (the work will be sketchy), you just need to make sure that your modeling is within their limits (without losing sight of the general), and the more often you take these plans of each given person, the more thorough the work will be. When working on marble, these plans are divided into secondary and tertiary ones, while in clay this is taken more widely - by modeling.

Each body can be disassembled in the same way. Such an analysis helps the development of the sculptor's vision, and in addition, work from solid material requires mandatory decomposition on a plane.

Body parts. When you are working on a sketch, no matter how much time you have to work, it is still not enough for the limbs. Until you start working separately, you will never know them. And, meanwhile, you need to know them; arms and legs are as expressive as the face; until you work them, it doesn’t even occur to you how interesting they are in themselves and how important it is to be able to finish the figure with them. In order to put your knowledge in order in this regard, you need to make several dozen separate studies of limbs.

Sculpting sketches of arms and legs should be of different sizes, in different turns and movements; You should not get carried away with details, you just need to take character and movement. Having done several of these studies of arms and legs, you will feel that you have taken them. The demand for material is already a matter of a higher order, although, as you saw in the chapter on technology, there are almost always feelings of material and life at the very beginning of work, but all this is unconscious and incomplete, and in the concern for correctness is destroyed without a trace (often forever).

Now we must consciously present this demand to ourselves. This cannot be taught, but everyone must find, love and protect those places in their work where nature is reflected with greater force and vitality, and achieve this.

An artist cannot be indifferent to nature: he always likes it or not. And you need to ask yourself the question of what you like in nature and what you don’t. On this question you will analyze it, and if you analyze many models in this way, you will have a good idea of ​​\u200b\u200bforms and beauty. There is beauty in deviations, but this is another matter - not school. And the more models you make, the richer you become in terms of artistic experience. This is one of the reasons why I don't advise you to run the same model for a long time; another reason is that with the current three or four year course, working for two or three months on the same model, you run the risk of leaving school with fifteen or twenty sketches. What kind of experience will you bring to life? But you will have Russian sculpture in your hands. By changing the model weekly (as is done in France), you get about a hundred and twenty, and with such intensive work, the desire to work usually increases, and a person is not satisfied with one session, but takes two or three. and this in four years will be about four hundred. The difference in experience will be significant. Calculate how many studies you will leave school with, and, according to this calculation, determine the time that each model should take from you. When studying, it is necessary to consistently take strongly contrasting models, for example, after a man - a woman, after an old man - a child, after a stocky - flexible. This greatly contributes to the development of understanding. As for the head, I will only remark that one should never take pictorial models, i.e., those that have been treated dozens of times as types. There is frivolity and a loss of the artist's dignity in this.

If you want to make a sketch, then you should never put it off: it will go away and go out; on the contrary, the more you do them, the more the imagination and desire to do them awakens. They develop the ability to think in images, taste, composition. There is no such sketch that would not serve both for the future and as an etude, even more than an etude. And most importantly, then you won’t do them: everyday work and practical considerations will be delayed. If you don’t really want to do it, then you have to force yourself. Sketches are essential.

The bas-relief is somewhat reminiscent of a drawing: it is as if you are painting with clay, and the main task when working with a bas-relief is to maintain the same size of cuts and perspective everywhere. Without this, a simple flattening will result, sometimes so strange that if the bas-relief figure is restored as round, then the head will be wider than the shoulders, and the width of the nose will be larger than the mouth. A good bas-relief requires very expressive modeling and a strictly consistent gradation of cuts, that is, you take each place just as much higher on the relief as it is closer to you, and, conversely, do everything that is farther from you lower.

Every sculptor needs to be able to mold, firstly, in order to be able to cast his own thing in the last resort, and, secondly, if you know this business, you can follow the casting and direct workers who often do the wrong thing. what you need, you are helplessly waiting for what will come of it. And it turns out that often your work is mutilated, or even disappears altogether. It is very easy for a sculptor to understand this matter. It is enough to look at how it is done once and mold a few things (of course, small ones at first).

One more piece of advice: do not let molders lubricate the mold with the so-called "grease" (a mixture of stearin and kerosene): it spoils the work terribly, but lubricate it better with soap, i.e. soap suds, which remains on the brush if you rub the soap with it.

Neither marble nor other materials need a separate science. As much as you know how to work in clay, so much * you know how to work in marble, and in wood, and in bronze. It is enough to see how they work on marble, and you can already work. From the habit of two or three weeks, you will not always hit the tool with a hammer, and then you get used to it. The rest will come with practice.

It is much more difficult to obtain and select marble. Marble with large grains is too rough, with fine grains it is somewhat deaf, there is little light in it. It is necessary to choose a medium, good warm color.

Large pieces should not be knocked down, they need to be sawn off to be used later. In completely solid marble, sometimes a so-called wormhole suddenly appears. It starts as a small point - barely a needle can pass - and gradually expands to a cave the size of a walnut and more. Usually, hoping to clean it off, they begin to deepen this place, but further - even worse. The best thing, having met such a wormhole, is not to dig further, but, having melted borax in a teaspoon, putty the hole with it - and it will be completely unnoticeable.

Other stones from which one could work add almost nothing to the plaster, except for weight. Therefore, probably never found a stone sculpture at exhibitions. Sandstone still gives something, but very little. Beginners are seduced by alabaster with its softness and lively color, but in processing it is so vulgar that after much effort and labor it is always thrown away.

With bronze, the situation is as follows: before casting from bronze, the caster casts our thing from wax. When casting from wax, everything softens too much, the eyelids become plump and thick, the eyes blur softly, the mouth too. In general, everything thin and sharp disappears, and we have to restore it on wax. For a good caster, the work does not change much, but still it is necessary to review and work through.

We also have to choose bronze and take part in the patina. That's all we have to do.

The best wood for a sculptor is birch, ash, linden. We, who live among large forests and trees, look for a tree and try to fit our thing there. This is not done abroad, they have long been gluing together bars of the same color and structure, approximately an inch and a quarter thick, and it turns out very well, because the wood is dried and matched completely as a whole.

Big trees always crack; of course, you can insert a rail, but on the figure it’s still nothing, but on the face it’s very annoying. S. T. Konenkov always works from the whole tree, but he has become so close to the tree that it seems that he does not work, but only frees what is contained in the tree. Beginners must be careful not to submit themselves to the tree. This sometimes comes out very ugly. Yes, finally, a thing can be conceived independently of the tree that comes under hand, and there is no point in squeezing it into a stump at all costs; it is better to resort to gluing than to disfigure the work. Gluing is easier than finding a suitable tree, and you can not glue everything from the bars, but simply glue the missing piece - that's all.

All of the above is not at all necessary for you, and you should not blindly obey the notes. But if, while working, you see confirmation of what I have said, then take this into your artistic experience. When you are told the way to somewhere, it often happens that all these paths, stations, etc. are mixed up in your memory; such complexity becomes scary. In fact, it's all easier. Go yourself, and when you go, you will see the signs indicated to you along the road and in this you will see confirmation of the correctness of your path. Maybe you will shorten this path somewhere, maybe make an interesting detour. Good time! It is necessary to be more calm about these requirements - they are not the most important. Everything will come in due time. Work more admiring than caring. The main and the best is ahead, while study is only to master one's own strengths, and much of this will have to be thrown away, just as textbooks are thrown away.

I repeat once again: take lightly all this study, it is not the main thing, and if you have a strong conviction to do something differently, do it in your own way: you are right. But you will be right only if you really sincerely think and feel so. Only then will it be the real truth, which is dearest of all and which will be reflected in the work with a new and living word.