Will Self on Montaigne

Had the pleasure of listening to Will Self talk about Montaigne last Thursday at the Institut Français. A fascinating man, very modest for all his eruditeness, with a 'bad-boy' glint in his eye.
I spent a really interesting and highly entertaining evening in the company of two remarkable writers and thinkers: Will Self I knew as a columnist - I haven't yet explored his fiction, but bought his 'Dorian' that evening (the very first paragraph sets the tone for the whole novel, I would think; the reason why I've not ventured into his fiction before - I prefer not to linger in the realm of human existence at its most sordid if I don't have to - but now that I've met him I want to see whether he can get me on side.) Montaigne I knew from my French Literature syllabus back at college, when, aged 19, I didn't really connect with him - probably because we read the essays in the almost original 16th century French (bar the punctuation and some of the spelling, which had been updated). I'm pleased to say that I now have the recently published 'modern' French version, which makes the whole experience far more pleasurable.
Two fascinating men, two sceptics; the latter both a companion and a guru, with great insights into human nature, the former rather more of an unknown quantity to me at this stage. You see, I firmly believe that as artists, be they writers, sculptors, actors, poets, painters, musicians or dancers, we must be conscious of and take responsibility for the effect our art has on our audience and choose the way in which we convey our thoughts accordingly.
This talk last Thursday has rekindled my interest in Montaigne and I shall share some of his nuggets of wisdom and highly amusing observations on the human condition here where appropriate.

Progress with the Relief Maquettes

Having removed all the clay from the two maquettes, I'm now able to ascertain which shapes work for this positive/negative exploration and which shapes don't. One of the maquettes, the rounder one of the two, hasn't really worked at all in the negative: the sides on the edge of the form are too steep, the principal concaves are too acute and severe, the hole doesn't have enough substance around it for it to make sense in this form - for a hole to work in this kind of sculpture, in my opinion, it has to be formed organically by the substance around it, not just 'pierced' through (that conveys a very different feel).
To make the negative of this first maquette work I would need to work on the negative by adding substance around the hole and I would also need to make the whole relief bigger, to give the concaves a bit more room to breathe. I won't do that though, because I want to spend time now on incorporating in the large relief what I've taken from this process - that's the whole point of making maquettes.

The second maquette has been more succesful:

The transition from the edge of the relief into the concave is more gradual; the compisition is simpler than that of the first maquette, which works better in the negative, the shapes flowing more coherently, with the movement gradually climaxing in the 'centre' of the composition from the edge.

I also rather like the way the positive side is white and smooth (ish, since it's a maquette) and the negative side has the texture of the clay and has retained a slight staining from the clay.

So, it's now time to transpose these findings to the large relief. Will I be able to incorporate a hole in the large one?
I shall be doing some more maquettes as well, playing around with composition and holes.