michel coste - sculptures

Marine 2010 Daum art issues 375 copies, 42 cm (16,53 inches) high

I created the first version (“L’Accueil Ste-Marine”) in 1997 for the wedding of a niece of mine in Combrit-Sainte Marine, Finistere : sea breeze, an ample generosity in giving oneself, evocative of Iseult recognizing Tristan –“She opens her arms wide : “Here I am, take me” ”. On the following year, I granted Joan of Arc the same gesture for her church in Rouen; twelve years later, Daum took it up in a crystal version.

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Phryne 2012, Daum, 375 copies, 51 cm (20,07 inches) high

Lover to sculptor Praxiteles (and model of the Aphrodite of Knidos). As she was prosecuted, her defender, at his wits end, removed her veil; the sight quite dazzled her judges: everything in the impression of modesty she casts, in the curve of her back, in her reflective face and her arm flung out by the disrobing, everything suggests the presence of the great veil stolen off her but in which she nevertheless still seems to be wrapped as in unequalled mystery (see page 39).

When I originally created “La Dame au magnolia” (The Lady of the Magnolia), that woman was clad in a petal of magnolia-shaped veil. In my mind, it would be in semi-transparent glass paste. But the challenge was technically testing for Daum. Their Artistic Manager eventually told me : “Take her veil off : Phryné/Free-née”.

(Translated by Michèle Bustros)