5.11.13

MASCULIN / MASCULIN 6

William Bouguereau, Dante And Virgil In Hell


Masculine / Masculine. 
The Nude Man in Art from 1800 to the Present Day 
  Musée D'Orsay

Without compromise
The fascination for reality established in artistic circles in the mid 19th century prompted a thorough renewal of religious painting. Although resorting to the classical idealisation of the body seemed to be consistent with religious dogma, artists like Bonnat breathed fresh life into the genre by depicting the harsh truth of the physical condition of biblical figures.
This principle was already at work in Egalité devant la mort [Equality before Death], by Bouguereau, who, in his early work, in the final days of Romanticism, exploited the power of the image of an ordinary corpse. Rodin, far from enhancing the appearance of the novelist that he was invited to celebrate, sought to render Balzac's corpulent physique with implacable accuracy, without diminishing his grandeur in any way.
The question is thus raised of art's relationship to reality, a question Ron Mueck tackles in his work. And the strange effect brought about by a change of scale gives an intensity to the dead body of his father that echoes the dead figure in Bouguereau's painting.
William Bouguereau, Equality before Death

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