The "good Sculpture"
Purchase of The Faun was proclaimed as a great success. Chief curator Douglas Druick declared it Gauguin's "first ceramic". In 2001, The Art Institute sculpture curator, Ian Wardropper, said it was one of the most important acquisitions in the last twenty years. The Faun was included in a publication of Chicago's "Notable Acquisitions". It was accepted by a specialist in Gauguin ceramics, Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark. The consensus of analysis was that the half-man half-goat fitted with Gauguin's known exploration of primitivism, and various attempts were made to provide a detailed interpretation of The Faun's sexuality in terms of Gauguin's relationships. Druick noted "the absence of the often flaunted sign of a faun’s virility, resulting in an aura of impotence". Even after it was exposed as a forgery, James Cuno, the director of the Art Institute, still described it as "good sculpture".
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“You should go to picture-galleries and museums of sculpture to be acted upon, and not to express or try to form your own perfectly futile opinion. It makes no difference to you or the world what you may think of any work of art. That is not the question; the point is how it affects you. The picture is the judge of your capacity, not you of its excellence; the world has long ago passed its judgment upon it, and now it is for the work to estimate you.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)