The emergence of this dark apparition, as if lurking within itself, owes much to the end-of-the-century spirit that cultivated “the sickly and bizarre flower of symbolism”. Indeed, nothing could be stranger or more disturbing than this figure of darkness, entirely amalgamated with shadow. From what anguish, from what depths of the soul, does this hybrid mask emerge, on the threshold between human and beast?
When Bourdelle was creating Night, he was still working under Rodin. The master's influence is evident in the taste for expressionism in this magma of forms that the sculptor modelled in 1904 but which, as far as we know, he reserved for experimentation in the studio. No bronze transpositions were made during the artist's lifetime. Rodin's influence is also evident in the reuse of a fragment from the composition, presented as an independent work. Bourdelle remembered this lesson andseparated this part from the initial group, the better to affirm its “disturbing strangeness”.
Jérôme Godeau
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