Russian sculptor, a student of the famous Rodin, Anna Golubkina left behind amazing works and a small book – “A few words about the craft of the sculptor.” In it, she shares her experience with her students, but everyone should read it in order to better understand how to live and work, so as not to miss the main thing.
With Rodin, they have an abyss, although Anna Golubkina called herself his Russian student, and he said that the student’s arms and legs molded by her were tres bien, and even went against the rules – he undertook to advise her, penniless. Rodin is festive, life-affirming and very civilized. Golubkina – wild, forest, gloomy, otherworldly. Rodin “everything will be fine, even if …”, she has “life – just a moment before the start of the main thing.” Some of the works in her house-workshop are so uncompromising and “on the threshold” that it’s chill on the skin. It seems that Golubkin’s sculptures were sculpted by a fearless man, and Rodin’s by a sophisticated woman.
Read more:
- How a visit to a museum changes lives for the better
You need to free yourself and get stronger, at least enough to say: I consider this to be true, I want it that way.
If you look with a desire to understand, then there will always be something interesting, and often completely unexpected and pointing. I will be told that the ability to see is innate and does not depend on us. But I probably know that the ability to see can develop to great penetration. We don’t see much only because we don’t demand this ability from ourselves, we don’t force ourselves to consider and understand, perhaps, or rather, we don’t know what we can see.
It often happens that gifted people despair of their work, they clearly see that they have done something completely wrong, they do not know how and when the meaning of work is lost. and how to get back on the road… Such confusion must inevitably happen to those who try to take simple arithmetical solutions by feeling, and, conversely, what is taken by feeling dries up with diligent reflection and prudent copying. And because of this, such wonderful movers as feeling and mind are fruitlessly tired at work that is not characteristic of them. For firm, definite and strong work, everything that can be counted must be worked with the mind, preserving the freshness of feeling for that part of the work that cannot be counted and which is the most valuable …
Read more:
- Exhibition “Vadim Sidur. Looking for a man”
Nothing ever needs to be done. It is only necessary that each touch on the clay be real, serious, truthful, and the work will be done by itself. Do not just irresponsibly tear, scratch, crush and grab. After all, nothing in life is done in order to redo it.
One must dominate the work, and not be its slave … Arrange everything for work so that you can only rejoice.
The ability to find and preserve the good in your work is just as important as the ability to see your mistakes. Maybe this is good and not so good, but for this time it is the best, and it must be preserved as a stepping stone for further movement. And do not be ashamed of the fact that you admire and appreciate the well-taken places in your work. It develops the taste. If you treat everything that you do equally, then there will be nothing to rely on; one indifferent correctness will not give a good movement forward. There is nothing to be afraid of stopping complacency, because what is good now, in a month may be no good. So you’ve outgrown it.
Read more:
- Elena Spirkina: “Art, even gloomy, can be beneficial”
The bad must be endured until you clearly understand what and how to replace it with. It will show you what needs to be done.
If you want to work, but you do not know exactly what and how to do it, then it is better to refrain from working.until it becomes clear what needs to be done. Otherwise, an unconscious touch will confuse the work, and it will be more difficult to figure it out … If you feel lethargic and there is no good desire to work, then go and look at the work of your comrades and carefully analyze them. We learn a lot from our comrades, both from their virtues and from their mistakes… This is very developing. With a complete unwillingness to neither think nor work, the best thing is to go home, because this is already overwork, which there is no need to increase. Wishing to overcome overwork, you support it, and it can seize you for a long time and be further intensified by the fact that work in such a state is depressing. It is at this time that people fall into despair.
Regardless of the posture, you will distinguish between a sick, resting and sleeping person. From this it can be seen that muscles that are powerless, tired, lazy, have a different situation and therefore give a different form to the same movement. All people see and know this difference in the movement of a sick, sleeping, lazy and tired person. Movement, like a construction, must be felt within: the Assyrians and Egyptians conveyed a swift movement with motionless clothing. And the heads, beaten off from the statues of the Greeks, keep the movement of the whole. And so, in order to take this inner movement at least to some extent, one must want to make it – not to repeat the movement of the model, namely, to want, to feel, to seek, respectfully and vigilantly observing life. And the deeper you scoop, the more miracles you will see.
Read more:
- Feel every minute of life
The main and the best is ahead, the study is only in order to master one’s own strengths, and a lot of it will have to be thrown away in the same way that textbooks are thrown away … If you have a strong conviction to do something differently, in your own way, do it: you are right. But you will be right only if you really sincerely think and feel so. Only then will it be true truth, which is dearest of all and which will be reflected in the work both as a new and as a living word.
Anna Semyonovna Golubkina (1864–1927) is one of the largest Russian sculptors of the Silver Age. Self-taught from a peasant family, at the age of 25 she entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. She studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, took lessons from Auguste Rodin in Paris. She worked in plaster, bronze, marble, wood. About 1500 exhibits are stored in the workshop house in Bolshoy Levshinsky Lane, including the famous sculptures “Birch”, “Fog”, “Old Age”, “Iron”, “Music and Lights Away”, a bust of Leo Tolstoy, a collection of cameos and others.
For more details, see A. Golubkina “A few words about the skill of the sculptor” (Soviet artist, 1983).