A fascinating phantom, a menacing spectre... the conformation and cruelty of this monster lend it a part-animal appearance: curious, ferocious and wild. The monster is the animalisation of anxieties and desires, the roar of shadows lurking in the depths of the soul. Towards the end of the 19th century, attempts were made to give voice to these shadows and infuse life into ghosts, by the likes of Jean-Martin Charcot and Sigmund Freud, of course, but also Louis Lumière and Wilhelm Röntgen who, around that time, had simultaneously invented the cinematograph and the X-ray, giving us a luminescent and magnetic glimpse of new forms: new, unsuspected monsters (Jean Clair, Hubris, La fabrique du monstre dans l'art moderne, Paris, Gallimard, 2012).
Deeply affected by the disasters of war – the Franco-Prussian conflict and, no doubt, the prints by Goya as well – Bourdelle knew the barbarity of the world in all its tyranny and atrocity. Drawn or sculpted (Study of a head for the Montauban Monument), his Screaming Head is a true forerunner of expressionism, with an expression that is as enduring as it is ranting.
Colin Lemoine
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