The French Academy: Sculpture
For the artists outside of Paris, there were numerous provincial art schools, écoles de dessin and académies des beaux-arts. By 1830, training for sculptors was similar to the training for painters in its rigorous control of style and content. Sculptors could also study from drawing courses printed in Paris. Predating the later use of photography and textbooks, these unbound lithographed sheets were copied by artists outside of the Academy. Called modèles estampes, these prints were for aspiring students who could also work from plaster casts, also available outside the Academy. At the Petit école, a “school” that we today might be termed “trade” or “vocational,” students took courses in human anatomy, modeling and drawing. Courses in the history or ornament trained students to supply carved ornamental motifs for the building trade. Students who wanted to focus on fine art sculpting went on to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where they were first granted the right of “inscription,” that is, the right to follow the courses to the right of “admission,” which gave the student the opportunity to participate actively. Once admitted, further proof of training was demanded in which students had to demonstrate their skills in competitions for admission in one of the two annual concours des places. These competitions for available slots in the Academy consisted of six three-hour sessions of drawing and modeling the figure from nature. These concours des places would be the equivalent of being admitted to an art school with a portfolio.
The schedule of the sculptor’s training followed that of the painter—from drawing outlines to drawing volumes to drawing live models. During the first two years, students copied casts of antique marbles and began to work from life only by the third year. In the fourth year, the student was expected to complete a full-scale marble of a human figure. Once again, the sculptor would follow the same procedure as a painter, from drawing to sketch to study to finished product. First, the student would produce a drawing. Second, he would make a small model in clay or wax, a bozetto or maquette, which would be spontaneous and sketchy. Next, a full-scale clay model would be made and then destroyed in the process of making a plaster cast of it. With the aid of the pointing machine, the original plaster would be copied in marble by professional carvers, or practiciens, or the plaster cast could be cast in bronze at the foundry. Thus there are no “originals” in sculpture, unless the clay model or the maquette is preserved. This system of education and production was universal in sculpture by 1851.
Competitions among students never ended. The études libres, which presented two weeks of free study of specific problems set out by the professor prepared the students’ spirits for the most prestigious competition of all, the Prix de Rome. The screening process for the candidates included the première essai, a sketch of a pre-selected subject, eliminated all but sixteen students who returned for the deuxième essai, in which they sculpted, either in relief or in the round, a figure from a living model. Full-scale sculptures from the original sketches had to be produced in two months time, from themes that were usually taken from ancient history or mythology. The Prix de Rome was based upon the assumption that the only the aesthetic criteria was antique sculpture. These competitions, no matter how small or large, reinforced the academic doctrine of classicism on one hand and the enormous prestige of the Ecole and its prizes. Although David threatened to starve himself, when he lost in the Prix de Rome competition, the decision of the conservative judges was accepted and not debated.
From 1750 to 1800, sculptors had to create models of proposed monumental sculptors on their own initiative in hopes that critical acclaim would attract buyers. Unlike the painters whose materials, paint and canvas, were relatively cheap, sculptors were bound to the tradition of expensive marble and bronze. Commissions were, more often than not, public which immediately meant that the sculptor had to submit to a civic committee and lacked the same kind of freedom a painter, working alone, would have. The result was that sculpture, as a discipline, lagged behind painting in innovation of means and content. The Industrial Revolution reduced the price of metal and brought bronze sculpture within the price range of the average art buyer. Unlike the sculptors of the early decades of the century, sculptors at mid-century were less dependent upon public patrons and the commissions they requested. The aim of bronze casting was to capture the texture of the clay model and allowed the sculptor to take on a newly independent role, directly addressing a new rich bourgeois buyer. Initially Neoclassical sculpture enjoyed a prestige that was higher than that of painting, which was more “private,” that is, placed in museums. Public sculpture, which was out in the open and seen by everyone, needed to be in the Neoclassical style was intended to educate and inspire the public to strive for nobility in society. However, as times changed, sculptural monuments had to respond to the needs of this newly democratic and middle class society that wanted to see its own history commemorated. The artist had to communicate with a diverse audience that demanded contemporary content and historical accuracy and a degree of realism that was incompatible with Neoclassicism. Once the sculptor stepped into contemporary history, s/he had entered into the precincts of Romanticism.
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Tags: Academic sculpture, academic training-sculpture, Neoclassical sculpture