‘Arc Majeur’ by Bernard Venet, the work of art, which took 35 years to complete, that has a motorway running through it!

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5 days ago Robin

Almost every driver on the A4 motorway in Lavaux-Sainte-Anne in Belgium between Namur and Luxembourg, are surprised to see a colossal metal arc emerging on either side of the motorway.
It is actually a work of art, known as “Arc Majeur,” by the French artist Bernar Venet, that evokes the form of an enormous metal circle, 75 meters in diameter, forming an angle of 205.5 degrees.
And part of it seems to be hidden underground.
The two arches have a total weight of 200 metric tons, with the north-eastern arch reaching a height of 60 meters (or, if you prefer, almost 200 feet).

The chaotic history of the arc art began in 1984, when Jack Lang, the French minister of culture under the late President François Mitterrand, asked Bernar Venet to create a work of art to be placed next to a motorway.
The original plan was to install it on the A6 at the Porte de Bourgogne (Burgundy Gate), between Auxerre and Avallon.
However, the project was blocked by a local politician and, in the mid-2000s, the French motorway management company APRR relaunched the project, but with the demand that the work be painted red.
The artist refused to do so and the project was once again abandoned, and also a third attempt in the Moselle region was also unsuccessful.

In 2014, during the inauguration of two of the artist’s works at the headquarters of the Belgian engineering firm John Cockerill, the company’s director, Bernard Serin, had a meeting with him and, during this event, the two men made a commitment to the realization of the project once and for all.
The John Cockerill Foundation paid €2,500,000 (about $3 million) for the work, before donating it to the Walloon Region, which manages the motorway and, on 23 October 2019, 35 years after the start of the project, the work was inaugurated.
The work was largely funded by the John Cockerill Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the mechanical engineering conglomerate based in Seraing, Belgium, while the arcs for the sculpture were made in workshops owned by the John Cockerill company in Seraing.

Of course, there are higher monuments in the world, but no bigger sculpture made by an artist, with the Statue of Liberty without its pedestal that is smaller, and the Corcovado, the statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, is half the size!