Antoine Bourdelle (French, 1861–1929)Beethoven dit Métropolitain1902.Inscribed 'MOI JE SUIS/BACCHUS QUI/PRESSURE POUR/LES HOMMES LE/NECTAR DELICIEUX/ Paroles de Van Beethoven' on the small base.Signed 'Bourdelle' on the neck, bottom right; also signed 'ANTOINE BOURDELLE' and monogrammed on the small base (right profile); also with '© By BOURDELLE' on the large base, bottom left (rigth profile); with 'E - GODARD/Fond Paris,' and numbered 'E. A. 2' on the large base, bottom left (verso), bronze with green patinaHeight: 41 in. (104.1cm)PROVENANCE:Rhodia Dufet-Bourdelle, Paris.Acquired directly from the above.Collection of Robert A. Becker, New York, New York.LITERATURE:André Fontainas, Bourdelle, Les Editions Rieder, Paris, 1930, plate 13 (another cast illustrated).Ionel Jianou and Michel Dufet, Bourdelle, Arted, Paris, 1965, no. 83, p. 73, plate 14 (another cast illustrated).Carol Marc Lavrillier and Michel Dufet, Bourdelle et la Critique de son Temps, Paris-Musées, Paris, 1992, plate 127-128, p. 221 (another cast illustrated).NOTE:Beethoven dit Metropolitain is among the largest and most powerful busts ever produced by Bourdelle. Originally titled Bacchus, it is inspired by a famous letter written by Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859) to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) in 1911, in which she claimed the composer had identified himself to Bacchus, saying: “Music is the wine that stimulates man to new achievements. I am Bacchus, pressing this divine nectar for man in order to make him spiritually drunk." Bourdelle took out the words from the letter, translated them and inscribed them at the base of his bust, which would later take the name of the famous New York museum where its first model was sent.The figure of Bacchus had always appealed to Beethoven. In the Roman pantheon of gods, Bacchus is the god of wine and dance, and the artistic counterpart of his brother, Apollo. Both represent a certain side of the creative genius: Apollo embodies rational thinking, order, and appeals to logic, prudence and purity, whereas Dionysus represents irrationality and disorder, and appeals to emotions and instincts. The god used wine to reach a state of complete open-mindedness, and shared it with mortals to help their creativity. Beethoven is like Bacchus in that his music is a god-sent nectar that inspires mortals and incites them to indulge their creative whims. Bourdelle was not the first artist to channel this comparison. In fact, Nietzsche himself in his 1872 The Birth of Tragedy, had already analyzed Beethoven as this prophetic deity who gives mankind a taste of the divine through his music.Here, Beethoven sits high on his pedestal and dramatically looks down on us, mortals. The movement suggests our inferiority, and deliberate submission to the musician god. In complete awe, the spectator stands petrified before the composer's heroic bust, as he would in the presence of Medusa.