Making Of A Bronze (1966)

foreign [Music] with the exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art because it was made with great love and respect for the work of the artist now for me it's quite experienced because I'm seeing more than 40 Years of my own work and I think that it's a great lesson for me I don't have any preference for some particular work which is at my exhibition I just go through all the rooms in the garden like I would remember my past life it's a very interesting experience for a living artists [Music] when I look the room of my beginnings while I was still very young and very enthusiastic and in this atmosphere of Paris before the first war marvelous creative atmosphere and then my early Cubist period where I was looking for a new language and then when the new language was assimilated everyone started to tell its own stars and I started to tell my stars I have been now for 44 years a professional sculptor I studied a lot I saw a lot I worked a lot I had the great privilege to have among my friends as the highest spirits in the field of heart we are endless discussions and from this life experience I came to some convictions these convictions are ruling my life they are ruling hours of my work among my convictions which I prize the most is the freedom for the artist to go wherever is Imagination leads him foreign 46 in Paris I was asked by father Couture if I would like to make a version for the Church of a sea first of all I was a little bit surprised because after all I am not a Catholic faith and I told her to foreign [Music] and I was very pleased with disaster and I said immediately that I will consider to do it I started to think about my vision and for a long time really it didn't come until one day I had an inspiration and I immediately saw how the version should be and I started to make my sketches I made a lot of them drawings and little sculptures and finally I made a big scale model so I started my big sculpture and divert for entire year and this version it was almost completed when the fire destroyed everything in my studio and the Virgin was gone [Music] because the fire was a tremendous tragedy in my life but I immediately started all over again and with the help of friends I started to build a studio [Music] you are surprised to see so many words of art around my place but really I'm not a collector don't misunderstand me I'm a Workman who is interested in work done by other people from the prehistoric times until today people say that the objects which are here around me coming from different ages and different places have a kind of unity I think this Unity is because they're coming to me I choose them I like to watch how the human mind realized with the hand ideas all kind of ideas plastic ideas and humanitis that's why I'm fascinated by all these things which are around me and I love it the atmosphere which it gives me I'm watching all these things every day and every day is new for me thank you [Music] I love my craft because it is like being a Workman is around the morning I'm getting up and I go to work I walk to come to my studio and then over there it's not only a physical work but also intellectual I have the feeling that all my human potentialities are busy while I'm working and it gives me a tremendous satisfaction it gives me also a lot of strain because in the evening I'm just worn out every evening nevertheless I walk back home and then I can read a little bit or listen to music [Music] to make a sculpture I don't have really any process it's very different sometimes I'm making a lot of drawings before I start to make my sculpture sometimes it comes spontaneously just like that without thinking automatically I started to build my new version and now it is completed in plaster and will go to the founder [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] the processes of sculpture of course are very complex and complicated if you work in clay you model well you have to cast it and after that it goes to bronze and the casting of grounds is a very long and difficult process especially if it's done like I like to do it in the last wax process something which is very slow before you have a result but you have to love it to go into it [Music] so you see I'm working on this version since 1947. now I will have a lot to work to retouch my waxes and then after that to Chisel the Browns and quite a lot of work before it will be completed I have now my sculpture in wax whatever I'm doing now will appear in the bronze even my smallest fingerprints after that we will add to my sculptures a lot of Gates or kind of tubes which will help the wax to melt it out through these channels and after that the metal to come in foreign [Music] we cover it with the kind of mixture of plaster and silicate [Music] and when everything is finished they have our mold [Music] this mold is put in a kiln variable stay for a few days until all the wax is melted out after that we will put the mold in a kind of a pit which is at The Foundry and we will put sand all around so that when the metal which is coming with a tremendous strength will come into the mold it should not burst foreign poured into the mold oh after that they mold us to cool off [Music] and Venice School of we take it out from the pit and we break the mold [Music] when we break the mold we find our sculpture in metal plus all this tube which we added [Music] these tubes have to be caught away all right then the artist is chiseling with the Chisel and the hammer chiseling directly into the metal to even up all the material thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign sculpture with all kind of oxidations of different acids until we come to the color which we like then the sculpture is finished [Music] foreign [Music] is very rich in all kinds of experiences Pleasant and pleasant tragic marvelous it seems to me that sculpture is just a miraculous medium of course I am prejudiced because it's my craft I love it but to see how something is burned from your hands something that didn't exist before and now is here existing taking place in the space it is just miraculous I made this inscription in French and I used my Jewish name it trades Jacob lipsitz Jew faithful to the religion of his ancestors made this virgin for the better understanding of human beings on this Earth so that the spirit may prevail thank you