Day and Night or Adolescence (Le Jour et la Nuit ou Adolescence)

myminifactory

This is a marble bust sculpture depicting a languid man, eyes turned to the sky. An indistinct figure, his hand on his shoulder. The day, bright and night, dark. United as are the sun and the moon. United as light and darkness would be. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Bourdelle recognizes in the Marquis Henri du Bideran a model "as beautiful as the day." The artist decides to translate this solar beauty into marble. The young man, his head bent backwards, seems to be won by some Saturnian thought. In fact, La Nuit , hanging on his shoulder, reminds the youth of the fate that awaits him. Magma informs, she seems already to whisper to her the inexorable old age and the irrevocable time.Rich in the memory of Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel (1518-1534), the work proceeds from a tension of opposites. The vigorous teenager is prey to a disturbing surge. His radiant body is manhandled by a twilight allegory. In other words, the Realism of the Day is threatened by the symbolism of the Night. The Day and the Night or the obverse and the reverse of the same medal deployed in a unifying marble.