On Sculptures
To set the scene: Summer mornings are when I wake up to the sound of things moving in the kitchen and when I have a chance to properly interact with the maid while making coffee. I haven’t seen her as often during the past few years, but she did.
The conversation:
Her: why do you have these white things on your desk?
Me: you mean the sculptures?
Her: yes, what are they for?
Me: nothing, I just like the way they look.
Her: there must be something more to them. I see them in movies and in houses of old foreigners…I have never seen them up close until now.
That was one of our brief morning interactions. Usually it’s me who is interested in her life, this time she was in mine (or maybe I just like to believe so). Knowing that I provided no constructive answer, I thought; consider her question a legitimate inquiry and your lack of substantial response an ignorance and reflect on the following: How and when did I become interested in sculptures? Why do I like them so much I spent a bit of a fortune on not one but two in one purchase? If it had to mean something what would it be?
I even thought about the possibility of forcing a meaning.
Since there is no innate interpretation of the object itself (at least to me), let’s examine it first on a philosophical level and then on a materialistic level. Because they are the only paradigms I can entertain.
The philosophical level is simply motivated by the fact that I now have on my right (and usually on the left on my desk) Michel Onfray’s book “La Sculpture de Soi” or Sculpting Oneself. This book which came out the year I was born and was awarded Prix Médicis Essai is my reading of choice after I decided to thoroughly study Onfray’s approach to philosophy and hedonism. Onfray cites Nietzsche at the beginning of his book: “Be the master and the sculptor of yourself.” As someone who identifies with the utilitarian/hedonist school of thought, the idea of constructing oneself in the spirit of growth and the pursuit of hapiness is a conception that I adhere to fully. So on a philosophical level, there is something about sculptures and sculpturing which is intertwined with my character.
On the 12th of December 2018, I posted a picture on my instagram of a sculpture by Auguste Rodin done in 1895 and titled “Mask of Camille”. I remember how I went into a rabbit hole that day obsessing over Camille Claudel who was a sculptor herself and another genius woman who’s work only gained notoriety after she died.
That is the only date to which I can recollect a substantial and extensive research on sculptures through which I also discovered Rodin, whose museum is now on the list of places I want to see before I die. But since I can remember, I was always amazed at the sight of sculptures no matter where I encounter them. Although I cannot enumerate the places and times because I never tempted to record it, but I still have a memory -for example- of a Belgian cafe I would go to back when I lived in Doha for the sole reason that they had beautiful sculptures everywhere. I remember this vividly because they had terrible coffee but I still went whenever I could.
Speaking of Rodin, the sculptor is famous for his “Le Penseur” or “The Thinker” sculpture. I owned a replica of The Thinker with an African twist in wood which I bought off the streets in my hometown one cold evening. I was back home on winter break. I liked the shape because it did seem to me like a person who was sitting and thinking with his hand supporting his head; a position I often find myself in. This was also long before I started being interested in existentialist philosophy. I took the sculptor with me to Istanbul, to Doha and brought it back to Tangier where I gifted it eventually to a friend who saw it on my desk and became as obsessed with it as I was when I first saw it.
As to the story of my “greek” sculptors, they have always seemed to me as something that is fancy and which only the “old riche” can own as I have never seen any in anyone’s living space. That is why, sometime last year and while I was randomly strolling in Zara Home -as one does to spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need- I accidentally found them in front of me at an aisle I usually never check. I did not think twice, in fact I called the staff in a hurry because there were only two left and I felt as if someone can pick them up before I do and I may never be able to own them.
They were just perfect, because there are a lot of types of sculptures and the ones I found were just my favorite type. One was a male figure and the other was a female’s.
For the sake of this essay, I tried to google what they represented, and it turns out that there is nothing special to them. Just like I thought. The Zara Home website indicated the following as a description: “Female bust decorative figure” and “Male bust decorative figure”. But upon a little more research, I think that the female one is inspired by the ancient statue Venus head, the Roman goddess of beauty. The male one however, I could not attach in similarity to any famous head in shape and form. But I was the other day doing some extensive research on Chopin and it hit me that the sculpture looks like a young Chopin with shorter hair. I am fine with this representation.
Now that I have written this far, it made me think of an essay dedicated to the concept of sculptures in the philosophy of aesthetics? maybe.
