I’m working on writing another book right now, a follow up of sorts to my biography of US Admiral George Dewey. This one is about one of his contemporaries. I was having some trouble recently in one of the chapters. I had compiled 25 pages or so worth of notes, but they really didn’t strike me as much more than a pile of observations and loosely connected vignettes. I couldn’t figure out how to make them all fit together in a coherent form. Somewhere under that mess, I thought, my subject’s life was buried. Maybe I just need to start tossing stuff aside to see if I can see it. Sort of like looking for a dog hidden in a big pile of leaves.
Actually, once I did that, it started to click. I started cutting things and slowly these three or four complicated years of his life began to emerge more clearly. I thought, “this seems familiar somehow.” But I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Then I remembered the sculptor who’s possibly the most famous artist in Western civilization. Michelangelo is reported to have said that his sculptures were already complete within the block of marble, before he started his work it. The form he was after, that he was imagining, was already present, he just had to chisel away the superfluous material.
Just to jog your memory, Michelangelo lived from 1475 to 1564. But during his lifetime, at least two biographies of him were published. His career (including his thoughts about sculpture) was more fully documented than that of any other artist of his time, or earlier.
His two most famous pieces, the Pieta and David were both made before Michelangelo was 30. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, all his life he was a sculptor; only at certain times was he a painter. Granted, one of those certain times was the Sistine Chapel, so there’s no reason to diminish his ability to paint.
Anyway, unless it’s something called “assemblage,” sculpting is quite different from painting and Michelangelo is basically right in his comment. When he was sculpting a block of marble, he wasn’t building up anything at all. To create his form, he was removing things. Even with paint one builds up that which is being created. Maybe with clay sculpture that’s later cast in bronze you build something up. But not with marble. It’s a creation by subtraction, which maybe makes it more amazing than it already is.
