Marie Madeleine Gautier

MMG'words

Oppositions

 It's a message of peace and tolerance. And tolerance is not even the right word ! Tolerance is accepting each other, put up with any people ; in fact my message is larger. It's the absolute necessity of exchange to evolve, to learn about each other : the exchange of cultures means the advance of culture.

I choose first the disproportions because I didn't want to demonstrate the evidence, the classical proportions or the modern standards : a woman with equilibrated forms means beauty. As many creators, I wanted to prove that beauty can be found in an other way. For example, in the representation of monstrous women (elephantiasis) whose arms and legs have different length, or women usually considered as ugly with short and big legs, or obese, and so on.


If I liked so much to reach the balance of opposite elements, contradicted and disproportionated, it's because the message is not only esthetic. When balancing the disproportions, I'm trying to prove that the opposite elements value each other naturally. I choosed a simple and evident representation : the human body and especially the woman's one. Everyone knows it and has its figure on mind. We, nearly all of us, agree to recognize the beauty in a face or in a body. Beauty is international, standards of ugliness too. So I choosed standards of ugliness to harmonize them and show this way that beauty, elegance and grace can bloom from it. To prove that all the people can agree about a priori and be wrong about the concept of beauty. Concerning the human being, there are more exceptions than rules ! Thin parts value big volumes which themselves give give a lot of emotion to the thin parts.It' because my heads are small that my sculptures look so tall and take up so much space.It's because the arms and the breast are so thin that the pelvis and the legs look so strong, so fixed in the ground. They give an impression of interior and natural strength.The large and big volumes from the waist value thin parts and turn attention to this delicate writing, and at the same time protects it and permits it to fulfill its potential of art.The thin parts give grace and lightness to the big ones. To really exist, the large parts need the thin ones and vice versa. Their strength bloom from their union.

With this search of balance between the oppositions, I try to prove that it's because of our differences that we value each other. To move in with people who think the same thing than you is sterile. To compare different ideas make us evolve. It's the same for the peoples : the knowledge and recognition of other cultures make them evolve.