The Sphinx--cast and carved

She beckons you from her corner atop her pedestal; the flirtation curve of her body is hardly longer than a foot. The tilt of her head could be curious or knowing. She is as sprite-like in her demeanor as she is in her stature—certainly not the typical impression one has when one thinks of the Sphinx.

This little model at the Rodin Museum seems typical in his approach—feminine forms titled with names of mythical creatures—the titles are used to suggest and inform the viewer of a possible quality of the figure, rather than depicting the figure as the mythic beast in question so that the form overpowers the read. Rodin played with perceptions of the figure, especially that of the feminine, often imbuing figures, which might as well have functioned as portraits, with symbolic qualities and genderswapping from creature to creature. All things considered it’s hard to say whether he had much of a positive consideration for the feminine form, but her certainly paid it a great deal of attention. 

I was quite taken with the curious depiction of the fabled Sphinx (no parts of her seeming beastly), so it was especially curious when I came across several other surprising depictions of the infamous creature while at the musée d’Orsay in the special exhibit "The Angel of the Odd: Dark Romanticism from Goya to Max Ernst". Another model version of a larger piece, Christian Behrens’s Sphinx sets a whole other tone for the beast in question. Instead of sculpting a lone figure, Behrens’s sculpture depicts a charged scene between Oedipus and the Sphinx locked in a brutal, unforgiving kiss.

Needless to say, I don’t remember that part of the story.

It wasn’t the only work in the exhibition that depicted a kiss between the riddle-master and the “hero”; clearly the Symbolist drew a great deal of inspiration from the formidable embrace of the wise and mysterious Sphinx, no doubt casting themselves as the hapless man willing to subject themselves to this dangerous creature. 

Both depictions are striking, curious, and indubitably contain commentary on role of the feminine figure in art, mythical or otherwise. Where Rodin used the title of the piece to imply certain characteristics intended to be read in the piece, Behrens’s sculpture depended more heavily on the symbolic (no surprise there) nature of the scene depicted to convey an overarching theme of the price of knowledge