National Museum of Fine Arts (II)

(February, 2007). We concluded our tour of the Recoleta-Plaza Francia area and its surroundings at the National Museum of Fine Arts, where I was able to take two photos that I had missed last time and wanted to have: photos from the Hirsch Collection, 17th-century art.

In the photograph, an oil painting titled "Saint Francis in Meditation" by the artist Francisco de Zurbarán. Year 1632. Located in the Mannerism and Baroque room. Interesting to see this and two other paintings related to Saint Francis, now in the year 2014, when there is a Pope who chose the name Francis.
The art ranging from 1945 to the present is the one I like the least of what the museum exhibits. According to the museum's webpage, it features a total of 400 works, and some are truly good, but the rest do not catch my attention; I find them incomprehensible. Senseless, that's just my subjectivity. For example, the photograph—a set of metal spikes, roughly shaped like a sphere, hanging from the ceiling. What meaning does that have? To me, none. Yet there it is, in the Museum of Fine Arts. Obviously, art experts have seen the beauty in it, and the artistic value as well. I believe that some artists build their careers, and then their name alone is enough to allow themselves certain liberties in their creations. This particular work is a sculpture from 1968 by the artist León Ferrari, made of stainless steel. Style: Abstraction, Conceptualism. Something like "the idea prevails over its form." This work is called Moon.

In one of the rooms of the National Museum of Fine Arts, one of the last ones on our tour, I saw a small statuette representing a person with a bow. A 19th-century French sculpture (Mercedes Santamarina Collection). The work is titled "Herakles, The Archer," made in bronze by the artist Émile Antoine Bourdelle. Created in 1909 and acquired in 1943. This work caught my attention, on the one hand due to its small size, 58 x 60 x 27.5 cm, and on the other because it reminded me of another work I had seen somewhere else.

The Archer (Square) It reminded me of another very similar work—actually identical, but differing in size, the latter being much larger—located less than a block away from the museum, outdoors, specifically in a public square. It is located in Dante Square. It is also a bronze sculpture from 1909 by the same artist, Émile Antoine Bourdelle. This sculpture was acquired by the City Municipality in the late 1930s.
The Archer. The work Herakles, The Archer is considered one of the most important works by this artist, Émile Antoine Bourdelle. Émile Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929) was a French sculptor during the period known as the Belle Époque. Herakles, The Archer (1909) is inspired by Greek mythology, representing Heracles (Hercules) shooting an arrow with his bow, kneeling on his right knee with his left leg resting on a rock. Heracles kills the birds of Lake Stymphalis. This work is considered a turning point in the shift toward modernity.