Aristide Maillol’s Méditerranée: a silent impact on art
It was supposed to be a Young Girl in the Sun, which makes complete sense when spotted on a day of beautiful light at Jardin du Carousel, in Paris. Later entitled Méditerranée by its creator, Aristide Maillol, the sculpture proposes the contemplation of a naked young woman, in a moment of serenity and reflection.
As told by the artist himself, “the idea in sculpting her was to create a figure that was young, luminous and noble. All that, is it not the essence of the Mediterranean spirit?” [1].
His silent artwork might bring some relief from attempts to find deeper layers of meaning. Committed to preserving the sculptural tradition of classical Greece and Rome, Maillol brought lightness to female nudity through geometric shapes, thus overcoming expectations to promote a strong emotional appeal as in Rodin’s works; which, by the way, was not a reason for rivalry between the two sculptors.
Auguste Rodin was the person behind a meeting between Maillol and who would become his greatest patron: the German diplomat and collector Count Harry Kessler, who in 1908 took the sculptor to Greece. The experience provided him with the Greek structural principles for sculpting the female body.
Méditerranée can be seen in different materials, from marble (Musée d’Orsay) to bronze (Jardin du Carousel, Paris, and MoMA, New York). Its first version was presented as Woman, in 110 cm of plaster, in the Autumn Salon of 1905 — Parisian annual exhibition, started in 1903 as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon, showcasing innovations yet to come in the 20th century.
It can be said, therefore, that Méditerranée was a pioneer work of modern statuary. From the rupture with the narrative tradition of representation, Maillol unpretentiously revolutionized art, opening paths for a silent contemplation of sculpture and its forms.
- René Puig, “La vie misérable et glorieuse d’Aristide Maillol,” Tramontane 1965, 26, cited in Maillol, ed. Jean-Paul Monery [exh. cat., Musée de L’Annonciade] (Saint-Tropez, 1994), 76, 80.
