{"product_id":"francois-pompon-polar-bear-mug","title":"François Pompon – Polar Bear Mug","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrançois Pompon (1855–1933) spent more than four decades as an assistant and stone-carver in other sculptors' studios — working under Rodin for a significant period — before achieving his own recognition at the age of sixty-seven. The occasion was the 1922 Salon d'Automne, where Pompon exhibited a large plaster polar bear that stopped the exhibition in its tracks. The figure was unlike anything else on show: radically simplified, its surfaces swept clean of anecdotal detail, the animal's weight and movement suggested by the most economical of forms. It was immediately recognised as a masterpiece, and Pompon spent the remaining decade of his life executing it in various materials — marble, stone, bronze — for collectors and public collections across France.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003eOurs blanc\u003c\/em\u003e (Polar Bear) became one of the defining images of Art Deco sculpture, and Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann placed it at the centre of his celebrated pavilion at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris — the exhibition that gave the style its name. Pompon's achievement was to find, through reduction, something more truthful about the animal than any amount of surface naturalism could provide: the polar bear pacing, its head slightly lowered, entirely present, entirely itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrançois Pompon, \u003cem\u003eOurs blanc\u003c\/em\u003e (Polar Bear), c. 1923. Public domain.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tazzarte","offers":[{"title":"Fine Porcelain — 10 oz","offer_id":56856454070603,"sku":"a635d71b-fcfd-4cb0-8453-3773f5e21127","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0816\/8475\/8859\/files\/8b765484-f94f-4d27-9cb7-3de42fb99c08.jpg?v=1783186171","url":"https:\/\/tazzarte.com\/products\/francois-pompon-polar-bear-mug","provider":"Tazzarte","version":"1.0","type":"link"}