Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-08-21
Borglum Sees Mountain Carving Harmony With Colossal Ag


mates, and gives character to the
unreasonable.
Size must be employed by creative
artists as an accessory to the heroic;
but size itself destroys work OF art
if the spirit is not great.
The world has marVeled over the
carving of mountains; the audacity or
the undertaking; the scale; the con-
Ception. the dangers and the engineer
ing. l have had my fears and my
troubles, and l and my men have
taken the risk, and we have beaten
every problem that has presented it
self. Alexander in his day had
greater thought; had he lived he would
have cut an Apollo in the mountains
to the north of Athens. so large that
in the extended hand of the god cut
in place he would have produced
temples rivaling those on the Acrop-
oils.
T HAD four great schemes for the
great Confederate memorials. The
first of these was the treating OF the
entire mountain as a modern Acrop-
oils, and carving memorial buildings
and statues in place, terracing the
whole with n flight of 1000 steps
cause of the reminiscent character
and it's utter unsuitability to the
Western spirit.
My second plan was to point the
rounded top of the mountain into
great pyramid, Egyptian in character.
1t would have been four times larger
than the greatest of the Egyptian
pyramids. The northern slope of this
pyramid. with a pitch of As degrees.
would have stopped 400 feet from the
ground. and then would have dropped
like a sheer wall with an ellipse.
This wall would have been 1000
feet in length and the face of it would
have carried the whole history Of the
founding of the Anglo-SaXon western
world by Raleigh, down to and in
Guiding the war between the States
over the Interpretation of the Consti.
tuition.
1 always believed this plan had
great possibilities in it, but the Nation
was too young and the location of the
mountain too far from the centers of
wealth to give the necessary support.
My third plan contemplated taking
the entire mountain as a single mass
and dealing with it much as l did with
the MARES of Diomedes" and in that
mass carve seven of the greatest Lead
ers of the SOuth-Lee. Jackson, For.
rest, Albert Sidney Johnson and three
others. This plan was proba bly, the
most daring and more nearly fitted
the character of the supermen who
have founded and have had so much
to do with the direction of the spirit
of the great Western Hemisphere.
These plans were all abandoned for
the one l finally adopted, that of plac-
srlrr l. n 1t,
ates, 100 feet in length, marching
northward across the northeast wall Of
the great cliff.
THERE are no rules for carving
mountain, there are no presidents.
| AleXander's plan was a magnificent
| dream, of which there have been lit
| orally millions, carried no further
than his was carried. Michelangelo
planned great carving in the Carrara
quarry. 1t was never begun. There
were no rules or tools for art in such
scale. | made up my mind in the very
beginning of the mountain work that
| should have to possess the noun
| tain's bulk, much as one possesses a
couple of cubic yards of stone; in some
| in new dimensions and realize it's form
as easily as 1 would a table full of
| clay in my studio: that / must place
the design of my figures upon it with
the same freedom that l would sketch
on drawing board and be as ready to
change any part or all of ito de-
stroy or rub out an acre or two Of
drawings, which I literally did many
| times.
My central group of three horses &C.
cupied full acre of stone, upright.
/ l not only redrew it several times,
but l began the carving, shifted my
position and started all over again for
reasons of better location and better
light. giving more Importance to lead
ing figures and more accurate visible
| relationship of the central group to
the whole mass. The mechanics Of
this required invention-we solved
that.
How much labor this cost no one
can even guess. Most of it had to be
done at night under artificial light, as
the designs were projected onto the
mountainside from a lantern slide and
were transferred to the rock by paint
ers lowered from the top of the noun
tain. A horses head was a little un.
der 60 feet in length and a riders
rim of a hat Is soldiers had been pho.
tographed, and Mrs. Borglum enter.
tanned three governors. their families
and official aides al dinner on the
shoulder of the first figure the day of
the unwilling.
To plan such designs on piece Of
foolscap may be anybodyS job, or to
square one into a panel little more
than sign painters art, but to fit
it into a space between the sky and
the valley in an area 500 feet high
and 5000 feet long, where it would
look the best at all times Of the day
and from every point of view and
pick up the sun and that shady side.
was not only a problem, but it was
the problem.
THE monument had come to belong
to the world as the colossal art
production of modern times 1t had
given America new interest in the
South.
The 10 years of building have
taught a Nation what can be done
and what should be done with the
story of her fathers: the story of
her people. In the great Northwest
we are carving on the granite peaks
of the Rockies the empire builders Of
our great Republic. The Black Hills
work is completely laid out; models
are made. and my entire Stone Noun
tain staff under contract for the life
Of the Western work The heads OF
Washington. jefferson and Lincoln
will be 60 feet. These heads will rise
above the peaks of the small range
that lies east of the Rockies to an
altitude of 6.400 feet above sea level,
of a granite harder than Stone
Mountain. and can be seen at some
points for a distance OF over is miles.
They will rise clear against the sky
and in full relief. The problem again
is one of scale. and l am dealing with
the figures in such manner that
they will fit into the location We