Baudelaire

Gallery 281, Modern and Contemporary Art, second floor

Main Building

Baudelaire

1911

Raymond Duchamp-Villon (Pierre-Maurice-Raymond Duchamp) (French, 1876–1918)

Raymond Duchamp-Villon made numerous versions of this bust of the influential French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). The figure's blank eyes suggest the writer's visionary imagination, while the large, bulbous cranium references his enormous intellectual capacity. His brother Jacques Villon kept this plaster sculpture in his studio long after Raymond's death in 1918. The severe geometric composition must have evoked fond memories of the many discussions it inspired among the Salon Cubists after the work was completed. Villon later recalled, "I remember that about 1911 we sometimes used to say . . . that if Baudelaire's bust were to explode, it would do so along certain lines of force."

Gallery 281, Modern and Contemporary Art, second floor

Object Details

Title:

Baudelaire

Date:

1911

Artist:

Raymond Duchamp-Villon (Pierre-Maurice-Raymond Duchamp) (French, 1876–1918)

Medium:

Plaster

Dimensions:

15 3/4 × 9 × 10 inches (40 × 22.9 × 25.4 cm)

Classification:

Sculpture

Credit Line:

Gift of the family of the artist, 1978

Accession Number:

1978-15-5

Geography:

Made in France, Europe

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Gallery 281, Modern and Contemporary Art, second floor

Main Building

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