This summer, René Lévesque would have been 100 years old. Until August 24th, anniversary date, The duty underlines on all its platforms the memory of the founder of the Parti québécois and one of the greatest prime ministers in history with the 100 years series of René Lévesque.
For nearly twenty years, the elected members of the Parti Québécois have gathered at the foot of a bronze René Lévesque to celebrate the anniversary of his death. The 700-pound statue located in the gardens of the National Assembly imposes from the top of its eight feet. She contrasts, however, with the accessible politician who was affectionately nicknamed “Ti-Poil”.
The former prime minister’s bronze is an oversized copy of a “life-size” statue that occupied the same spot between 1999 and 2001. The five-foot-five monument was quickly embraced by passers-by. Witness the cigarettes that were regularly slipped between the brazen fingers of this indomitable smoker. The critics nevertheless got the better of this bronze at breast height.
The work, financed by a private foundation, was the subject of an early debunking in 2001, only two years after its inauguration by Prime Minister Lucien Bouchard. “I had mentioned that it had to be put on a base, explains the sculptor Fabien Pagé, joined in his workshop in Donnacona. The architects said, “You make the statue; the rest of us will take care of the rest.” »
This original bronze resurfaced in the days following its unbolting, in New Carlisle, the birthplace of the original Gaspésien. The statue is first installed in the middle of the game modules of a children’s park before being moved to the doors of the Espace René-Lévesque. For the past five years, it has welcomed those nostalgic for a Quiet Revolution which came to a halt one evening in May 1980.
Distortions
Fabien Pagé’s work was sculpted in wood before being moulded, then cast in bronze at the Inverness foundry. “The advantage, explains its designer, is that you can keep the wooden statue, it’s like a double room. »
This atypical process had been ridiculed by the artist Daniel Beauchamp in the weeks following the unveiling of the original statue, in the summer of 1999. the height of the hero with his “spinal column in “2 by 4””, his “badly squared head” and his “ears full of splinters”.
The architects said, “You make the statue; the rest of us will take care of the rest.”
For others, the defect in the design of the work would rather go back to the photo that served as a model for the sculptor. In this shot, we see René Lévesque alongside French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who looks like a giant with his six feet and two inches. Their meeting is immortalized from the top of a staircase with a wide-angle lens having the effect of compressing the lower body of the former prime minister. The distortion is palpable in the bronze.
Fabien Pagé says he has not heard of these criticisms. “I only had good comments”, maintains the specialist in ornamental sculpture and bas-reliefs. If he likes all of his bronze “babies”, the artist particularly cherishes his life-size René Lévesque, which he prefers to the copy he made in 2001. “I like the little one much better. She is really cute, more real, less gigantic. »
Caricature
The “conformist” style of Fabien Pagé was in phase with that advocated by Corinne Côté-Lévesque, the second wife of the former prime minister. The widow had fallen under the charm of her bronze of General de Gaulle inaugurated at the entrance to the Plains of Abraham in 1997. “She liked the work I was doing because I did not fall into caricature. »
Mme Côté-Lévesque had been scalded by the bust of her husband released in 1989 from Raoul Hunter’s studio. The artist, known for his work as a caricaturist in the Sun, had also had to correct at his request the pout yet characteristic of the politician. “I made the bronze bust of Prime Minister René Lévesque and not the portrait of Ms.me Côté-Lévesque,” Hunter said.
The widow of the former Prime Minister also intervened with Pagé so that he recuts the long hair of his René Lévesque in wood. “For once he won’t cry, you’re going to cut me off!” she said during a visit to Donnacona.
If it were to be done again, Pagé would sculpt the “people’s liberator” in the same way. The artist has also made miniature copies of his work from the twenty-inch model that allowed him to obtain the initial contract. “I still have some for sale in my workshop,” he says proudly, adding that he’s already sold a third of them, at $3,000 a piece. “There will be 12 in the world, after that we destroy the mold. »
Fabien Pagé was not approached for the design of the Jacques Parizeau bronze unveiled at the back of the Quebec parliament in early June. “I don’t run after those things,” he said proudly. I am not into politics. »
The artist still plans to see the work of his colleagues Jules Lasalle and Annick Bourgeau up close. He will take the opportunity to admire his most famous bronze “baby” on the other side of Parliament Hill.