Mask of Kiss (Baiser (le) - masque)

In 1899–1900, Théodore Haviland (descendant of the famous Limoges porcelain house) tried his hand at ceramic sculpture with a view to the upcoming Universal Exhibition in Paris. His collaboration with Bourdelle proved particularly fruitful. This can be seen in the quality of the nine creations, all bearing the sculptor's signature, which Bourdelle wanted to see again before firing “in the great ovens. [...] I worked hard, retouching crowds of heads, creating vases and poses”. The entire series of Kisses that came out of the Limoges kilns – Kiss with Crazing, Kiss of the Rose, Kiss Mask, etc. – was almost certainly inspired by a large marble Kiss (1899). All that remains of this marble today are some photographs taken in the studio while the work was being carved. Characteristic of the serpentine graces of the Art Nouveau style, the Kiss Mask with its closed eyes offers a voluptuous, troubled variation on the stylisation of the feminine in its efflorescence, when anatomy becomes ornament and ornament becomes anatomy. The offering of this “carved mouth, feminine, proud, bitter and sad all at the same time” (Bourdelle) takes on an equivocal flavour, as this mask of pleasure in its bloodless whiteness could just as easily be inverted into a spectral, perhaps even vampirical apparition.

Jérôme Godeau