Wim Delvoye is making a public sculpture in homage to the French physicist and astronomer François Arago (1786-1853) that will be erected in Paris. Budgeted at €350,000, it has been commissioned by Association Ars Arago. The choice of Delvoye, decided by a jury including Bernard Blistène, the director of the Centre Pompidou, was not unanimous as some jury members dislike his Cloaca, excrement-making machine.
“I want to make a rotation sculpture, using these light waves that Arago theorized about and that goes well with my use of 3D scanning and modelling,” explains the Belgian artist, who beat 12 other candidates for the commission, including Elisabeth Cibot, Daniel Druet and Sébastien Langloys.
The idea behind the initiative is to make a replacement of the original Arago statue on Place de l'Île-de-Sein, near Montparnasse, that was melted into weaponry by the Germans during the Second World War, leaving an empty socle.
In 1994, the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture commissioned Dutch artist Jan Dibbets to make an artwork in response to the issue of the empty socle. His proposal was to keep it empty and install a line of 135 bronze medallions along the north-to-south Paris meridian, which Arago re-calculated.
“The City of Paris asked what should be done at the end of the 20th century with this problem of an empty socle; they didn't ask for a new sculpture but to revive the idea of Arago,” Dibbets says. An explanation about his conceptual piece is inscribed on the socle, on which two of his medallions appear.
Last year, the businessman Hubert Lévy-Lambert, the founder of Association Ars Arago, applied to the City of Paris to have a new sculpture placed on the socle. “Jan Dibbets objected to another statue being erected there and this was upheld by the Mayor of Paris,” says Lévy-Lambert, who is applying for authorisation from the Observatory of Paris, the Ministry of Culture and the City of Paris to have Delvoye's future sculpture installed in the Jardin de l'Observatoire (Garden of the Observatory) on Boulevard Arago instead.
Dibbets raised his objection last October, a year before the choice of Delvoye was made, and the Mayor of Paris supported his position in a letter to Lévy-Lambert in February: “Any new implantation of a work would be contrary to the choice deliberated by the City and the State [in 1994] and an indisputable infringement of the moral right of the artist [Jan Dibbets] who precisely constructed his imagination around the emptiness of the socle. Besides the allocation of damages and interests, a judiciary judge could absolutely order the withdrawal of the new statue adulterating the first work.” The letter invited Lévy-Lambert to look for a new site once an artist had been selected.
“This socle is occupied [by my piece] but Mr Lévy-Lambert doesn't see it,” says Dibbets, who refers to Arago's stint as the Minister of Defence in 1848 and his renouncement of slavery as reasons why an “imaginary” sculpture on the empty socle is symbolic. “I have absolutely no problem with Wim Delvoye making a sculpture about Arago—I respect him very much as an artist,” Dibbets says.
Delvoye says his sculpture “has to be placed in June”, although authorisation for the Jardin de l'Observatoire needs to be granted.
UPDATE: This article was updated on 28 November to include comment from Wim Delvoye and Jan Dibbets
