Phillippe Faraut

May 15, 2011 10:03 PM

Philippe Faraut, realist sculptor, has a couple of interesting videos on Youtube ... one shows the effects of the aging process, another shows the effects of meth, and a third shows the effects of insanity.

(bonus link: here are some images of works by hyper-realist sculptors.)

posted by crunchland (12 comments total)

Aw. Since the whole point of sculpture is preserving something ephemeral, like the beauty of youth, watching a sculpture age the way a human actually ages struck me as one of the saddest things I've seen in a long time. I almost had to turn it off, because I didn't want to think about what would happen when it died.

.
posted by hermitosis at 10:20 PM on May 15, 2011

"Does God want us to suffer? What if the answer to that question is 'yes'? You see, I don't think that God particularly wants us to be happy. I think He wants us to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. You see, we are like children who think that our toys bring us all the happiness there is, and that our nursery is the whole wide world. But something has to drive us out into the world of others, and that thing is suffering. Put simply, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. We are like blocks of stone from which the Sculptor carves a form. The blows of His chisel which hurt us so much are what make us perfect."

-- CS Lewis
posted by hermitosis at 10:26 PM on May 15, 2011 [8 favorites]

The insanity would have been much better, more real, had the subject been youthful. Insanity really is a disease of the young. I have seen impossibly beautiful youth being brought down by schizophrenia. In the aged, one can't say what is the result of insanity or what is the result of worry and struggle. Or perhaps, the result of not one's own insanity, but the result of watching one's own child falling its victim.
posted by Goofyy at 10:56 PM on May 15, 2011

Meth, a central nervous system stimulant is often highly addictive after one use. (But at least it quiets that shrieky kid in the picture down.)
posted by telstar at 11:20 PM on May 15, 2011

This, more than anything I've seen in the past several years, makes me want to start sculpting again.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 1:53 AM on May 16, 2011

Some sculptures become better as they age though, hermitosis. The classical marble sculptures of Greece and Rome, long venerated for the grace and simplicity of their naked stone, were actually painted garish colours in their time and, in their original form, would appear crass and even childish to the modern sensibilities their denuded forms helped in no small part to create.
posted by joannemullen at 2:02 AM on May 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Incredible to watch this master at work!
posted by rmmcclay at 2:26 AM on May 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

thanks- the aging one was very sad....but well done.
posted by catrae at 3:06 AM on May 16, 2011

That's interesting, catrae, that you saw that as sad. If anything, I saw that face move from bland to a bit happy in that process. The only 'sad' part for me was trying to place myself on that continuum and having to wait WAY too long while the video reached that point.

The insanity piece... hard to pick that out. I've known way too many people that were 'insane' (no, really, I spent three years in college working the locked wards at a psych hospital), most of them you wouldn't know were ill just by looking at them.
posted by tomswift at 3:11 AM on May 16, 2011

I'd say that the "insanity" sculpture might be more accurately labeled "the effects of long-term use of antipsychotic drugs" or "the effects of living in a mental institution".
posted by Fuego at 4:33 AM on May 16, 2011 [1 favorite]

Some sculptures become better as they age though, hermitosis.

Yeah I know. That's clearly not what I was talking about though.
posted by hermitosis at 7:33 AM on May 16, 2011

Man. I never knew insanity took such a heavy toll on the nostrils.

Seriously, though: beautiful. I love watching him add clay to the aging face, much as flesh would grow and sag. Even as the body is decaying, it isn't disappearing. Just changing.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 8:51 AM on May 16, 2011