An occasion that the museum could not fail to celebrate, Bourdelle is undoubtedly one of the artists most influenced by music, but also from the figure – in a physical and symbolic sense – of the German composer. Based on identification, this obsession translates into a plethora of heterogeneous works: Bourdelle reserved around eighty sculptures for Beethoven, but also around twenty drawings and photographs. Populated with sculptures, photographs, drawings and archives, "Bourdelle devant Beethoven" illustrates the story of an obsession, perhaps even of a filiation, if we want to re-read Bourdelle's confession to him. – Indeed: “In my turn, with tenacious premeditation, he said. “
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was born in Bonn 250 years ago. A quarter of a millennium. This anniversary gives rise to numerous European commemorations in Germany as in France. The Musée Bourdelle takes the opportunity to celebrate the Beethoven year with a new exhibition. Antoine Bourdelle is undoubtedly one of the artists most influenced by music, but also by the figure – in a physical and symbolic sense – of the German composer. On the basis of an identification, this obsession translates into a plethoric corpus of heterogeneous works: Bourdelle reserved around eighty sculptures for Beethoven, as well as around twenty drawings and photographs.
The visitor immersed in two different atmospheres: one, clear and bright, will be confronted with the many carved faces of Beethoven, conceived by Bourdelle as many variations around a cursed face, of a sovereign interiority; the other, dark and dramatic, will attempt to expose the methods and sources of this incorporation, but also to make dialogues, sculptures, photographs and drawings to penetrate the secrets and subtleties of this great identification. Beethoven was for Bourdelle more than a father, a brother, a mirror double, a traveling companion whose path already crossed could show him the way, at a time of doubts and joys.
Beethoven is a complete artist, but also a cursed one. His frantic scores consoled and sublimated the deafness he suffered from. With him, from him, artists have scrutinized their most intimate passions and darkest nights, torments and visions, electrifying joys and metaphysical anguish. This maturity of sensibility, which prefigures Romanticism and, soon after, Expressionism, has been an object of obsession for painters and sculptors alike. In other words, all those soul seekers who, from Austria to Japan, from Sweden to the United States, claimed the composer as their aesthetic ancestor.
Under the auspices of Beethoven, and especially his fascinating mask of life – cast from his face when he was alive - artists try to find their way, often turning their gaze inward. When Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) was just 20 years old and studying in Toulouse, he discovered Beethoven's music and quickly identified with "the soul of a master". In addition, the composer's disheveled hair, gloomy expression and high aspirations were similar to his. While the sculptor would sometimes sacrifice social niceties for a concert, he admitted hearing Beethoven "only by heart", rather than "constant listening". He preferred to approach him through readings, sketches, photographs and, above all, the approx 80 sculpted portraits that Bourdelle made of the composer from 1888 until his death in 1929. They are like many variations of an enchanting leitmotif.
The new exhibition, made up of sculptures, photographs, drawings and archives, bears witness to the illustrious story of an obsession, perhaps even a sort of father-son relationship if we revisit Bourdelle's own admission: "I in turn, with tenacious meditation, resumed where it left off ”.
CURATOR: Colin Lemoine, Head of Sculptures
