flamenco bronze 2005 / la conversation bronze 2006 et 'voulez-vous danser ?' marbre 2006 / le creuset bronze 2000 / le doux roulis bronze 2012 / cœur épris bronze 2005 / l'anneau d'or terre 2012 / étreinte1 terre 2010

75

For a history of couple scultping

    Couples can be found in songs, in films, in photos, in engravings, in paintings … when will they be found in sculpture ? In India, they were happily represented; they had a wild time with Rodin, the Hell of an exception … Will they not eventually bloom in our traditional sculpture –Sculpture would have, through thousands of years, celebrated beauty and seduction in women and men, and it would fail to unite them, to arouse mutual love in them ?
  With Renaissance, a kind of incipience can be sensed with the representation of love “rapes” –i.e. abductions- in Florence and Rome (by Giambologna, Bernini…). With the 19th century, some heat pervades lovemaking representation with Canova’s Psyche revived by Cupid’s (i.e. Love’s) Kiss (grace and languor), Carpeaux’s Dance (joy and flesh aflutter), not to mention Rodin’s exceptional profusion including the Cathedral, The Kiss, the various figures of passion in the pangs of Hell(*), and yet with one major exception : 1883-1893, Rodin himself/C.Claudel, the master and his practitioner, two sculptors with a rare force –and a mad love- both doomed, thus providing a Hell-wise version of lovers. Then, with the Moderns, next to nothing. But what about tomorrow ? Let us try to understand.
   All along my History of sculpture, I do not refer to the classical bridegroom/bride (or brother/sister) couple with each figure sitting enthroned or standing or lying recumbent next to the other. I rather refer to the vivid and realistic love-embrace that, all along centuries, sculpted women and men, all attraction and beauty, have been yearning for. What could explain such restraint in sculpture side by side with licence in images -whether pottery of ancient Greece, Pompey frescoes, Renaissance and 18th century drawings and paintings, or Chinese woodcuts dealing with erotic art, Picasso’s engravings and paintings (no sculptures whatsoever), and current images, more than ever trading upon that theme –in the field of press, cinema, television … while sculpture is off on that matter. What might be the reason for it ? A decrease in orders, because sculpture is more expensive than images, and more conservative ? No, for customers wishing to indulge themselves and able to afford unrestrictedly the price of their pleasure were never in shortage of. I should say the real explanation lies in sculptors’ lack of boldness, starting as early as their being conditioned in schools and tradition, two fields where proprieties matter as never before. Evidence of that : Picasso himself. Try to imagine the practical difficulty of sculpting a group (of two) with posing models –when posing is full contradiction of the issue.    Ultimately, that restraint seems to be resulting from the corporeality of sculpture, its flesh-related aspect by which it differs from images. For what is it about ? Two lovers awakening to their passion, the intimacy of their kisses and of the love they make, and, above all, the force their mating casts around, all such things that may be attractive, fascinating, shocking in the effect they make, fright-inspiring as well as turbid pleasure-inspiring. The reality of it is so forceful that it can offend the sensibilities of fragile viewers, young people, and even one’s wary self to a certain extend. Conveying that view in an image, a drawing, a painting, and even on television is introducing a notion of distance that more or less keeps the hurt at bay, makes it look illusive, rejects it into fantasized imaginations. In a sculpted scene, the same reality is suggested in a more direct, proximate way since it is as bodily as the lovers’ very flesh : sculpture, indeed, as love itself, is a path into the touch, and touch can move a heart of hearts upside down. Otherwise, why Carpeaux’s Dance, and Rodin’s couples heavily criticized as indecent ? “Each new world created by an artist renews our vision of the world”. Considering how profuse in lovers’ scenes our days may be, sculpture should, no doubt, join in, even though the art of sculpting such themes remains, so far, mountains and rivers in terra incognita. Boldness and delicacy requested.      "

(*)Few couples, in fact, are presented on the Gates of Hell. Solitary people, damned individuals, naked bodies, in torments, provokingly lusty, clothe the Gates, as an outrageously sexual version of the Infernos depicting Doomsday on cathedrals portals, retables, or other danse macabre paintings (Dance of Death paintings) and paintings by Hieronymus Bosch. What is more evident is that no couple by Rodin offers the relaxed joy of Carpeaux’s Dance.
(Translated by Michèle Bustros)