Claude Lalanne
La Pomme Bouche
circa 1975
(gilt bronze)
(gilt bronze)
Simultaneously humorous and disturbing, this apple looks surreal. It seems to constantly morph back and forth between its fruity side and its human side, like an undecided shapeshifter. In fact, is it an apple with a human mouth, or is it an eye-less, nose-less human with an apple head?
Perhaps plucked directly from Magritte’s The Son of Man (circa 1964), the idea of pairing humankind with nature brings to light a similar question as that of the chicken and the egg: though undoubtedly related, which came first? Was humankind really borne from nature, or is humankind the (or at least one of the) reason(s) for which nature exists in the first place? Without nature, would woman and man cease to exist? And without woman and man, would nature perish or weaken in some way? Questions as these always bear more of the same, and eventually those doing the questioning find themselves caught in a circle of complexity often riddled with the redundant and the inexplicable, all with a strange sense of clarity. But choosing to remain ignorant or uncurious with the fear of being tangled in one’s own web of natural confusion is foolish. Two facts to realise and to accept as solid truths are that without questions there are no answers, and that when lost, always return to simplicity.
That said, which stage of thought could Lalanne’s so-called apple represent? That where, after a long and tiresome self-orientated debate, it has reached its personal level of clarity? Or that where it has become so muddled within its own never-ending labyrinth of questions that it no longer recalls its original form? In which case - is it really only an apple with a mouth?
