Antoine Bourdelle

An artist of modernity, Bourdelle encouraged his students to abandon detail in favor of a dynamic whole, as exemplified by his famous Héraklès Archer, which brought him triumph in 1910 and was long admired by schoolchildren on their notebook covers.

In contrast to academicism, this pupil of Rodin had adopted his master’s technique of the fragment, who advocated for the unfinished. But Bourdelle went further, daring distortions, deforming even into the formless, giving his work abstract accents.

Rodin himself confessed to being surpassed by his disciple: “Bourdelle has revitalized contemporary sculpture as much as could be done in our time.”

Filmed as if peering over the artist’s shoulder, the works are presented in all their diversity: Penelope, Apollo, nymphs, centaurs, the facade of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, monumental warriors, 80 versions of the Beethoven bust… well-known icons in wood, plaster, marble, and bronze. To view sculpture differently, to make it accessible, the camera is as close to the work as possible, allowing the viewer to confront its volume, vibration, materiality, and physical laws, as if the film particularly sought to emphasize and reveal the third dimension of this art.

“I enclose feeling in a muscle. Bourdelle, on the other hand, makes it burst forth in a style”

Rodin