From America to France, and Vice Versa

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Sculpting has always been the surest method to embody the image since the finished work of three-dimensional shape is perceived by the human eye as the most realistic. Moreover, it has been an indication of the importance of the idea, as long as the artist decided to perpetuate it in time. The outstanding sculptors from all over the world have thereby made their masterpieces epitomize the impressive figures of politicians and public activists, of scientists and inventors, and even of the same artists as they personally were. The leading motives of those sculptures were not infrequently bound with the time and the place that their creators worked in, and, therefore, nowadays the art connoisseurs often refer to the era and country when talking about the origins of some statue and what had the greatest influence on the author.

However, such approach cannot be claimed to be suitable in all cases. Firstly, there is a great deal of eternal images, which trace back to the ancient times despite being present in the following epochs. These comprise the whole family trees of gods and goddesses, who possess powers of different kinds and strengths, and other mythological characters. Another point is that the cultures were sometimes combined, or one could have an impact on the other. One of the splendid examples of the products of such cultural mixing is the representation of the French Beaux-Arts style in the American culture of the nineteenth century. As Tolles mentions, it was the Civil War that caused the heavy flow of immigrants from America to France:

In the decades following the Civil War, hundreds of Americans joined the throngs headed to Paris. Needing to compete with French artists, especially the academics whose works were being snatched up by wealthy American collectors, they enrolled in the prestigious government-sponsored École des Beaux-Arts and in thriving private academies and studios. (Tolles Americans in Paris par.2)

The same happened to Frederick MacMonnies, who was born in New York but went to Paris at the age of twenty-one. Some of his sculptures created while studying and working there are now stored in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the city of his birth, and three of them can be considered as the classics of MacMonnies.

If described chronologically, the list of these works would start with “Diana”, the statuette of the Roman goddess of animals and hunting. The young woman stands on her right foot lightly bending the left leg in her knee and holds a raiser from a bow in one of her hands. The other hand is retracted so that the whole pose creates an impression of the one-second ago shot. The sculptor made her look like a real huntress with so necessarily inherent grace and femininity but at the same time confidence and freedom. Fischer-Hansen and Poulsen notice that “one of her largest and most important sanctuaries in Italy was situated near Aricia by Lake Nemi in the Arban Hills, where the cult of Diana flourished from the Bronze Age to the 2nd century AD” (12).

It would now seem to be a coincidence that the actual sculpture was also made from bronze if the use of this material would not have been the peculiarity of the whole period between the middle of the nineteenth century and that of the twentieth (Tolles From Model to Monument par.3).

The next work worth mentioning is “Bacchante and Infant Faun.” It depicts a beautiful smiling woman with a grape in one of her hands and a baby in another. Her posture is even more dynamic and expressive than Diana’s, which resulted in calling it even provocative by that time’s society. Naturally, her drunk and carefree smile, which asserted that she enjoys her nakedness, could not have been highly regarded by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which, by the way, disagreed to accept this sculpture as a gift to the Boston Public Library (“19th and 20th Century” 6). The grape alludes to wine and implies that this woman, as well as Diana, is a goddess.

The most recent work of MacMonnies presented in the museum is “Boy and Duck”. It is a marvelous illustration of American public sculpture, which flourished in Europe in the late nineteenth century thanks to the immigrant groups (Tolles Americans in Paris par.3). As opposed to the previous two works, this one had a direct urban implication, namely fountain. Although there is no straightforward reference to the mythology, the pose of the boy and the ornaments on the column indicate the presence of ancient influences. As previously pointed out, Bacchante reveals her intoxication, and a similar idea is found here since the duck in the boy’s hands could be understood as a symbol of getting pleasure from the food.

To sum up, branches of different periods and places indeed can interlace and grow up in the new cultural phenomena. Although it may seem hard to trace the flash of this initiation, one can easily plunge into the history of art by visiting the Metropolitan Museum.

Works Cited

19th and 20th Century American and European Figurative Bronze Sculpture. 2015. Web.

“Bacchante and Infant Faun.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web.

“Boy and Duck.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web.

“Diana.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web.

Fischer-Hansen, Tobias, and Birte Poulsen. From Artemis to Diana: The Goddess of Man and Beast, Copenhagen: Collegium Hyperboreum and Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009. Print.

Tolles, Thayer. From Model to Monument: American Public Sculpture, 1865–1915. 2015. Web.

—. Americans in Paris, 1860–1900. 2015. Web.

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From America to France, and Vice Versa

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