What do “Pregnant woman” by Louise Bourgeois and “Torse d’Adèle” by Auguste Rodin have in common?
"Fertility" was the inaugural exhibition of the gallery I founded and operated in Berlin from 2011 to 2018.
I thought this theme would constitute a marvelous metaphor for artistic creativity, as well as one marking the “birth” of my exhibition program.
Both “Pregnant woman” and “Torse d’Adèle” depict a pregnant woman, but even as the Bourgeois is very explicit, the Rodin is more subtle: my friend Jérôme Le Blay, author of the "Catalogue Critique de l'Oeuvre Sculpté d'Auguste Rodin" wrote to me: “Adèle Abruzzezzi, the model for the Rodin sculpture, was a young woman from Abruzzo as were many Italian professional models at the end of the 19th century. She was a very beautiful woman with white and milky skin. Adèle with whom Rodin was very much ‘in love’ served as a model for the great Eve in 1881-1882. After many sessions, Rodin had to stop his work, failing to fix the shapes of Adèle's belly on his sculpture. It was only at Rodin's request that she admitted that she was a few weeks pregnant and therefore that her belly changed imperceptibly. She had to leave Rodin's studio and returned to Italy without ever coming back to Paris.”
Furthermore, when Jérôme came to Berlin to see my exhibition, he brought to my attention the nape of the neck in Bourgeois’ figure and cried: “look at her neck, you can see that this is a sculptor’s drawing ‘un dessin de sculpteur,’ you clearly feel the tension of her heavy stomach pulling on her neck!”
I later found out from Jerry Gorovoy, former studio assistant to Louise Bourgeois and now head of her foundation, that Bourgeois actually owned at least one work on paper by Rodin, and that she greatly admired him.
Please click on the image below for installation views.
"Fertility”: Side by Side Gallery Akim Monet, Berlin, September 9 – November 26, 2011.
Photos: 2011 ©️ Side by Side Gallery Akim Monet GmbH, Berlin
Popcorn Gallery Los Angeles is the curatorial branch of Akim Monet Fine Arts, LLC. After a decade in Germany, where Akim Monet founded and operated the renowned Side by Side Gallery Akim Monet GmbH on Berlin’s famed Postdamerstrasse, he moved his practice to Los Angeles in 2018, where he continues to develop his focus on thematically curated exhibitions that juxtapose modern and contemporary art.
BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
Akim Monet Fine Arts, LLC
100 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 700
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Untited States of America
+1 (424) 394 8480