All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found read more

All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.

A sculptor wields
The chisel, and the stricken marble grows
To beauty.

A sculptor wields
The chisel, and the stricken marble grows
To beauty.

A Mercury is not made out of any block of wood.
[Lat., Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius.]

A Mercury is not made out of any block of wood.
[Lat., Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius.]

I did my sculpture as a painter. I did not work as a sculptor.

I did my sculpture as a painter. I did not work as a sculptor.

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or
say of the Laocoon how it might read more

In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or
say of the Laocoon how it might be made difference? A
masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of
being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

The Paphian Queen to Cnidos made repair
Across the tide to see her image there:
Then looking read more

The Paphian Queen to Cnidos made repair
Across the tide to see her image there:
Then looking up and round the prospect wide,
When did Praxiteles see me thus? she cried.

And the cold marble leapt to life a God.

And the cold marble leapt to life a God.