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DUALITY

Bronze polychrome – diamètre 100 cm

Dualité

This sculpture is a thinking on life and death through the symbolism of the seasons. Life and death belong to the same cycle and get fresh ideas one in the other. This is why this sculpture is round. From the left the life principle is represented under the shape of a spring allegory, symbolized mainly by a profusion of transformed cherry trees bronze buds. This symbol of bud will be taken back many times.  In his symbolic vocabulary Michel Lévy uses the bud as symbol of life because this one carries in it the promise of the flower and fruit to come. To the right, the principle of death is represented by an allegory of the realized winter not by a human skull, but by a dog skull to say that the fear of the death is something very primitive within us. On the other hand, he symbolizes the winter under the shape of the snake because the snake is a cold-blooded, most of the time immovable, but perfectly alive animal as the winter which, under its ice-cold appearance, prepares the revival of the spring. 

You see that even if life and death are face to face, the life diverts slightly its head because, except for some outstanding people, it is unbearable to face the death. The life and the death belong certainly to the same cycle, but Michel Lévy wanted to put a very acute barrier in between what is alive and what dies by making this peak. This peak is very particular because it carries a rope knotted in a special way. There is an equivalence between the Hebraic letters and the numbers. The number of knots constituting the rope (10-5-6-5) reproduces the sacred Four-Letter Name of God (Yod, Hé, Vav, Hé, in Hebrew).

It was for Michel Lévy a way to introduce God's notion between life and death. A last point which questioned him a lot is this kind of chance that seems to preside over the fate, because we cannot understand why such person is alive and such person died. That is why he put this character with this die by thinking of the poet’s verse which says: "a dice thrown will never abolish the chance ". 

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