Gallery | Don Quixote

°Photos | pictures : JV & Leduc

Don Quixote

A real hero of my childhood, in the Normandy countryside ! and yet its so far away from the arid territory of Don Quixote.

The madness of his assaults, the comical absurdity mixed with wonderful conviction, there was nothing like this. An opening ! there was also Rocinante and his faithfull and fat Sancho on his little donkey.

I had all this well imposinted on my mind. “picture like” ! I couldn’t miss it. As soon as I felt more at ease with welding and that I had enough confidence “in my eye”, making it became obvious.

I spent a lot of time on Rocinante. The mare, so scrawny, allowed me to draw up the whole contemporary reading of the quarter that I wished to make.

The utopian lunacy of Don Quixote is notatall in tune with our consumer society and yet he is often mentioned in the medias or by individuals and often to his advantage.

The association “Don Quixote” in favor of the homeless people of the Saint Martin Canal in Paris. With the idea of the tents lined up along the water. The name given to this to this association did a lot I think to increase and impose the impact it had on the people.

The kind of “made determination” and absence of fear of the hero made an impresion on the people.

Often stricking to consumerism, our society lost its ideology and generous outbursts that went with it.

The “basics” that is to demonstrate to support political beliefs vanished, got narrower or even weakened along with relevant ideas in our country or the promotion of one ain: “benefits”.

In my “sculptor’s language” I gave to Rocinante which is the rider’s base, a kind of stubborn position with its head turned towards its “master” and its body far from a galloping position.

What I did also, a first time for me, was to intensify Rocinante’s general aspect with only 10 mm steel reinforcement bars.

I kept working on it with the following question in mind: how little material can I use so that the volume of the sculpture will be seen and interpreted the way I want it to be ?

The ability of the onlookers to complete the partly given information without any hesitation nor ambiguity surprised me.

Don Quixote on Rocinante with its metal sheets and its vertical determination takes its strenghth and dimension riding a relevant horse but our eyes easily go through it.

In the installation chosen on the main square in front of the railway station in september 2005, Sancho Panza “trudges” away from his “master”. He also distances himself from the exploits of his utopist master. He even turns away a little to eat a sandwich and it’s obviously not the first one looks at the way he sits on the donkey and his generous rolls of flesh…

The fellow traveller has changed.

First I tried to find an equivalent today of the wind mills the spirited hero tries to fight with his lance.

I only had found the metaphor of the ad panels.

Sancho Panza would carry one on the croup of his donkey and the ad would have written on it an unreadable number of 21 digits !
I didn’t carry on the idea, not really undertstood and too far away from the sculpture material.
Plastic art and complex messages do not always go along. For two years now Don Quixote and Sancho panza have been travelling on this square looking towards the south west.

They’ve adopted the square and vice versa. This idea of really nicely “fitting in” convinced the town, helped by the SNCF (french railroad company) to buy the sculpture so that it would stay permantly there, respected actually by everybody inhabitants as well as travellers.

As a conclusion I’d like to tell you a true story pleasant and impressive.

Leaving the train one day, I was surprised to see about 40 people dressed in folk costums standing near to the 2 sculptures. While walking I saw the lady Mayor of Saint Pierre des Corps waving at me, she was with her assistant. They were there with a group of singers artists from Spain and they were announcing a show for the afternoon.

After we were introduced to each other in a warm and very friendly manner everybody seemed to be quite happy : the Spanish people to see their hero so present, the sculptor to feel the strength of the imagination coming alive because of his work and the people from the town hall to preside over such a meeting.

Suddenly I saw Sancho Panza dressed up with folk costumes surrounded with laughter !
Don Quixote was on the other hand alone riding Rocinante.

As I was surprised by the difference in the way both were treated I asked the leader (a fine art teacher in his town) why ? He answered in one breath that even after a couple of centuries touching Don Quixote remainded unthinkable.
Sancho on the other hand was “one of them” he was the man in the street.

A proof in 2005 of the strength of the cultural imagination.

To conclude another story. Three young Spaniards taking a picture, the two boys in front of Sancho Panza, the girl at the foot of Don Quixote… and nobody to answer the question!

Dimensions: 361 x 250 x 134 cm