The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1914-02-11
ROBBER BARoNS OF ART.

| LAtllCu HleCNoSlun HlppoblN VIII LUZ
low in the wake of Gutzou Borglum S
charge that "ncarly 90 per cent of all
the monuments and statues in the
United States, including those in
Statuary Hall at Washington. were not
made by those whose names they bear,
! This noted sculptor, in an address to
the Women s Political Union, declared
| that while artists were starving on
small pay, others were garnering glory
not their due. He said that be had
known two or three sculptors who had
committed suicide because they had
been doing other men s work, while the
other men were getting the credit and
the material profit.
Although this is startling charge, it
has been paraleled moro than once in
The history OF art Not so very many
wears ago il was iniimsted that certain
American m,lhoualres who had bios
somed forth as authors had done none
Of tho writing themselves, but had
paid impecunious authors TO do It,.
About twenty wears ago it transpired
that n famous short story, LA Belle
Nivernaise, until that time ascribed to
Daudet, had been written by an under
study, although Daudet probably had had
some part in it. During tho discussion
entailed by this discovery some inter
esting literary secrets were revealed.
Literary men flew 20 the defense of
Daudet, declaring that it had been
the custom among the noted French
authors to parcel out some of their
applied TO them for instruction and
guidance. It was asserted that Dumas,
perc. had conducted a sort of literary
manufacturing establishment, in which
thirty or forty men were employed to
suggest ideas, look up historical ma
terial, or do the actual writing of
books, which later were published un-
der the great name of Dumas. Tho de-
tenders of this system averred that the
genius of the master was in all the
work; that it was he who transmitted
the base metal of ordinary talent into
the pure Sold OIL genius.
De Maupassant was an understudy in
tho atelier of his uncle, the celebrated
Flaubcrt, author Of Madame Bovary"
and Salambo, and did not produce
was about thirty years Of age. Almost
Immediately he assumed tho position
OF master craftsman in the literary
art, and the time soon came when his
work was more highly regarded than
that Of Flaubcrt himself.
Should the charge made by Gutzon
Borglum drive into the open any of
the men who have been gaining money
and reputation through the work of
others, it is likely that the same eX~
cuses offered in defense OF Dumas and
Daudct will once more be resorted to.
1t is TO be presumed, Of course, that
the men accused by Borglum are them
selves sculptors. Having been awarded
contracts for extensive work by the gov
crnment municipalities, corporations or
individuals, they probably have found
it impossible TO do all the work them
selves, and naturally have employed
others. Not wishing TO confess that the
sculptures were not just what had been
ordered, they permitted their names to
be attached to each work. If their
names are made public they probably
will say that the poor artists merely
performed the manual labor and
wrought out the ideas of the master.
This is a sample OF an art which has
been brought to perfection by the
modern world-the art of grating and
taking. In his Lines to a Critic, -
Kipling suggests that the contractors
who built the pyramids probably sup
piled poor material at high prices and
took their graft even as our contractors
do today. IN the days Of PraXiteles
the famous Greek sculptors probably
availed themselves of the manual skill
and even of the ideas Of meaner men,
but in our day, when everything is done
on a big scale, we no doubt have regu.
lar manufacturing establishments where
sculptors without regulations create
masterpieces for sculptors who are al
ready celebrities,