The Feminine Ideal in Banyuls and Perpignan

with Ellen Turner Hall

Two exhibitions, two artists, two different views of  the ideal woman.

At the Maillol museum in Banyuls  Maillol’s final unfinished sculpture L’Harmonie is the  intriguing subject of the summer show.

The unlikely couple of Maillol and Picasso share a double bill at the Rigaud museum in Perpignan.

In Banyuls L’Harmonie is presented as the ultimate expression of Maillol’s fascination with the female body.  Yet  the title belies the tormented history of its creation, produced during the war, while his chosen model Dina Vierny was guiding refugees over the border into Spain. The Nazi occupiers imprisoned her not once but twice. Each time Maillol  used his influence to have her released.

From the very first sketches, we see the sculptor aiming to understand the form from front, back and sides,  thinking in three dimensions  while drawing in two. We see these images transferred into clay and then bronze with minor adjustments while Maillol  sought the perfect form:  round, soft, peaceful. A timeless object of adoration. That sense of awe is  captured in a photograph of the artist’s gnarled hands placed upon the smooth curves of  the work in progress.

In Perpignan selected works of Maillol (1861-1944) and Picasso (1881-1973) are exhibited in tandem interpreting similar themes,   while demonstrating their individual styles. Picasso’s large painting of  two women in front of the sea (1956) emphasizes  their bodies’ angularity and disproportion  and contrasts with Maillol’s  serene, meditative Mediterranean woman, sculpted in  1906.  Maillol never ceased to search for an ideal form. Picasso was constantly hungry for change, never satisfied with simply repeating himself.   His sketches  demonstrate a masterly control of line,  yet  it was the what-if … ? that drove his creation ever forward.

In  Femme torero (1934) Picasso creates  a tumultuous  jumble of heads bodies and legs.   As our eyes adjust to the  distorted images, figures of a woman, horse and bull emerge from the complex  combat in which they  are trapped. Maillol’s Desire (1907), a bronze relief,  illustrates a different but totally recognizable struggle, that between a man and a woman. But here too ambiguity reigns. Who is  the seducer? Who is the seduced?

In 1938 near the end of  his life Maillol  sculpted L’Air,   a woman  improbably balanced on one hip, in apparent  defiance of gravity, at risk of tumbling  over at any moment. About the same time (1932) Picasso  painted  a reclining  nude with  ballooning limbs  wrapped around her torso.   Treating the same subject,  Maillol attempts to defy chaos  while Picasso embraces  it.

Maillol’s art was dedicated to  sculpting the ideal  female body,  while  what motivated Picasso was a much more abstract quest :  to  make art that  challenges nature and the way we see.

BANYULS
Harmonie: l’ultime oeuvre

runs from 25 June to 2 November 2025.
Open Tuesday to Sunday 10 -12 and 14 -18.
WEBSITE

museemaillolbanyuls@orange.fr

PERPIGNAN
Maillol/Picasso. Défier l’idéal Classique runs from 28 June to 31 December 2025.
Open every day 10h30 to 19h00 from June to 31 September.
WEBSITE

Friday 27th September 201