Bigo's Kiss / Homage to Rodin

In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice decided to dynamically bring the fine arts closer to everyday life and to invite contemporary art in particular to revisit the works in its collection.

On the occasion of the "Matisse-Rodin" exhibition, Véronique Bigo, for her third journey through the museum's collection, focuses on Auguste Rodin’s works and offers, this time, her interpretation of the famous Kiss. In the eyes of the painter of objects, the mouth, symbol of desire, gains independence and becomes the autonomous and mutant object of a new series of realizations.

Bigo's Kiss / Homage to Rodin

Contemporary views on the collection, tour “Le Baiser de Bigo / Hommage à Rodin”, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice - June the 20th to September the 27th, 2009

For her third journey at the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Nice, Véronique Bigo invites us to the staging and painting of his meeting with Auguste Rodin. […]
Provocative, by taking an interest in the Kiss, she pretends to let the Master choose the subject of their meeting. But this is for better to turning away from academic exegesis.
She avoids addressing the great Rodin to better joke with Auguste, who she quickly got rid of the heavy coats made by the history of art and the academic institution. By joking, she has fun bringing this devourer of woman off the artistically marked paths of amorous passion to engage in those of the passion for pleasure.
She answers to the magnificent sculpture of the Kiss by a smiling, and somewhat exciting, accumulation of mouths. She turns the pathos of this imaginary kiss into a very physical and jubilant affair of lips.
Véronique Bigo has chosen to avoid the paraphrase of the master to better underline her freedom of being and artist and a woman. [...].
Provocative without being aggressive, these drawings of mouths incite us to reinvent our relationship with their forms, with their materials and their realities. Sketched, reduced to a few lines, none of these mouths is necessary. Their unreal transparency questions us, without dictating an expected answer. Isolated from any context, whether it is a face or a narrative composition, they destabilize by the incongruous force of their presence. The material that Véronique Bigo shows us is there to stimulate our idea of the pleasure of kissing.
On guard, sparkling and spiritual, we can bet that Véronique Bigo's free discussion, far from shocking Rodin, has allowed him to meet a new expression of modernity, with a smile of pleasure.