Abstract

Translation by Matthew Vollgraff

Auguste For has no preconceived ideas. He gathers, he builds, he constructs, he is “constructing.” He does not make the artistic effort of transposing a “symbolic schema” into the world of objects; he is a “symbolic schema” himself.[fn 1] He has crossed through the mirror. With old bits of wood, scrap metal, pieces of rubber, shards of glass, trouser buttons, and old pennies, he constructs himself, he builds at random. It would be wholly out of place and pointless to try to describe the man on one side and the work on the other. He is at once man and work. It would be equally out of place to look for some kind of perfection in his work. Perfection is a concept and as such has none of the completeness of a life.