Georges Gougenot 

Curator: Oh, I feel the breath of history! Editor: You always say that when you're next to old marble, don’t you? This is Jean-Baptiste Pigalle's rendering of Georges Gougenot. A portrait bust, quite striking actually. Curator: Striking...and profoundly still. As if a conversation was paused mid-sentence. Marble captures a strange kind of eternity. A wealthy lawyer perhaps, full of courtly power...or even an artist with those curling locks. But in frozen in this cool surface? I sense an artist maybe pondering a lover's absence or an ended play on words, even some secret, something known. Editor: Secrets etched in stone, perhaps. Though, look closer. The material itself whispers. Imagine the labour! Pigalle didn’t just pick up a chunk of Carrara and poof – instant Gougenot! This was sweat, studio assistants, specialized tools. The act of sculpting, cutting away to reveal a likeness. A reduction to capture the essence, like he’s taking away layers. Look at those undercuts of the hair and in the buttons-- all so carefully hollowed and placed. It's all craft as well as "high art", blurring those boundaries. Curator: Oh, you are always looking into the guts of the creative practice to find something essential. And truly I suppose there’s magic to be found in a hammer meeting a stone! However... look at the fur collar there, it gives that sense of warmth, like the possibility of touching some hidden kindness that exists only inside him! Maybe? Or perhaps it is Pigalle’s clever craftmanship speaking its quiet language! Editor: The warmth is the burnishing and beeswax, maybe. Gougenot certainly enjoyed it – that status symbol, the luxury material of it, but all these swirls can take many forms from a far! Though to truly consider a neoclassical portrait we have to see where these commissions came from, whose tastes are these reflecting. And who owned this piece? These objects move beyond the purely personal! This form and its history are meant to showcase an individual, in the public, an art object that can show influence beyond life's border, I believe. Curator: Perhaps. But sometimes… I choose to get happily lost in that internal life, I feel he is hiding. All in one sculpture. Editor: Hehe. I suppose there’s room enough for both interpretations and their origins to co-exist then. Curator: As there always should be.