The swirling ribbon
Interpenetration by Lucien Wercollier
Polished bronze sculpture
Height: 1m 20
Donated by Luxembourg in 1961
With (in order of appearance):
Martine Wercollier, granddaughter of Lucien Wercollier
Lucio Wercollier, grandson of Lucien Wercollier
Christian Mosar, art historian and artistic director
Sound archives: Lucien Wercollier
Producer: Council of Europe
Co-producer: Micro-sillons
Concept: Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger
Written by: Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger, Anne Kropotkine
For further information:
Joseph-Émile Muller, Lucien Wercollier, coll. “Les Maîtres de la sculpture contemporaine”, Arted, 1976.
Joseph-Émile Muller, Lucien Wercollier, publication by the arts and letters section of the Institut Grand-ducal, imprimerie Saint-Paul, Luxembourg, 1983.
Lucien Wercollier, audiovisual documentary by Sophie Langevin and Jacques Raybaut, in the “Portraits d’artistes” series, produced by Samsa Film, 1997.
Catalogue of the Lucien Wercollier exhibition marking his 100th anniversary, Neumünster Abbey, Luxembourg, 2008.
Transcription
PODCAST: INTERPENETRATION BY LUCIEN WERCOLLIER
Opening titles: L’Atelier de l’Europe, discovering the Council of Europe’s art collection. Interpenetration by Lucien Wercollier, a polished bronze sculpture donated by Luxembourg in 1961, with Martine Wercollier, Lucio Wercollier, Christian Mosar and, from the sound archives, the voice of Lucien Wercollier.
Martine Wercollier: When you look at it, it’s a bit like a ribbon dancing.
Lucio Wercollier: To me, it’s like a ribbon that’s curling up, that’s turning around and creating a whole series of movements in the space around it.
Martine Wercollier: A ribbon that soars up but then in the end also touches the ground. And a ribbon that’s folding in on itself.
Martine Wercollier: There’s a sense of verticality in which you can see the outline of a pierced triangle. And there’s a horizontal aspect, too. It’s a figure of eight shape, like the symbol of infinity. And when you look at the edges of the figure of eight, ultimately you see something much more physical, more organic. And when you look at the slenderness of the triangular section, you see much purer, more linear contours. And there is a void which ultimately leaves room for the expression of all these different tensions and energies.
Christian Mosar: Wercollier was something of a master of intertwined shapes. With a way of doing things that combined organic and semi-organic elements, round shapes that seem very familiar to us, sometimes sensual, so that they seem to stem from a single piece, a single stroke or a single move. This really involves the interpenetration of two elements which come together and are perhaps in the process of forming a whole.
Christian Mosar: It’s clearly a monumental work, made for the outdoors.
Martine Wercollier: It’s polished bronze, which is a specific material that is not affected by bad weather.
Christian Mosar: Wercollier was someone who had chosen the most difficult materials, stone and metal. But when you look at what he produced, things that are very monumental and are also made with very heavy materials like bronze actually seem very light. And that is the great thing about his work.
Christian Mosar: Wercollier clearly began really moving towards abstract art, in the stricter or clearer form so to speak, around the second half of the 1950s. He was involved in artists’ groups in Luxembourg, including one called the Iconomaques that was very influential in 1954-55, and this sculpture came along only five or six years later. So that was a very quick development and with that group he completely abandoned figurative art, as one of the first in Luxembourg to do so.
Christian Wercollier: But I still have doubts about saying it was pure abstract art. In my, view the figurative starting point played a part in his work until the end. That’s why there is often that proximity to natural forms.
Lucien Wercollier: What really gave me a fresh start was during a holiday trip we went on to Brittany. On the beach there, I discovered two big pebbles standing on top of one another. And I was really taken aback by the force of those two pebbles lying there in nature. I said to my wife: “Look at those pebbles. They’re presenting themselves to nature on all sides.” And that’s the secret.
Lucio Wercollier: And I think he often told us about that experience.
Martine Wercollier: It’s a very important memory because after the concentration camps my grandfather went through a period where he was no longer able to sculpt at all. And after a while, they went off on holiday. I think that also gave them an opportunity to come together as a family again after the terrible experience of the camps. And then he saw the pebbles, which was a revelation at first sight in some way. That enabled him to work on all forms of sculpture he chose to tackle. He would always have this idea of sculpture that had to be seen from all its various angles.
Lucio Wercollier: It enabled him to move away from traditional statue making, with a pedestal, with the work standing on a base.
Martine Wercollier: Which led to that comment by Henry Moore:
Lucien Wercollier: “You do sculpture for the blind.”
Martine Wercollier: They are sculptures, yes, and if you close your eyes you can touch all aspects of them. And it really is a sensual experience to run your hands over these soft textures. It encapsulates the idea that sculpture is accessible to everybody.
Martine Wercollier: One of the great strengths of my grandfather’s work is really that through forms that seem simple, a complex range of interpretations and possibilities emerges.
Christian Mosar: That involves a vocabulary of shapes and forms that in my view was clearly influenced by the modernity of the 1950s and 1960s.
Martine Wercollier: When you look closely at the work, you realise that there are several links between it and the idea of Europe.
Christian Mosar: Back then in 1961, people talked about Europe in a very different way from how they do today. Luxembourg was one of the founding states of Europe, and part of Benelux. There was also the history of coal and steel, which formed the prototypes for all this. And Wercollier was very, very familiar with all that.
Lucio Wercollier: This idea of a structure unfolding and finding its own reflects the idea of a movement of nations coming together in a union. And I think there is something special about it, in that there are movements in which it withdraws into itself, or moves into an inner space, while at the same time it is also asserting itself on the outside. So I think that this also reflects these two dimensions of creating a union to be cohesive together and also to be able to fit into a broader community.
Closing credits: That was Interpenetration by Lucien Wercollier for L’Atelier de l’Europe, a Council of Europe podcast created by Charlotte Roux, Antoine Auger and Anne Kropotkine, with Martine Wercollier, Lucio Wercollier, Christian Mosar and, from the sound archives, the voice of Lucien Wercollier. Other episodes are available on the Council of Europe website.
