La femme sans tête
Berlinde De Bruyckere Belgian
Not on view
In La femme sans tête (The Headless Woman) deep sympathy combines with shuddering horror upon confronting the recognizable shape of a human form that appears simultaneously lifelike in its anatomical details and dermal texture, and lifeless by its mutilations and limp stance. Modeled in pale tinted wax, De Bruyckere's approach to rendering flesh draws lessons from the depiction of figures seen in the paintings of Rogier van der Weyden and Lucas Cranach. Painted in delicate hues that conjure alabaster skin, at the same time the figure seems drained of blood. This tension, in which the grisly processes of decay and decomposition appear to unfold before one’s eyes, makes the sculpture incessantly moving and compelling—the body reduced to biological matter in a depiction that verges on abstraction.
