Medusa from Antique to Digital
About the exhibition "Under the gaze of Medusa. From Ancient Greece to Digital Art", on view at the Caen Museum of Fine Arts until 17 September.
Gorgon... Medusa... The images on a black background are striking. The works of art presented by the magazine Connaissance des arts for its May portfolio are to be found in an exhibition that is no less striking, at the Musée des beaux-arts de Caen. We let you imagine the exorbitant eyes and the swarming reptiles! Or even decapitated heads... " Under the gaze of Medusa. From ancient Greece to digital art" is on display from 13 May to 17 September. "A fertile iconographic theme, of Greek origin, which illustrates more than two millennia of artistic creation," says journalist Hervé Grandsart in the foreword to his iconographic selection.
A key figure in Greek mythology, Medusa has exerted its power of fascination on many generations of artists who have contributed to the creation of an incredibly rich repertoire of images. Commonly recognisable by her hair swarming with snakes and her wide-set eyes, the figure of Medusa has been constantly renewed through the ages. The exhibition at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Caen is devoted to the evolution of these representations, from the first iconographic sources of Antiquity to the most recent artistic productions.
The exhibition brings together sixty-five works from French and international collections by the greatest artists. From Crésilas, a sculptor of Greek antiquity, to the artists of today: Benvenuto Cellini, Sandro Botticelli, Pierre Paul Rubens, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Adèle d'Affry, Jean-Marc Nattier, Theodor van Thulden, Maxmilián Pirner, Franz von Stuck, Edward Burne-Jones, Antoine Bourdelle, Auguste Rodin, Alberto Giacometti, Luciano Garbati, Laetitia Ky, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster... The exhibition covers the fields of painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, decorative arts, cinema and video games. These multiple perspectives provide a rich, paradoxical and up-to-date vision of this fascinating figure, several thousand years old.
The Art Knowledge portfolio on black background opens with Medusa, a square cardboard painting by Franz von Stuck from 1892. "Supposedly able to petrify her enemies with her hair swarming with reptiles, the mythological figure of Medusa allegorically marked the fear of death embodied by a fantasized female omnipotence," writes Hervé Grandsart. "Nourished by the Symbolist movement and the aesthetic of the 1900s, the German painter Franz von Stuck (1863-1928) presents here the image of a timeless Medusa destined to hypnotise the spectator, for better or for worse.
In the earliest written versions of the myth, Medusa is a terrifying primordial deity, granddaughter of the Earth (Gaia) and the Ocean (Pontos), referred to as the Gorgon. Of the three Gorgon sisters, she is the only one who is mortal. A first variation, introduced in the 5th century BC, sees Medusa as a figure of great beauty who, after joining forces with Poseidon in the temple of Athena, suffers the latter's terrible punishment. Medusa is a particularly ambiguous and paradoxical figure, and this is what makes her so successful: both an instrument of death, with her petrifying gaze on all those who see her, and a symbol of life, since from her sacrificed head the horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor are born.
Over the centuries, readings of the myth have evolved, giving Medusa multiple metamorphoses that make her a reflection of the fears and fantasies of Western society. For the Greeks, she is first and foremost the incarnation of terror, an unbearable vision of death. The medieval period, marked by Christian morality associating sexuality and sin, equated Medusa with seductive beauty. During the Renaissance, her horrific face became a metaphor for art and its visual power. Medusa develops a melancholic character in the 19th century and then, for the English Pre-Raphaelites and the Symbolists, becomes a young woman of dreamy beauty. She bears witness to the despondency of artists in the face of industrial modernity, regains her deadly power with the atrocities of the 20th century and is finally renewed in Hollywood and in video games, where she finds a new fertile ground, thanks to special effects. What will Medusa's next mutation be? It could be that she will embody a principle of insubordination to order as well as a militant feminism... Just like witches.
A bit like the Gorgon Medusa, by Adèle d'Affry, duchess of Castiglione Colonna, known as "Marcello", which has the honour of a full page in Connaissance des arts. A 90 cm high marble sculpted in 1865. "Thanks to her wealth and rank, the Duchess of Castiglione Colonna (1836-1879), born Adèle d'Affry, was able, under the name of Marcello, to practice sculpture and gain recognition in the artistic world without having followed the usual academic curriculum," explains the legend. "Evoking a strong woman rather than a reckless monster of death, this bust, known in several copies since 1865, was commissioned by Napoleon III. The work was praised at its first Paris exhibition in 1865, and the following year it received enthusiastic reviews in London, including this fine portrait by Théophile Gauthier: "Marcello's Gorgon is truly an original and proud work. What bitterness and what superb disdain in this head of wicked beauty that proudly shakes its viperous headdress and rises at the end of a neck, of serpentine length and flexibility. What a terrible grace and what a disturbing attraction. She frightens and fascinates like the reptiles that writhe around her forehead full of dark and venomous thoughts. Despite her horrible hair, this Gorgon has a strange charm: she is a monster and she is a woman [...].
The magazine continues its glossy art gallery with Perseus, an oil on canvas by Joseph-Paul Blanc (1845-1904) which won him an award at the 1870 Salon, featuring Perseus mounted on Pegasus and victoriously holding up the severed head of Medusa, from which he carefully looks away. A parade shield shares the same page, a roundel with Medusa from the Milanese workshops of the 16th century, on which Medusa's head appears as a trophy in the central part, framed by wings evoking those of Perseus' helmet and becoming a sign of invulnerability and protection.
The following pages show the Attic black-figured eye cup, a terracotta from 510 BC unearthed in Italy by Lucien Bonaparte and evoking the Gorgons, as well as the famous decapitated Medusa by Rubens (1577-1640), who was commissioned to paint a figure of Medusa at the height of horror with its human-scale head focusing the light, following in the footsteps of Vinci (a work that has been lost) and Caravaggio. It is hard to imagine that collectors would have bought this terrifying work of art for sale... but they did! This painting was part of the Duke of Buckingham's collections, works of art sold in Antwerp in 1648. Finally, Giacometti's Medusa Head (1901-1965), conceived in the form of a mask with the help of his brother as a sconce, stands on the last page alongside Zhang Yunyao's red and blue pastel Floating II, which the artist, born in Shanghai in 1985, created in 2020.
Illustration: Franz von Stuck, Medusa, C. 1892
Graphic design Studion Martes 2023