Modernist Polished Brass Abstract Duck Sculpture, French circa 1970

A remarkable piece of modernist decorative sculpture in which the familiar form of a duck has been reduced to its absolute sculptural essence. The entire bird is resolved into a single, unified volume of highly polished brass: the rounded, cushioned body merges seamlessly into the sweeping S-curve of the neck, which arcs over and back toward the body in a gesture of preening repose, the small bill barely distinguishable from the flow of the whole. There are no legs, no individual feathers, no anatomical particularities beyond the minimum necessary to evoke the species — only the pure, liquid movement of a form that could as plausibly be an abstract sculpture as a representational bird.

The mirror-polished brass surface is the making of the piece. Every curve reflects the light in a different direction, so that as the sculpture is viewed from different angles, it seems to change shape, the reflections creating a constantly shifting play of warm gold highlights and shadowed hollows. The surface is flawless: not a seam or tool mark is visible, and the transitions between the body’s different volumes are perfectly continuous. The result is an object that has more in common with the biomorphic sculptures of Arp or Brancusi than with the traditional animalier bronze.

At 19.5 centimetres in length and 10 centimetres tall, the piece sits with compact authority on a desk, shelf, or coffee table — small enough to hold in the hand, substantial enough to command its setting. French craftwork of the highest quality, circa 1970.