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AMERICAN SCULPTURE FOR AMERICAN GARDENS 



A71 Infant Art That is Worth Fostering 



IF sculpture is to be really acclimated in our 

 American gardens it must be indigenous, of 

 a kind that the average citizen can understand. 

 It must be made to look at home in the aver- 

 age American place. It must be treated, not 

 as an outstanding object of art dominating 

 ever}i:hing in sight, but as symbolizing the 

 spirit of the place, of the flowers and leafage, 

 an integral part of the picture. Such statuar}' 

 will not be too conspicuous, and is more likely 

 to be of bronze or lead than of marble. It will 

 be more difficult to set especially where the 

 composition is entirely informal, if there are 

 no places contrived for sculpture to fill. Stat- 

 uary in such surroundings is apt to look as 

 though it had strayed in by mistake or had been 

 casually dropped, as it does in most of our 

 parks. 



The important fact underlying this problem 

 of finding the right place, whether in an archi- 

 tectural garden or a commuter's yard, is that 

 the setting ought to be designed as well as the 

 statue. It is not sufficient to give thought to 

 the sculpture; it is necessary to give serious 

 thought to the place where it is to go. If 

 there is no fit and proper place for it, no niche 

 in which it will naturally belong, no scene of 

 inevitable fitness, one must be made. The 

 statue should seem as much at home as a dryad 

 .stepping out of the tree in which she lived, or 

 the spirit of the cave or the waterfall. 



^^^hen the question of putting statuary in a 

 small place arises, the first consideration 

 should be, not "Is it good sculpture in itself, 

 that I happen to like for its own sake?" but, 

 "Is it the kind that harmonizes \vith its sur- 

 roundings? Is there any kind of sympathy, 

 obvious or subtle, between the sculptor's 

 thought and the lives and loves and aspirations 

 of those who live with it, or is it as remote from 

 them as the Group of the Laocoon?" 



Or to put the same idea in a different way, 

 "Was the sculptor thinking of an American 



.4 fountain, by Mrs. 

 Harry Payne Whit- 

 ney, designed for an 

 A m eric an gar den . 

 Courtesy of the 

 Whitney Studio. The 

 text in this article is 

 prepared by Harold 

 A. Caparn, land- 

 scape architect 





"i Girl Aquaplaning," by Rena Tucker 

 Kohlman, shows the freedom of interpre- 

 tation characteristic of our American gar- 

 den sculpture. It stands 20" high a-nd is 

 intended for a basin fountain or a small 

 garden pool where the water could be ar- 

 ranged to spray against the figure. Cour- 

 tesy of the Milch Galleries 



In the cleft of a rock garden you discover 

 a young Pan piping away. The gray stones 

 are immediately animated and the rock 

 plants vitalized. This figure by Janet Scud- 

 der is in the Rockefeller gardens at Po- 

 cantico Hills and shows the proper placing 

 for such work — secluded and surprising as 

 you come upon it 



