Tribuna La Croix - December 2020
I am a sculptor. Through an unexpected connection, I fell in love with the art of bronze casting at the age of 15. At the foundry, acrid smells, heavy dust, and moments of eternity where molten bronze, in its almost phosphorescent flow, illuminates the eyes of men with a glow of fascinated awe—a glow that centuries of practice have not quite managed to tame. The foundry was called Landowski, a family devoted to sculpture, related to the creator of the Christ of Corcovado and the serene Saint Genevieve of the Pont de la Tournelle. This foundry was swallowed up by the silent clamor of an economy unfriendly to costly artistic craftsmanship.
Enriched by this extraordinary material, I sculpted. The earth, infinitely sensitive, transformed into metal to the rhythm of these captivating flows, these layers of acid patina that lay beneath the flame of the blowtorch. Didier Landowski made it clear to the young girl that I was aware bronze was impervious to any known form of decay, that it would last as long as our earth itself. Thus was the word “eternity” spoken, in the rays of light falling upon the small desk in Bagnolet.
Forever?
Are there really any of our actions that last forever? Love, I believe, is invisibly inscribed in the book of the soul, beyond life and death. But in the material world? Everything in our world is decaying and eroding. Nature knows how to draw from its sap the momentum of seasonal rebirths. But what of our human creations? They are replaced and succeed one another rather than endure. Even our beloved cathedral stones are crumbling silently, preserved with extensive conservation measures that do not promise them eternity. As I walked through the sculpture museum of the Coubertin Foundation, I thought, seeing General Alvear’s great by Bourdelle or Ousmane Sow’s warriors, that they would be there long after us, under thousands of other rains and other snows. This changed my view of sculpture—for the span of my life and for the works that would remain after me. I followed Montaigne: “If life is but a passage, let us at least sow flowers along this path.” Even though I had begun by saying something about human suffering, I decisively turned my back on it—not that it did not exist, but to leave indelible traces on this earth, I wanted them to be of grace and not of fear.
Art in the Service of the Sacred
For years, Providence has been asking me, with methodical persistence, to create designs for liturgical installations and arrangements in churches from every era, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century. Altars, amboes, tabernacles, Christ—and often all of this forms a chorus to be set to music and brought to light. I had decided to speak of what is luminous in humanity; I was asked to show what is luminous in God.
So I saw two things: the beauty of the human spirit and the incorruptibility of the Mystery.
I gaze upon our beautiful land of France. The TGV and TER carry me from valleys to meadows, from the warm north to the sunny south, from misty mornings to fiery sunsets. Every time, I discover treasures carved in stone. And treasures of human beings. I cannot name them all—these faces of priests, monks, women, men of good will, all ready for the boldness to undertake, for the energy of action, for the trust that beauty can arise from creation and that this beauty is a gift to offer our world. That matter can be transfigured when the spiritual is needed. That art is the complement of faith.
With these sponsors, I realize more than ever that vigilance in beauty is one of the keys to transmission. Just as in the Basilica of Saint-Avold, where I transformed a structure once weathered by time into a star-studded dome before our eyes, wide with childlike wonder; where I created a light fixture that was not merely a candlestick, but the mantle of the Virgin Mary, into which she will place the flame of our trust and our surrender. My eye sees, thinks, and creates through the eyes of all generations to come.
But above all, I become more aware every day of the incorruptibility of the Mystery, despite the world’s decay and violence. It was bronze that first pointed this out to me, drawing my gaze beyond the familiar future. And then I delved into the treasures of the past to unite ancient works with a contemporary touch in jewelry design. My perception of time has expanded to infinity, and I have opened my eyes to a reality that completely transcends the temporality of my life.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5.
We are not merely who we are. We are a long line stretching back 2,000 years in the footsteps of a single man, repeating, taking up again, and reexamining the words of the Gospel with tireless faith. We are not merely our voices, whether singing or fighting; we are the long psalmodic song rising toward the shadowy embrace of heaven. The baptismal water that flows over the forehead and mingles with the holy sweetness of the Chrism has been changed forever. It is enough for us to face this divine Mystery, which burns like an ember deep within our hearts, to gently open this tent of encounter in the souls of children. The Eucharist, like a majestic sun, will continue to rise over the bronze horizon of the altars, to be carried in the silent triumph of the monstrances, fundamentally impervious to the chaos of history, to its absurdities or its attacks, which bear neither fruit nor memory. For it radiates an absolute and inexhaustible light.