Carvers & Casters

The art of sculpture has no more indefatigable plugger than capable, stately Malvina Hoffman. When she did her famous bronzes of 101 racial types for Chicago's Field Museum, she performed a sculptural-scientific job of Leonardian scope, proved to countless U. S. citizens that sculpture could be scholarly. In the four years since then, 51-year-old Sculptor Hoffman has done less notable modeling, more writing. In her latest book* she offers students and laymen a drilled-eye view of a tough craft.

Catholic if somewhat cursory, Miss Hoffman's chapters on great sculpture are aided by keenly chosen illustrations. Once a worshiping student of Rodin, she speaks with equal understanding of the intense simplifications of Brancusi. But her chief theme is the craft itself. Among other things, she describes in ingratiating detail: the processes of casting in bronze, techniques and mechanisms for making enlargements from a small model, tools, tempers and techniques for working in different types of stone, an orderly scheme for scrubbing a studio.

"In most cases," says she, "the ideal plan to challenge a young hopeful . . . would be to send him or her to a practical school of technical training (if one exists) where the pupils are taught to drive a nail straight, or saw a plank, miter a few corners and plane the surface of rough wood until the hands become used to holding and directing tools. . . ."

For 30 years a celebrity sculptor, bushy-whiskered Jo Davidson is known for his studies of presidents, generals, kings and Gertrude Stein. Of late "Headhunter" Davidson's social types have changed. Dedicated last autumn in Claremore, Okla. was his memorial statue of the late homespun Humorist Will Rogers. Exhibited in Manhattan last November were his portrait busts, made under fire in Spain, of the leaders of the People's Army. Last week when chunky Sculptor Davidson stepped ashore in Manhattan, glowering amiably, he brought with him from Paris a seven-foot, two-ton bronze statue of Walt Whitman, a People's Poet if there ever was one, for the New York World's Fair.

Manhattanites who wished to supplement Knoedler's nudes with something contemporary and three-dimensional could see distinction in both respects at the Buchholz Gallery. The exhibition was of bronzes by Charles Despiau, 65, a quiet, interminable workman who has gradually taken rank as one of the two or three finest French sculptors. His Assia (see cut), a 35-inch bronze done in 1938, was the chief work shown. Not ten classic "standing nudes" so esthetically satisfactory have been fashioned since the time of Rodin.

On a Park Avenue vacant lot neatly prettied and pedestaled, Manhattan's lively Sculptors' Guild turned out to haul, hoist and hope for vernal weather. Occasion: a repeat performance this week of its smash-hit outdoor show (TIME, April 25).

* SCULPTURE INSIDE AND OUT--Norton ($3.75).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.