Génius of Arts, by Antonin Mercié

In many countries, September is the period when children go back to school...  Today's beautiful sculpture aims to encourage them to study the arts, with Antonin Mercié 'Génie des Arts' large haut-relief, visible at the Guichet du Louvre in Paris, facing the river Seine.

Génie, in terms of sculpture, or painting, describes a kid with wings, in this case he is sitting on the Pegasus winged horse. Sometimes the feet are covered with foliage ('rinceaux', in French).

 

This sculpture, made in 1877, replaced a Napoleon III sculpture from the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. (There is a similar sculpture on the Jules Michelet tomb, visible at the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris). It is made in hammered copper.

Antonin Mercié (1845-1916) was a famous French sculptor, who received the Prix de Rome in 1868 (when he was 23 years old!). He made a famous 'David' bronze sculpture (edited at 100 copies, the large one is visible at the Orsay Museum in Paris. He sculpted the Arago monument in Perpignan, a marble sculpture for the tomb of the wife of Charles Ferry, called 'Souvenir'. And several other monuments, for Jules Ferry, Meissonier, Louis Faidherbe, Adolphe Thiers,  and a 'Regret' sculpture for Alexandre Cabanel tomb. And also a large stone sculpture called 'Justice'...

Below, photograph of Antonin Mercié in his studio (115, boulevard Saint Michel Paris).
 

Mercié was also a painter, one of his famous painting being the Michel Angelo studying anatomy (1885). He was one of the teacher at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris, for both drawing and sculpture. He became President of the French Artists society in 1913.He is resting in Toulouse, at the Terre-Cabale cemetery.

Mercié portrait (1900) done by Ramon Casas - Musée Nat. des Arts - Catalogne - Spain

Sources :
Wikipedia
Louvre Museum
Paris1900 L'Art Nouveau.com 

Abel (2) by Vincent Emile Feugère des Forts

The other Abel sculpture I want to share is from the French sculptor Vincent Emile Feugères des Forts (1825-1889). His 'death of Abel' was first created in plaster, and he showed it at the 'Salon' in 1864, for which he got a medal. You can see the plaster sculpture in Chartres, at the 'Musée des Beaux- Arts'.
He then sculpted it in marble, and presented it two years later. It is a very sensual sculpture of a young man lying on the ground.

The marble sculpture is in Paris, at the Musée d'Orsay. A cast in bronze was reportedly also visible at the Chateau des Forts (Illiers), during the end of the 19th century but I could not find any trace of it.

In March 2007, the Musée d'Orsay, in his 'Correspondance' serie (in which an artist is invited to choose a Museum art piece and to present his work next to it), displayed the contemporary visions of the French artists Pierre & Gilles (previously mentioned in this blog here), who choose 'The death of Abel', and painted him, not once but 3 times, so as to give a 3D vision of this Abel, around his sculpture. An interesting way to see that sculpture with a new eye.

Here are the photographs of their 3 paintings, taken by 'Lunettes Rouges', an art blogger from the French newspaper 'Le Monde'.

Sources :

Wikipedia
Musée d'Orsay

Pierre & Gilles video interview (Italian & French)
The ''Amateur d'Art'' blog of Lunettes Rouges

A few male sculptures from the Paris Opera Garnier (2) Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

This 'Spirit of Dance', a smiling young man playing music is part of the large sculpture from the main side of Opera Garnier in Paris, called 'La Danse' (The Dance), executed by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875).

It took a few years to agree on the final sculpture between the architect (Charles Garnier) and the sculptor, and to achieve it. The final result still caused much controversy due to the females nudity involved. A bottle of ink was even thrown on it one day. Some wanted the sculpture to be removed. But the war of 1870 started, and the sculptor died as well, so this put an end to the controversy.

La Danse, 1866, by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (Opera Garnier) - photo Verchere

Nowadays, the original piece is located at the Musée d'Orsay to ensure its protection from the weather, and a copy is in front of the Opera House, copy made by the French sculptor Jean Juge, and supervised by Paul Belmondo, other French sculptor.
 
Have a look at this interesting video about 'La Danse'

We may come back to some other Carpeaux sculptures. The Musée d'Orsay organized a major exhibition last year about his work.

Sources:
Musée d'Orsay
Video
Wikiphydias

The nude man in art exhibitions (1) : 'Masculin Masculin' with 'Mercury inventing the caduceus'

We thought it would be interesting to show a few sculptures from exhibitions focussing on the male nude in art. Todays' sculpture was displayed during the 'Masculin Masculin' exhibition held recently in Paris (Sep 2013 - Feb 2014) at the Orsay Museum. Approximately 20 male nude sculptures were selected by the curator/director Guy Cogeval and his team (together with 180 other art pièces mainly paintings and photographs). The period ranged from 1800 until today.

Among them, for today, I selected 'Mercury Inventing the Caduceus' done by Jean-Antoine-Marie Idrac in 1878.  This French sculptor is born in Toulouse in 1849 and died early, in 1884 of typhus. He studied under Alexandre Falguière and also Pierre-Jules Cavelier. He won the famous Prix de Rome in 1873. He also exhibited at the Salon from 1877, and got a first class medal two years later for our selected marble sculpture.

 

This large marble piece was sculpted in Rome, Italy, in 1878. Several years later, in 1886, a copy in bronze was casted, which was displayed at the Exposition Universelle (World Fair) of 1900 in Paris(and today in Toulouse, at the Musée des Augustins).

 

 



One of the other curators of the 'Masculin Masculin' exhibition, Xavier Rey, stated that male nude anatomy and study was extremely important for every artist training. With some humour trait, Guy Cogeval added that this sculpture shows probably the cutest buttocks of the museum!
Indeed, several of this exhibition's sculptures and paintings contain a clear homoerotic aspect. And part of the exhibition is specially focussed on the male as an object of desire.

 

 

Why ' inventing the Caduceus ' ? The mythology has many stories about this! One reports that Mercury wanted to find a symbol for his role as the god of healing and messenger of the gods. He received a gold stick from Apollon. Later on, seeing two snakes fighting, he throw his gold stick towards them, the snakes curled around the stick and stopped fighting.

The serpent-coiled staff, or caduceus, is sometimes illustrated with wings at the top end to match Mercury’s winged helmet.

 

Some sources, videos and links:

Video about 'Masculin Masculin' exhibition (in French with English subtitles)
Other video about this exhibition showing some master pièces.
Orsay Museum website
Article in French in the 'Tribune de l'Art' website