Is it Venus brought forth by the sea ? Or Venus gazing at her reflection in a mirror ? It is Phryne, the courtesan of Ancient Greece, model to sculptor Praxiteles for his statues of Aphrodite – bared before him and her judges to her naked beauty. Now she is with the “Lovers of the St John Night” rising from their very fire : she edgewise opens to another field of sculpture that wells up an extended gravity in her, and, from the depths of such gravity, she seems to haul life in; she seems to materialize from the origin of the world, from a paradise forever unreachable, from the very happiness of lovers whence she was conceived; she, forever the harbour for traces and virtues of such happiness; she, forever the harbour for the longing to experience such sweetness herself; she, in the lover’s nakedness, in the nakedness of the a-newly born.

(Translated by Michèle Bustros)

 

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  LOVERS OF THE ST JOHN NIGHT
  filet sphérique et couple, bronze
  Fonderie du Gour 2/8 2000
  Hôtel National des Invalides
  Résidence du Gouverneur Militaire de Paris

  Table de réunion
  Bureau du Gouverneur Militaire
  bronze, fonderie Landowski, 1/1 2000