Beethoven
Ian Charles Lepine seeks to present beings trapped in a crossroads of contradiction: his interest is to display creatures whose very existence negates their very existence. These are beings at war with themselves, a war where all victories cannot but prove pyrrhic.
His sculptures are frequently accompanied by a poem in either English, French, or Italian, that seeks to give word to the tragedy intrinsic to the form.
Author: Ian Charles Lepine
Year: 2022
Title: Beethoven
Technique: Ceramic clay sculpture, painted with oxides and enamel.
Beethoven is considered a classical composer by history but anything but that by anyone who has ever listened to his compositions.
This bust seeks to portray such a contradiction. Behind the composer there stands an Ionic column representing the heritage of classicism, but indeed Beethoven gives its back to it. Atop the structure we read the words that were to change the world of art: Sturm und Drang.
Grand Sonnet Pathétique
How could you hear such music with no hearing
And love the very air that soon was soundless?
How is it that vibrations are endearing,
When they are common in the world and countless?
You groped your way into the heights of song,
Yet there could not enjoy the aural view;
But do the gods not punish right with wrong
To those who bring to men celestial dew?
Your anger’s an allegro in minor tones,
A contradiction of your life’s disaster,
With strange, black chords that make resound our bones,
And tremolos that grow from fast to faster.
As though through closèd eyelids we see light,
You blind achieved a music moonbeam-bright.
—Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor, Op. 13, ‘Pathétique’
Ludwig van Beethoven
1799