Pasiphaë Adorning the Bull with Flowers 1891 - 1907

Curator: Isn’t there something eternally unsettling about marble? I'm particularly feeling it when I gaze upon "Pasiphaë Adorning the Bull with Flowers", a tinted relief created by César-Isidore-Henry Cros sometime between 1891 and 1907. It’s currently residing at the Met in New York. Editor: The first word that springs to mind is “stark,” though not in a minimalist way. It feels starkly mythological, intensely internal, almost hermetic. Is it just me, or does that narrative freeze desire into something uncomfortably still? Curator: Oh, desire indeed. The piece is a beautiful puzzle. It's based on the Greek myth where Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos, falls for a bull. I get such a sense of longing from her profile, the curve of her neck... and the cool smoothness of the marble makes it all feel simultaneously very close and impossibly distant. Editor: The bull isn't depicted straightforwardly, which brings into stark relief, if you'll pardon the pun, the human agency involved in these violent relationships of power. The flowers seem almost sarcastic, like a superficial act of gentrification layered atop primal, dehumanizing lust. Curator: Maybe that's because, beyond the marble, the composition, or even the tragic love story, there’s also the weight of its decorative-art function, this lingering Art Nouveau sensibility that makes you feel how this classical moment exists only within a contemporary ornamental framework, always. The sculpture contains an idea more than a feeling, always. Editor: Yes! I’m thinking about the history of objectification. Pasiphaë’s body, sculpted here, literally becomes a thing, displayed to invite a gaze but devoid of interiority or agency beyond this…infatuation. We rarely get Pasiphaë's story told from Pasiphaë's point of view, isn't it telling? Curator: That is such a valid point, and the silence of Pasiphae screams out when viewed through the prism of contemporary feminisms, it speaks of lost narratives. What I also like in the marble selected is the tension with the story and title itself; Pasiphae looks to gently garland, in all beauty, a beast… Editor: It’s hard to engage, not just visually, but emotionally as well. Curator: An artwork about the pain of a woman for not becoming "the" woman… I get that. Editor: The past reverberates through the stone, leaving echoes in the present. A complicated vision.