Lot 58
  • 58

Berlinde de Bruyckere

Estimate
150,000 - 250,000 GBP
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Description

  • Berlinde de Bruyckere
  • Pieta
  • wax, epoxy, metal, wood and glass
  • 180 by 85 by 48cm.; 70 7/8 by 33 3/8 by 18 7/8 in.
  • Executed in 2007.

Provenance

Hauser and Wirth, London

Claude Berri, Paris (acquired from the above in 2008)

Thence by descent to the present owner

Condition

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although it fails to convey the varying skin tone of the original sculpture. Condition: This work is in very good and original condition. Close inspection reveals a loss to the fourth toe of the figure's left foot.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Masterfully executed in a uniquely crafted technique combining wax and epoxy, Berlinde de Bruyckere’s Pieta offers an emphatically macabre reinterpretation of one of the most emotive motifs of Western art history. Constructing a surreal tableau, a hybrid between votive image and an object of curiosity, this surreal reinterpretation of religious iconography plays into the artist’s profound and sustained dialogue with the Old Masters and the medium of sculpture. With significant representation in museum collections, de Bruyckere’s work has continued to gain international acclaim following her compelling presentation Cripplewood, representing the Belgian pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Pieta is emblematic of both the processes of creation and sombre theatricality that makes de Bruyckere one of the most unique sculptors of her generation.   

In her quest to investigate the peculiar line between beauty, pain, bliss and suffering, that has guided man’s reverent interactions with devotional art, de Bruyckere’s work pays homage to the masters of the German Renaissance, perhaps most pertinently Lucas Cranach the Elder. De Bruyckere has remarked of Cranach: “His subjects were morbid and cruel but there has been always the ambivalence and ambiguity between how the form fits into the subject: there is the death but no blood; there is a sword that kills, but at the same time, the gentle touch of the victim. In a similar way, I feel a strong connection with the stress on the body and its sophisticated, visual language” (Berlinde de Bruyckere in conversation with Marta Gnyp in: Zoo Magazine, No. 29, 2010, p. 17). In Pieta this ‘visual language’ finds its most poetic expression in de Bruyckere’s curious treatment of the limbs, amounting to a surreal encounter between the subtly stylised sense of elongation and distortion in the body parts and their corporeal articulation through the hyper-realistic virtuosity of sculpted wax. This inherent sense of exaggeration also draws the work closely to Italian Mannerists, most poignantly the sculpted mastery of Michelangelo.

The Pieta scene – the art historical motif showing the dead body of Christ cradled in the arms of the Virgin Mary – is one that Michelangelo has been especially revered for, with his most iconic and emotive marble interpretation housed in the St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Yet in her obsession with partial formation, mutation and amputation, de Bruyckere’s Pieta claims greater aesthetic allegiance to Michelangelo’s unfinished version of the subject, the Ronadini Pieta, where the two central figures of the narrative emerge from the untreated stone, remaining fused and hypnotically conjoined.

Frozen and perpetually embalmed in a state of Ovidian metamorphosis, de Bruyckere’s Pieta shows the synthesis of two bodies, relaying  ideas of mammalian support and intimacy, whilst skilfully embodying the themes of motherhood, pain, shame,  grief and pity that are crucial to the iconography of the Pieta. Though modestly framed in a cabinet display case, evocative of the pre-modern cabinet of curiosities, the grandeur of such a theme is brought down to the status of a malformed relic captured for exhibition. Thus articulating the duality of the body as both the apogee of nature’s beauty and as a grotesque configuration of organic matter, Pieta is a quiet elegy to the majesty of the human form and the body as a site of intense vulnerability.