How is our emblematic Bull linked to Maurice Béjart?
In December 1962, avant-garde choreographer Maurice Béjart presented À la recherche de Don Juan II at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. Belgian artist Francis André was asked to create some of the sets. For the 1st night of the ballet, he creates a bull that is both menacing and seductive, whose expressiveness Béjart exploits by having his star dancers perform figures between its horns..
In 1971, Claude Strebelle, architect-coordinator of the Sart Tilman campus, invited his friend Francis André to visit the estate. Seduced by the site, the artist decided to take the model of his bull out of the Monnaie workshops and enlarge it into an outdoor sculpture, 7m long and 3.6m high, to be installed on the crest of a mound near the university canteen, dominating the surrounding area and attracting the eye.
The fir wood of the original work did not stand up to the elements. In 1996, it had to be rebuilt, this time in cedar. In 2019, the bull, which had lost its horns and tail, has been given a new lease of life.
Francis André, Bull, 1984, Musée en plein air du Sart Tilman
Photo ©Vincent Halkin
