Page:Hindu Art - its Humanism and Modernism.djvu/42

 Rodin was charged with the crime of being an "innovator" in art, for he introduced movement and action in statuary. His St. Jean Baptiste (1880) is a specimen in point, as also the interlaced figure's like the Hand of God holding man and woman in embrace, Cupid and Psyche, Triton and Nereid, etc. In regard to this "new technique," the representation of activity, we are told by Van Gogh that the "ancients did not feel this need." "To render the peasant form at work is," as he reiterates, "the peculiar feature, the very heart of modern art, and that is something which was done neither by the Renaissance painters nor the Dutch masters, nor by the Greeks." (The Letters, 22, 24.)

It is thus clear why the theory and practice that seek movement in art-