Antoine Bourdelle created the beautiful Medusa head knocker from the May 18 blog post, and we found a promising quote from him in there, that he believed that sculpture was most beautiful when it was integrated into architecture. But unfortunately, he must not have had a chance to do much architectural sculpting in his lifetime, because most of his art is well executed and touching… but pretty much stand-alone art.

He created masks of Beethoven from around 1888 until his death in 1929 – if you are going to do something, you may as well do it properly! He studied under Rodin, whose most famous work is The Thinker, with which most everybody is visually familiar. And he also created plenty of two dimensional art, in the form of sketches and paintings. However, he did have the chance occasionally to indulge his love of integrating sculpture and architecture. As well as the Medusa head knocker, he was commissioned to create wall-sculptures – friezes – in the Champs Elysees theater in 1913. He created sculptures to represent Tragedy, Music, Dance, Comedy and the Muses—all different aspects of theatre.

A different interpretation of his fascination with melding sculpture and architecture is seen in the fact that he felt that sculpted art was innately connected to its surroundings – whether they were buildings or open-air spaces. Some of his great works in this area included his Monument to the Defenders of Montauban (Montauban was his town of birth), and the Monument to General Alvear in Argentina.

He was contemporary enough to have access to modern techniques and flexibility, and antique enough to have a whole lot of class…

Photo credits: The Great Warrior of Montauban

          

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