From the visible body to the invisible body: inner contemplation in Camille Claudel’s three-dimensional production

Abstract

Far from providing a simple delight of the senses, Camille Claudel's three-dimensional productions awaken the viewer. They remind him that beyond the visible body, they live and beat an invisible incorporeal that promises him a higher destiny than his painful earthly destiny. They call him to a higher level of consciousness, to a rebirth, to a higher life. Beyond the ethical standards that restrict the space in which the sculptor tries to move, the three-dimensional expression of her art opens a path to a creative space that transposes her moral questioning from a purely ethical plane - what is a virtuous life? - to a more rigorously spiritual plane - what is the meaning of life? - and in doing so liberating since connected to a questioning freed from the restrictive framework of bourgeois morality. In seeking new inner clarity to guide herself, the one whose mother said: "she has all the vices", will have finally left us a masterful, edifying, cathartic, even psychogogic work, and new reasons to love.