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Cherry Wood, 1973

That specification of sculpture as tension of force between the under-lying helicoidal axis and superposed rhythm of planes, in Sokolov is tempered by the artist's choice to work, free from preparatory modelling, in direct-carving. The Modernism of the French school of sculpture by taille directe started , and in reaction to the Academic abuse of sculpture made by mathematical measuring , where Gauguin's 1881 onwards wood-carving set wide artistic influence by his 1906 Salon d'Automne retrospective . Dallos taking the taille directe baton onwards from where many including Brancusi & Modigliani had by 1908 forwarded such carving revelation and which later had had Gimond as modeller vaunt an expression of sculpture in similar purification, lastly from Dallos influenced Sokolov to attempt his own reconciliation between direct carving and the figurative subject .

Direct carving of torsos from a monolith tends towards Mannerist use of quadrangular space or twisting of forms into that space, so even figurative structures sharing the helicoidal abstractions of Brancusi et al. , and, stone carving because being a risky as if storm-bound & emotional activity involves the artist's own rhythmic movement also bound by quadrangular space: a control of the monolith by the chisel as transmitter of will can only be pushed so far, or, for the keeping of impacts directed towards the mass then involves the artist's constant moving of his own positions, else disaster storms in. That is, a chief carving necessity is to direct the force of impact upon the stone towards the strength of its mass because it will fracture at parts already 'separated' from the mass. This underlying nature of the material alone is common to whatever method of stone sculpture except that of entirely cutting every excavation by machines, because thereby all strain towards unforeseen breakage may be avoided. However, machine-cutting possesses disadvantages and centrally of these is that its very speediness in the opaque material of stone acts to diminuish the mental capacity to conceive of the sculptural elements in that opacity.

Sokolov however by 1978 and in his early working found the technical means to overcome that as if the basic law -- of needing to direct the force of the chisel towards the centre of the mass, and believes what he found solved the problem of the mass leading the placement of the chisel in a new 'shaft-spinning' means to always control the force of the point chisel into only close breakage of the stone as against - if digging in in an obstinacy of blows, such producing a pent-up danger. Rather, the new method allowed the carver to free the chisel from all that danger of stone fracturing by its own as if volition and instead fracture only at the sculptor's volition, with therefore this technique being the cardinal means to any direct-carver's personal 'liberation' . This for it enabling a complete control and especially of by having that control such then freeing the any carver from the emotional storm or psychological fear brought on by the otherwise risked chance of breakages, the which follows on and too late to repent of, with the single agonizingly dull sound of as it were stone-death , as which ends the bright and optimistic normal resonancing of marble.

Stone sculpture due to its opacity has long divided between what may be termed true direct-carving that distinguishes itself from false or 'pointing machine' carving by the latter setting by drilling into the block the exact points of the surface already fixed in a clay model, so pre-setting these deep inside the opacity. By this the opaque quality of stone is entirely displaced and thus never is pointing an emotional activity, for, never is it an exercise of artistic judgement reacting upon the opacity. The direct-carving lesson of Paris Modernism and succeeding Avant-garde was by the rejection especially of Rodin's (assistants') "pointing" from his pre-judged modelling in that that by such measuring defeated the very nature of stone - its opacity - which thus perverted all the truly emotive sculptural impact and retained it within the dimensions of a purely decorative art. One late nineteenth century description of what was decorative Salon Sculpture, & that which even Rodin had sought to reform, was that its perfections were as if "squeezed ready formed from a tube of paste". Although Rodin sought greater expressiveness, largely by 'impressionistic' exaggerations of his modelling, eventually after his death a famous court case revealed that he had all along deceived his patrons into imagining he as the master had exercised his mastery of hand in his marble works and thus that they possessed the true efforts of a genius in marble.

In regards the reaction seeking to recapture the elemental qualities become so apparent by the then new collecting of third-world sculpture , an art un-affected by the always dominatingly technological stone-carvings from between high-Egypt and Akkadian precursors to the Greeks turning from their Archaic stiffness into the well-known flowingly draped exactitudes of hellenistic movements, here it is that the activity of direct carving in its return to the third-world innocences or emotional freedoms of modernism in direct carving always involves the simple straightness of a chisel's force yet always has to reconcile that forms in living nature are never straight and that the volumes of figures compose within opposites, so involve the creative mind in conceptual mirroring .

An oddity of direct carving is that, beyond such as if mirroring of forms, that all chisels travel in that an unnatural straight line, but taken into or as if not caressing nature's curves, because although a draughtsman would leave curved lines, at each force upon a chisel such is only straight-forwards, and only depth supplies any the curve. It is advised that whereas nigh myth (because he was so secretive ) recounts Michelangelo working by ever deepening of an initial relief, so drawing, and/or lifting a model free by releasing opaque milk from its bath, that the truer way of 'thinking' is as if akin to the skinning of a hide: a separation is the process, but a blind one , just as with such skinning the worker does not see the separated flesh he yet knows will separate, only concentrates on the moment of separating and at that the exact place of then that moment. In direct marble carving equally there is no either option nor intent to break away more than the exact moment requires, but the 'border' provides the existence of what is potential and still bound as if un-skinned, and covering what may be expected to come to sight but yet remains hidden, and that can be pushed much more slowly than would a skinner reveal flesh, but as of similar border between blindness and yet expectation , or 'faith'.

Such is of the process of deepening, by which the carver commits to what cannot ever be undone and when the feeling for a direct-carver is guided by between the leaving of as much of the excess or as if ruffled and so blinding (by as if half-skinned skin) what is of at that moment still un-worked marble so as contrasts with the visible contour of already revealed carving, as of in simile the skinner's revealed flesh; and by such as if a deepening of the relief, the less that the 'blind' volume is attacked then the more can it offer future as if expressive 'refuge', to contain anything dimly conceived because plainly un-drawable on what is an ever changing and anyway super-rough surface .

If indeed there is any 'joy' in direct carving, it lies in this the activity itself granting its own potentials, and probably the more any pre-fixed ideation then the less potentials are realised, but whether preconceived or not, the technique is of retaining as much that is left 'un-done' as possible, so of learning to think between the blind, of the unworked marble , alongside the deepening relief, and all under the automated control of the point that deepens ( and often faster than the best diamond machines ). It is the technique of utterly controlling that the momentary acting of the point that provides the liberty of the any artist to so 'dream', because in controllable way deepen and thus follow those the own or nature's curvatures, but do so without commitment to some preconception. This, for the first and 15th century authors concerning Renaissance paintings, howsoever a different subject, led to recognition by Leon Battista Alberti of when he had stated that a contributing constituent of beauty is the act of execution by hand (manus), which in turn provides grace (gratias), in his De re aedificatoria, 188-9, but, whereof conjoins for direct-carving through the later collector Francesco Scannelli, equally evaluating that connection between brushwork and ingenium: "the wise ones in this famous profession of painting, those blessed with the purest taste, are wont to value above all else the first lines and simple contours that take shape under the learned hand [da dotto mano], of the spirit in action [vero expresione de piu puro, ed efficace spirito'. , in his Il Microcosmo della pintura, Cesena 1657. p 129 ) .

It is that direct-carving , when its outcome is surrendered to the as if unthinking absence of preconception, so of the process linked only to feeling or as then by Scannelli was termed spirit, that renders the possibility of its expression.

That is, if the point-work is so learnt as to be at each blow the automatically chosen either 'left' or 'right' such breaking by this control is the both safety and 'liberty'- choice, for the eyes of each precise moment see which side of the straight-forwards blow to remove the marble ; the choice is made, and the opposite side can be chosen to be left un-broken, so to become the sculpture, or at least to retain its potential to be so. However, without such simple choice, without that point-chisel technique, you are either left to fearfully as if nibble at the marble as inoffensively as possible , as with a compressor, or, take up a brute of a diamond-disc, both of which act against the moment's contemplation needed to leave what should be untouched, or against that sensing of what indeed should be touched.

For the modeller all this choice within risk is evaded, as the modeller is given endless repair in what is an additive as well as substractive process, but for the carver the activity involves an as if dance of all these moments, to reconcile what is straight in its essence by virtue of that in the direction of any blow of the chisel it is firstly purely straight in its force even when the surfacing which is sought is curved. Such involves thus the referred sculptor's 'dance' and that such also includes for the avoiding of fragments that also fly straight- towards the eyes, to avoid which the carver has to shift endlessly to also position his or her face into its own safety because ineluctably the chisel's resultant fragments also fly straight, and particularly when working in an either purely upward or, downward point-travel, if the face is not moved from usual viewpoint then impact broken fragments into the eyes. (Wearing of goggles for a lifetime is not to be recommended, and learning to move out of the upward/ downward plane avoids other sideways moving fragments. )

The point chisel although can be used as did early ancients, of copper such, in a vertical pounding of fragmenting a surface, simply then moving it sideways very slightly to slowly lower the surface, through this the 'spinning' technique enables point work to not only easily run a forwards 'line', a line visible from where the stone is bruised, because showing always a lighter colour of there its broken crystalization, but also of knowing how such line will have impacted its surrounds because the technique so predictably determines where the stone will break, and either to one side or other of such line the always straight-impacts create. It the shaft-spinnng that allows the carver to not have to as, before, fear to 'bend' a such line whose final purposes are always just as curvylinear as for the modeller but whom is not so forced to 'dance' to better direct the every-time straightness of point impacts because a spatula indeed can curve into the material as if a knife through a soft butter, and a butter that does not strike 'back' with its own fragments: the shaft spun chisel by that will break the marble on the 'side' it is spun-towards, so gives automated control over and above that- plainly, the driving of a 'line' will because deepen into the marble then act as excavation of curving or space.

That the referred striking-back of marble is as if a governance, and because dangerous, requires repetition and of the certainty that if a chisel is held such as to strike vertically upwards, or downwards, then the fragments fly straight-way into the eyes, so the sculptor must beforehand 'dance' sideways out of that vertical plane. "Wear glasses" you might think, as in "wear a mask" or even "wear gloves" , but for the first, these become dusty as soon as put down, and a mask becomes putrid with vapour, and gloves- these prevent that the here described vital shaft-spinning element of instantaneous choice of the binary impacting - to the leftwards or rightwards (of the straight impacting-force, so choosing either of such dual ways to 'eat' the marble). Gloves remove this cardinal ability to swivel the chisel-shaft so to re-set the tip's quadrangular gradient to left-wards or right-wards. The doing so, by one spin left-wise or right-wise each blow simply effects that the marble will break to the left or the right (and will break as far as the prior fracture-lines to such left or right).

Without such technique the carver cannot known whether the marble will break to such one or other side, so cannot choose to retain one side's stone whilst remove its opposite side; then the sculptor cannot profit by knowing that if there is already a driven bruised-line to one side that the newer line will make the marble break but only 'up' as far as that preceding other line.

The there referred 'automatically' is of the here sculptor's Paris master's master Gimond's simile from poetry and that a poet naturally learns all the letters with which to write a poem but does not thus need to think in those letters in the moment at which he writes, for the actual writing is become as if automatic, to lie deep under the actual creativity. In this carving technique, the individual momentary decision of spinning once at each 'hit' (for one slight , in fact quarter- chisel rotation either way is all that it takes) is dictated by the mind's-eye 'held' at that stage concept of form, or curved surface, and of the surface , either being originally naturally rough, or sawn, or to then having the preceding chisel-working so bruised line-marks already, with whichever yet the minds-eye having the instantaneous 'choice' of what is to be 'broken' so as an in effect hollowing away, before just as instantly succeeding the first strike , the more strikes each one setting the chisel tip into where the prior removed fragments enable that further re-setting such that more other fragmenting is removed, always in a line or forwards, as supra referred, but at each blow with one and instant choice being of having chisel-spun either quarter turn one-side or the other by either permitting the choosing of which side the material will fragment, so, deepen.

This spinning action is as if akin to the obeying of a law or as if breathing unconsciously- where to remove is dictated in relation to all prior removed, and thus far is between perceptible form and conceived imaginary form, so, between what is felt necessary 'space' being marble to remove and thus creation of empty space around space remaining as solid future sculptural form; and the marks or lines of prior point-advances mostly as if 'advise' the eye. To visualise, say, a breast or low-cone as is to be curved, carving starts by that a cup-width line is sculpted (say) in a flat topped stone-form, and the point swivelling is away from the centre, so to the right; but it's next line (of point-removal) , at the same depth , is sculpted further out by, say, an inch, concentrically parallelling the first round line but, the point can be swivelled then back to that the first inner line so swivelled inwards to the left, but the stone will only break then as far as that former line's depth of fracture. However, to deepen outwards, so form a curve down the sides of the cone, the point is swivelled away from the centre, etc etc.

The simile is that just as the poet doesn't think in letters at all, the carver in this technique doesn't need to think of how to remove the stone by each fragmenting, only think of the overrall material's form, and / or of what he / she wishes it to become. As example here, a carving could be of the producing of a cone, or, a concave , if opposite, or even of a space.. The rule or law is not only of that the marble holding firm will always break up to the prior line, but that it will always more easily break to the ' spun' directing of the flat-tip of the four-bevelled point-chisel acting against the marble, and at each hammer-strike pre-shifted by that its next quarter-twist that sets that bevel to left or right, because in the second and succeeding strikes it lies deeper in the marble where held to the place already at first-blow fragmented, so lies where the carver has made an effective hollow or preparatory 'dig-in'. It is struck once to set it in, and then swivelled once more to set the bevel- and if hasn't fragmented the stone, is set further but with another same-directed swivel until breaks. In practice the sculptor can un-thinkingly decide to cut a long line, and either by 'feeling' how at each inch the marble reacts, or, because already has the preceding a (safety ) line, keep swinging away, whilst carrying on a conversation., say. All the means of breaking is forgotten and automatic, like compiling letters into words, so to speak, ant thus the minds-eye need not be disturbed from alone thinking of the overall form and between visual and conceptual aspects, and, given the slowness, have that a conversation as well.. To further render the cone in similar rule the point can be driven much harder as distances away from the retained inner (still flat ) area, and choice be 'felt' either to rapidly deepen by much harder striking and potentially away from the centre so twisting towards as if virgin exterior volume as requires removal, although then the risk is only lessened because that if, say, of such altogether the original flat block-surface, will be not expected to too much break anyway for its mass being as yet un-worked and thus more 'compact' the sculptor will know that virginity cannot be attacked safely, for could break the chisel if too light a point, or, if the marble is not 'compact' would risk large scale breakage of its' say blocky-form . The exampled releasing of the cone may be created simply by returning to any one prior line and following it but further twisting to control that a further breakage deeper not occur where not required, so, that the twisting making the fragmentation itself obey the 'rule'. Or , say the overall cone is itself to be shaped by a 'valley' as other deepening at say, one side, cross-lines can be driven across the 'round' prior lines and the twisting can make at least the second & etc such cross line 'rule' their own adding fragmentation.

And, in regards modelling or carving, the difference amongst other things is that for the modeller it is rather the will to limit the possibilities in order to avoid the confusion given by endless possibility whereas the direct-carver already constrained by the opacity and brittleness has the sole advantage of the stone lending an innate as if purity to the results, or at least offering very little in terms of any such modelling distraction through detailing or complexities: its opacity limits the brain's preconceptions of details, and its brittleness disfavours these entirely (an example is of hair ) .

Whereas the history of art, taking between paleolithic to archaic forms as all being carved, and then by only using harder stones to carve by as being without chisels, these all demonstrate the belated Modernist purity or simplicity of forms, yet modelling because given by invention the ability to repeat itself into marble, as in Classicism, imposes all the modeller-detailing upon its public, and the public enjoy such craft in the same manner as came to enjoy cinematography, by suspending their disbelief, and believing the marble detailing and complexity to be the product, as in a Michelangelo and Bernini, of some divine genius these had - to not only see through the opacity but also to retain all the (reverse or mirrored ) volumetric details in their minds. That is, just as in cinematography, one likes to suspend the normal judgement of that what is seen, then, is not forced composition, but as if reality itself.

Everyone is more or less aware of the draperies of a Michelangelo or even the rippling musculatures of Rodin, and writers since the former's death have liked to present not that he obscured, and destroyed the modelling facts of his creating, and that he did so rather to erect an as if divine-mystery upon those his compositions; he is supposed to have eschewed the age-old use of the 'running-drill' being chief and simplified mechanical means to overcome the here subject being of the brittleness so impossible in-carve-ability of marble drapery as details, and that his single un-destroyed life-size terracotta model in the Casa Buenarotti reveals also that the opacity problem of marble was overcome by him in same way as ever since classical times, by carefully measuring from models into carvings, and just as Rodin so much later, if in differing stylizations and before industrialization made actual rigid all-measuring "pointing machine" pantographs cheap, and such mechanised means to overcome the opacity of marble and so the concomitant blindness, that was in fact already overcome by the ancients of Classicism. Such is to say that the Vatican Pieta's drapery, and all entire, did not flow from a carver's slow conceptual almost divine mastery over marble, and by divine-mirror-like reversal from opacity to revelation, but rather was all tested and preconceived in clay, with additive and subtractive design reversals; and Michelangelo efficiently used models even to check perspective for perspective drawing of the figures of his Sistine Chapel.

Few examples can definitely demonstrate such techniques because the models unlike the marbles are fragile, but in the similar and later case of Bernini, the Getty Museum publishes a fantastically detailed monograph revealing how in one even smallish bozzeto or maquette he left upwards of fifty marks as measuring points for his (extremely highly-trained ) assistants to work from.

It can seem depressing for the public to be disabused of their illusion but it must be clarified, so in Educational Fair Use over his Copyright, of the many serious observers the most outstanding comes from the late Boston Museum of Fine Arts' curator Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III in his Greek Sculpture and Roman Taste: The Purpose and Setting of Graeco-Roman Art in Italy and the Greek Imperial East, of University of Michigan Press, 1977, between pages 14 and then 27, "It is no great feat to double or triple the proportions of a Greek original when making a marble copy" and "They [copyists] could make statues that seemed original merely by copying famous masterpieces in reverse on the same scale as the original or in larger and smaller versions. The second Fogg Meleager has been cited as an example. Once again the pointing machine did much of the work. If a series of pointed bars were lined up on the statue or a cast thereof and then moved sideways to a block of marble, the results were a duplication of the original statue. If, however, the pointed bars were all on rotating pins or swivels so they could swing 180 degrees in the opposite direction, all gestures, proportions, and details of the original statue or relief come out in precise, mirror reversal. When a few details or attributes were varied, the results seemed as original as if the copyist had created a fresh visual idea, a new dimensional experience, ...Thus in this grand monument of funerary architecture and sculpture, a full cycle of creativity and copyism that began with the Athenian marble lion of 390 B.C. has been reached six hundred and fifty years later in proto-Medieval Asia Minor. The same Greek funerary purposes of balanced order have been served, but the whole history of Greco-Roman copyism and elaborate architectural setting has intervened."

For the direct carver it is, of course, exactly and differingly from all modellers, necessary that there be the mass to absorb the impacts: it is only by drilling and better by running drills along their lines to protect the forms of draperies that one can avoid such necessary impact-absorbtion being defeated by brittleness ( a 'running-drill' was the classical precursor of what is now the electro-diamond-ed 'router' ) . Simply, 'deep' drapery cannot be safely chiselled, and because broken drapery, since visually central to the overall, amounts to fiasco, only that the circa 400 B.C. ( the same thus 390 B.C. ) and invention of the running-drill permitted such novelty, as opposed to the preceding two centuries of 'shallow drapery', assisted, that is and as such as the famed Sheila Adam once at the Athens School has itemized, by simple drilling of series of holes enabling (shallow) 'entry'.

Drapery itself serves the functional as opposed to aesthetic capacity of re-inforcing the -because brittle- endangered nature of extended limbs etc., even being pin-pointable to the earlier Archaic era ceramic-votives' original goddess-design behind the now so famous Venus De Milo, as of her skirt acting even in ceramics as that structural reinforcement, just as later in the marble; and by now large numbers of academics have isolated all examples of classical marble developments.

The hugely different nature of modelling suffers, to repeat, the consequent superfluity of its opportunities, up to that the modeller is even best advised to stand as far back as possible, thus, to use a medium length stick to pound at a clay model to gain perspectives by having thereby that longer viewpoint, but for the carver there has always to be a sense of rhythm in the artistic process even if silent to his final production: differing types of chisels involve different tempos throughout the repetitive manipulations of these tools ; some very fast, such as toothed chisels, are even best used in a 'retreating mode', to avoid digging too deeply inwards, or, small points because as hammer quicker than medium, and even slower when of large points. For any a direct-carver, these variations add their own rhythms, and can, on a spring day, find birds answering what to them can appear competitive phrases of sounds. (These rhythmic elements became ones that eventually also required Sokolov's (pseudonymous ) extra-sculptural percussion attention, as sound-sculpture, where the rhythm had, alongside, his interest in that physical forms of instruments (conga, timpani, rocket etc) determine their timbres. See Alejxis Pneu Percussion Orchestra etc. )

The general public's interest in stone sculpture, if any, remains pre-Modernist as continues to be dominated by that all from the Renaissance, indeed everything after the Greek Archaic of pre-6th century, is ' fake news ' when considered by a direct-carver: the perfection whether of a Baroque but neo-classical Bernini or an Impressionist Rodin is not the perfection of chiselling by eye but the perfection of chiselling by number: all distances so depths & protrusions are pre-set then drilled exactly to the millimetre, taking away all both thought and technical evaluation . These show up in Rodin's Paris museum, where assistants lazily drilled too deep, etc. Indeed in the present day a robot can exactly and more quickly perform what sculpture 'assistants' always performed, relieving the great artist, particularly known in the case of Bernini, who at his height is reckoned to have employed some fifteen thousand persons, so from any need to even model and still less cast such to more durable intermediary terra-cotta, nor even less be concerned with marble. Bernini , as himself from adolescence utterly trained in modelling was equally even from childhood trained as master draughtsman, so knew to at an early maturity employ the best modellers who could translate his only loose drawings of differing planes into the life-size pre-marble terracottas, which he could visit for checking and to instantly perfect any buttery swirl they had not risen to. His mind could thus be free to design arrays of sculptures and architecture in which to place such as as we still admiringly but ignorantly see.

Famed marvels such as these are 'known' to all - but Michelangelo carries greatest factor to have so carefully hidden his activities the better to conjure the image of the artist as divine maker, the which mere copying by measured rote would undo, just as eventually sullied the modeller Rodin's reputation. Bernini already in his time had the full equivalent of a modern digitization in his team, who could from their start of any howsoever large project make up firstly the full-size models, even of the architecture into wooden demonstrations from no more than his quick 2-d sketches ; he could visit these and instantly perfect a detail whilst checking, before then these be transcribed by the rest of the team into marble ready for final architectural insertion. Bernini was as if now the full team of artist-to-digital programme-to-robots, and a chief present interest is of where, or at what point the human artist will entirely disappear, so, involving societal consideration at levels beyond the mere continuation of how our religions, and then power-structures, long determined such. The parallel, in painting, is as David Hockney has long attacked, and of that all realism from the Renaissance onwards when closely analized reveals use of the camera obscura (before then the camera lucida ) - in effect, painting from outlines of imaged reality.

Meanwhile one part of this more interesting aspect is that, for sculpture, that compared to paintings remained (until Canova) closely the subject of 'commissions' , is that whereas the historic pointing from models was always the subservience to the powers-as-were, and acted as if today's 3-d digital robotics , and for the production of propaganda as if was the equivalent of film before photography was invented, it is how the character of the society in which these or earlier classical monuments were created that remains to be assayed in regards our future. Still left un-commented upon, is that in our now age of robots working from digital scans, the any artist is entirely unnecessary, and the populace itself only has to 'choose' a figurative subject for commemoration, so choose whom to scan, and their vote for such can be entirely digitally realised, as the democratization of sculpture-without-sculptors. (Of course, at least one sculptor takes scans , from masterpieces, and because digitally then alters parts of such, so to 'embody' the differences by robot, by that can evade the a plagiarism question.)

These the solely technical aspects, as updated by 3-d laser scanning for Computer Numerically Controlled - CNC 7-axis routers, now become even the removal of any artist from the scene of sculpture or architecture altogether (and painting likely soon as well, as already invented is the printing of anything fully as 'sub-surfacing' into one-off false-stone etc slabs : a cafe owner can have his own art or logo fixed as if is immemorial into faux-marble table-tops. Sculptors, of various names, have conclusively proved, for more than two decades, that , with 3-d laser scanning from life, that not even a modeller is necessary, and still less the marble sculptor of even any pointing system at all: designs can be scanned and then simply uploaded to foreign factories and these never even be visited. Such is the Pietrasanta Italian experience (although would-be sculptors still flock to its expensive environs, for the ambience ). Here it is not the place, however, to enter the wider philosophical-type discussion of power and the use by power or society, of art, nor particularly the novel use by 'artists' of robotics, rather here the gift is towards direct-carving and that the Paris-emanating path towards an individual's liberty, that is of in essence for the individual as the sole both cause and resolution choosing to create an own felt expression.

If direct-carving's remains of any peculiar interest, because is esoteric in the face of art-history's never-ending fake-news , and that built on the usual inertia peculiar to academic fields, and when most countries only refer it as if what is the practical basis to a "mason's yard" and therein for the production of architectural moldings, (itself now robot-obviated ) , direct carving had had for Alexander Sokolov a personal progression from this the over-riding lesson that where although as modeller Marcel Gimond preceded the direct-carver Miklos Dallos, each knew that the sole aim of the 'free artist / artiste libre' was to arrive at expressing the forms that his or her mind could, or wished to, 'feel' : this was the only liberty possible or desirable. Gimond equally simply defined that 'life is form and spirit and that the plastic ( of 'arts plastiques' ) is form and feeling ', so , as what is now (UNESCO) protected as the term "artistic expression" .

And from such also remains the apparently but not truly esoteric interest of carving, for is an activity that cannot occur to people who see only the in-effect falsity of the classical-type, but then if really considered involves what it is that is the means of direct carving, even now in the age when these further machines exist beyond those long ago designed by those the classicals before then again by Leonardo to even better pre-measure carvings, so better than by the always strings and calipers invented before classicism by the Greeks (and all including their stone-on-stone drills in fact borrowed from the Egyptians & Akkadians ).

Almost annoyingly it is that we still live in a stone-age, if one of diamonds. And, only (those ) academics studying half-finished ancient examples speak of how the 'running-drill', so, moveable router, it was, from c. 400 BC that replaced multiple drill-holes to enable faster & deeper carving of 'deep' drapery, that in consequence then floweringly appeared, so altering all major figurative possibilities because could support the such beyond prior limitations, and such deeper drapery still more measured from models where , at least provable during the Renaissance , this saw actual fixing of later plaster-hardened cloths over modelled figures , as means to purport even as if the wind, & that thus enabled exact model-simulation of their floating as if evanescent forms ( measuring from the fixed plaster cloths before finishing by using that the so called running-drill moved along horizontally to cut grooves rather than single holes ). The Venus De Milo ceramic-precursor support-evolution simply extended its original archaic simplicity, but, for a direct-carver- or a Modernist - the results were that what became ever more the preconceived modelling of Classicism as rather served to remove the entire expressive charm once as if native to the paleolithic and the 'archaic' up through to the age of agriculture, so, as modelling's preconceptions that became only power-accumulations termed 'civilizations', and of these requiring propaganda, so, preconceived imagery .

In contrast to the general apparent wish to believe in predecessors of an unknowable cultural genius, the esoteric interest in the activity of direct non-modelled and non-drilled stone-carving has here on these pages the simply cruder record of one individual's passage towards his own freedom; although, as Dallos warned, it takes a whole life to mount one exhibition of good sculpture, whereas here almost the entire trajectory is placed for its own developmental relating (some works are lost, some stolen, some never photographed) . If the entire was edited down to perhaps fit in one normal 'gallery' space, the story could be such as then Dallos advised; but how to carve is not here visible, and such is not of chance but the result of a one governmental choice to state that the filmic such recording be dismissed because without "critical element of work", but, the technique used is consequently described in words under the title Technique Sokoloff, and as yet only in street-level or rather 'studio-level' French because was a communicating towards an actual other French sculptor when was written. And for the general viewer, only Sokolov's lifelong rejection of these technically mechanical hereabove means of producing the normal classical-type apparent masterworks goes towards explaining these contrarily differing and cruder images, and as act to illustrate that in essence, direct-carving is a form of voluntary blindness, but a blindness leading towards the peace of inner freedom, but away from the enchaining of preconceived 'artistic reproduction' , as in copying of one-self let alone of others, for, given the beastly dustiness and weight of the material, that was best reserved, in classical times, to actual slaves.

In this circumstance Alexander Sokolov's being a portraitist working by taille directe is unusual, and, counter-intuitive for such as modellers (or now, robots which materialise an as if uploadable ghost as allows in effect 3-d photography ); yet portraiture encapsulates how his 1978 found technique enabled Sokolov's combination of the dual Paris influence between Gimond's bronze-precursive modelling and differently his mature-student Dallos' rejection of such through direct-carving. (For those of close interest, Gimond did at periods carry-on extra-mural teaching, but Dallos was one of his formal Beaux Arts students, and one who already pre-War had completed a Beaux Arts training at Budapest); and Gimond's disgust at extra-mural teaching of would-be sculptors it was that apparently gave Dallos the anecdote of that, on initial viewing of anyone's portfolio photographs, Gimond simply flicked in turn all such upon the studio floor.

The (although) modeller Gimond saw sculpture's salvation not in -as was - the epocal rediscovery of 'Primitive' art but rather through the subtle infusion of the Archaic ability to convey an as it were static emotion into portraiture. Dallos as a carver embedded in then Sokolov the same rejection of details for the better concentration upon the clarity of forms. However, such the flicking of photographs to the floor can be taken as really that all artists of long-practice find disappointment in younger innocence.

So, in contrast to direct-carving as in effect began at Paris in 1906, lies the entire history of Western sculpture, where drills were essential for highlighting , undercuts, and indeed everything including the first definitions of any monolithic figure in its quarrying. Direct-carving is thus a 'revolution' , and to use it for such as portraiture is to carry it into the sphere of either perverse almost spiritual nonsense, given the modelling norm, or, simply to exhibit a kind of masochism; however only the technique of Sokolov's direct carving of portraiture because is one freed from such the emotional fear of carving, or hesitancy that the as if blind riskiness of direct carving within marble otherwise imposes, is of Sokolov finding release through his technique towards some reconciliation of carving in return to Gimond's archaicized but modelling calm, whilst, in his figurative efforts the taille directe becomes his freedom to attempt also a reconciliation from Modernism into figural senses those ancients of the Archaic possessed before the mechanically proficient Classical. That is, simply, Sokolov sought to figure his feelings and stumbled on a means to do so. This was to have taken one of Dallos first carver advices, of to hold a chisel shaft with the thumb in 'sync' with the fingers, so wrapped just like the fingers all on the same side of the shaft, in order to avoid pulverizing the thumb with a miss-hit because leaving that the thumb exposed, and, finding that when doing so that thereby this enabled a swivelling of the point, and that that the point by that could have a specific greater impact and one directionable in 'space'.

Beyond this which is purely technical, is that the concept of freedom or liberty in sculpture, that is , for now any others who themselves desire their own freedom because are as if haunted by their un-knowing of whether they can themselves become 'free' in marble , and when even the machinery of industrial diamonds stuck to steel discs cannot provide freedom any more than did the always pointing techniques for reproducing modelling into stone because rather are tools that present their own problem of that diamonds that turn marble into butter by their very speed prevent the contemplative thought inherent to the expression that is the only freedom, and is the here message.

It is rather that hand carving slowed to the tempo of thought is what enables the desired expression its time to develop. For Gimond the beaux arts teacher, the advice was that each person's own artistic personality is born of their own very attempts at expression rather than from their seeking individuality, such as by creating their own distinctive style , so, by dissociating themselves from others' expressions; rather that it was the very difficulties of expression at all that revealed their truer and lasting personality or style. In short, style, so evident throughout history, is not the path to freedom, rather freedom is in the absence of style.

Under Sokolov's technical control the hand-carving tempo is speeded out of where hesitancy and risk dominate blind carving; that is, by knowing where and how much the marble will fragment away gives a carver the power over the stone that otherwise the stone exercises over the carver. Sokolov conjoins, especially in portraiture, the tempo of carving to the multiplicity of planes involving that the individuality of a face be realisable ; the tempo is of the surety beforehand of where and exactly how much the stone will fragment, so, the first freedom is from fear or hesitation, before the full freedom is, that by having this control as if automatic, the carver is free to exercise the mind rather in its consideration of the planes bringing forth an identity that either drawings or , better, the memory retain. Simply, at every strike the knowledge of its effect is predetermined, so all necessity to think how to do what is needed to be done is obviated. The Paris simile was that the artist who learns an as if language starting with as if the letters of it, by mastery when arrives at composing a sentence or poem does so without thinking of the individual letters at all; so it is not a matter of learning how to carve marble, but of learning how to feel (a person) in the marble.

In that it is a fact that the eyes can only look upon any model or drawing entirely separately from looking at a stone-work in progress, from as early as Paris Sokolov abandoned all modelling, knowing that each or any glance to a model took away the concentration upon the marble block itself, even broke the spell of so concentrating, but, in portraiture especially this carries to the extreme, thus for his portrayals of faces Sokolov believes the height of freedom (of expression ) arrives by carving entirely from memory, where the abstract so as if dream of (real ) life describes by the simile of 'love', and as the abstraction of inner-memory (love) perceptible to each human being and existing internally in the mind before may be realised, howsoever sketchily, in the totally material nature of stone.

The building of the internal image is as one we all know and we all do (when in love) but the only substitute for such memory can only either be between clay modelling, from a 'sitter' , or as is possible, carving from a sitter, but, cannot be fully provided from an any one drawing, for the any one 2-d such cannot inform of but rather only suggest the full 3-d planes, leaving that , for economy and this chiefly not to waste the sitter's own time, that large numbers of partial sketch-drawings as if annotate individual elements of 3-d in planes. This is, however, not the activity that produces what are termed 'drawings', rather is of notes that end up ground to pieces amongst sharp marble floor debris. Sokolov, who at least feels himself free because has made such drawing related portraits, believes the very best single way to carve a portrait, or one that has 'cleanest' sculptural value, meaning plastic content of what to religions is termed spirit, is by memory, where the internal image is not separated at any moment from the actually transforming material of the stone as the carving uncovers it.

Of course, for those to whom photographical exactitude appeals, the sitting in which calipers measure noses to chins and etcetera for modelling that is as if is a 3-d-photo to then be taken by pointing into then a marble copy, and perhaps is believed to contain the spirit of the subject, or, to show the spirit of the artist, yet , the simile is as if a human can feel free by feeling he or she is as good as a camera or as good as a robot (or a scanner and Computer Numerically Controlled router ). What is shown on these pages is the freedom of choosing not to be a robot, and rather to admit human frailty : really, the only general relevance is as regards what it still means to be free as a a human, and within that, of how in this one esoteric way it is possible to become free if feeling (in expressive terms ) un-free. It can be assumed that just as a small or large proportion of children dream to be footballers, or musicians, or what have you, the desire to be a Michelangelo assails some micro-percentage also, and the feeling, greatly certain in his case, must be of feeling absolutely un-free to so emulate.

Deeper comment elsewhere could dwell between the cultural fact that pre-1300 it was Medieval Sculpture's norm precisely not to attempt to render reality, for such was as if to challenge the very Creator, leaving us that the Madonna's of such Age bespeak faith rather than as if mortal beauty, and the cultural fact that religion weakened in its original pieties such as to allow carnality its entry, and the paining fact that the more a carving captures the memory or as if love, the guiltier does such working progression seem, of art transformed into exactly that the other and Creator's preserve. We all know what some faith/s forbid, but not altogether why they so forbid.

The thus only other storm or hesitancy to really arise to the frailty of the direct carver (of portraits ) is from the inter alia biblical 5th Commandment's injunction not to engrave any image (of abstract life ), and as arises ever more fully as the portrait takes on the identity under the essentially 'divorced' artist's power or freedom, and because is the power of creating, so, the more successfully such as the memory may enable the spirit to so be captured, this is the taking of the power not only of that person but the taking of the thereby protected divine expression. That it is which enables comprehension of the prohibition, but, then, such also enters to the philosophical area beyond this introduction, except that reference, finally, is made to the difference between what certain academics have termed "facsimile portraiture", being of the class of indirect sculpture because being reproductions taken from face-casting, or death-masks, and which return thus to the injunction by the fifth century Saint Augustine in his De doctrina christiana in which external appearances [species] are treated with suspicion for being sensual and corrupting, whereas more idealised modes of representation [signa] are permissable because refer to something beyond the representative subject, "making some other thing come to mind beside the impression that it presents to the senses", so, to the ineffable qualities that derive from humanity's supposed likeness to the Divinity.