Art never can
be life, but it may seem to be so if it do but keep far enough away
from life. A statue may seem to live. A painting may seem to live.
That is because each is so far away from life that you do not apply
the test of life to it. A statue is of bronze or marble, than either
of which nothing could be less flesh-like. A painting is a thing in
two dimensions, whereas man is in three. If sculptor or painter tried
to dodge these conventions, his labour would be undone. If a painter
swelled his canvas out and in according to the convexities and
concavities of his model, or if a sculptor overlaid his material with
authentic flesh-tints, then you would demand that the painted or
sculptured figure should blink, or stroke its chin, or kick its foot
in the air. That it could do none of these things would rob it of all
power to illude you. An art that challenges life at close quarters is
defeated through the simple fact that it is not life. Wax-works, being
so near to life, having the exact proportions of men and women, having
the exact texture of skin and hair and habiliments, must either be
made animate or continue to be grotesque and pitiful failures.
Lifelike? They? Rather do they give you the illusion of death. They
are akin to photographs seen through stereoscopic lenses--those
photographs of persons who seem horribly to be corpses, or, at least,
catalepts; and.
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