Auguste Rodin

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Auguste Rodin (born François-Auguste-René Rodin; November 12, 1840 – November 17, 1917) was the preeminent French sculptor of the modern era. He played a pivotal role in the art of the late nineteenth century, both excelling at and rebelling against the Beaux-Arts tradition. His work was redefining sculpture at the same time that the Impressionists were redefining painting. Possessing a unique ability to organize a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface, he set himself apart from the predominant figure sculpture tradition.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Art 2.1 Works 2.2 Methods 3 Last years 4 Locations of sculpture 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Early life

Rodin was born in 1840 into a working-class family in Paris, the son of Marie Cheffer and Jean-Baptiste Rodin, a police official. He was largely self-educated,^[1] and began to draw at ten. At 14, he attended "la Petite École", a school specializing in art and mathematics. There, he studied drawing with Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran and painting with Belloc. Rodin submitted a clay model of a companion to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1857 in an attempt to win entrance.^[2][3] He did not succeed, and two further applications were also denied. Instead, he attended Paris's School of Decorative Arts between 1854 and 1857, and studied with sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.

Rodin's sister Maria died in 1862; she had been in a convent, and Rodin likewise attempted to join a Christian order. He was soon dissuaded by its father superior, so he returned to work as a decorator, while taking classes with animal sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. In 1864, Rodin began to live with a young seamstress named Rose Beuret, and he entered the studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, where he worked as an assistant until 1870. The two travelled to Brussels, Belgium in 1871.^[4]

Until the late 1870s, when Rodin's sculpture would be accepted on its own terms, he earned his living collaborating with recognized sculptors on public commissions, primarily memorials and neo-baroque architectural pieces in the style of Carpeaux.^[5] His visit to Italy in 1875 drew him to the work of Donatello and Michelangelo.^[6]

In 1883, Rodin agreed to supervise Alfred Boucher's sculpture course during his absence, and met the 18-year-old sculptress Camille Claudel. Rodin fell in love with his talented pupil, and Claudel welcomed the opportunity to be tutored by a master. They became a creative and intimate couple. Claudel inspired Rodin as a model for many of his figures, including the wavelike Danaide, and assisted him on an important commission, The Burghers of Calais.

[edit] Art

[edit] Works

In 1864, Rodin submitted to the Salon his first sculpture for exhibition, The Man with the Broken Nose, depicting a street porter; the piece was rejected. This early work already illustrated the "unfinishedness" that would characterize much of his art.^[7] It was not a bust, but a bronze sculpture of a head "broken off" at the neck, and lacking a nose.

Another early work, The Age of Bronze, created after his trip to Italy, was shown at the Paris Salon in 1877. It appeared so realistic that Rodin was accused of having taken a cast from a living model.^[6] Rodin was eventually exonerated by a committee of sculptors, and The Age of Bronze was purchased by the state.

A commission to create a portal for the planned Museum of Decorative Arts was awarded to Rodin in 1880.^[5] Although the museum was never built, Rodin worked for 37 years on this monumental sculptural group, The Gates of Hell, depicting scenes from Dante's Inferno in high relief. Many of his best-known sculptures, such as The Thinker (Le Penseur, originally titled The Poet, representing the poet Dante), The Three Shades (Les Trois Ombres), and The Kiss (Le Baiser) were designed as figures for this monumental composition of eternal passion and punishment, and only later presented as separate and independent works.

The Thinker, a 27.5 inch-high bronze sculpture, was created between 1879 and 1889, and designed for the Gates' lintel. The figure is nameless, but the man may have originally represented Dante impassively observing the scenes of the Inferno. Aspects of the Biblical Adam and the mythological Prometheus have also been ascribed to him.^[5]

Other well-known works derived from The Gates are the Ugolino group, Fugitive Love, The Falling Man, The Sirens, Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone, Damned Women, The Standing Fauness, The Kneeling Fauness, The Martyr, She Who Once Was the Beautiful Helmetmaker's Wife, Glaucus, Polyphem.

Rodin unveiled The Burghers of Calais, a 2-ton bronze work, in 1895. During the Hundred Years' War, the army of King Edward III besieged the French town of Calais. Edward is said to have asked for six citizens of the town to deliver to him the keys to the city, or the townspeople would be killed. The sculpture depicts these men as they are leaving for the king's camp, expecting to die for their community. The chronicles of the siege on Calais by Jean Froissart inspired Rodin's creation of this piece.^[8]

Commissioned to create a monument to French writer Victor Hugo in the 1890s, Rodin dealt extensively with the subject of artist and muse, reflecting the various aspects of his stormy and complex relationship with Claudel in The Poet and Love, The Genius and Pity, and The Sculptor and his Muse. Like many of Rodin's public commissions, Monument to Victor Hugo met with resistance because it did not fit conventional expectations. The 1897 plaster model was not cast in bronze until 1964.

His Monument to Balzac, exhibited at the 1898 salon at the Champ des Mars showing the writer in his morning frock, was also repudiated. The negative reaction was not surprising: the preliminary maquette for the sculpture shows Balzac nude, his hands clutching his genitals, a gesture whose significance is not completely lost beneath the ample drapery of the finished monument. After the frustrating experience, Rodin did not finish any public commissions. Instead, after 1903 he had his most successful works enlarged to monumental dimensions.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, then president of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, invited Rodin to display his work at the Society's 1898 exhibition. This did not occur without difficulties: some of the pieces proposed by Rodin did not find favour with Whistler, and several works sustained damage while in transit. After Whistler's death in 1903, Rodin was elected president of the Society. His election to the prestigious position was largely due to the efforts of Albert Ludovici (the father of English philosopher Anthony Ludovici).

[edit] Methods

Through his method of marcottage (layering), he used the same sculptural elements time and time again, under different names and in different combinations.

Instead of copying traditional academic postures, Rodin preferred to work with amateur models, street performers, acrobats, strong men and dancers. In his atelier, the models walked around freely while the sculptor made quick sketches in clay, which were later fine-tuned, cast in plaster, and forged into bronze or carved in marble. Rodin was fascinated by dance and spontaneous movement; his John the Baptist shows a walking preacher, displaying two phases of the same stride simultaneously. Although Rodin used several models for each of his sculptures, Camille Claudel is thought to be the main model for several of his works.

As France's best-known sculptor, he had a large staff of pupils, craftsmen, and stone cutters working for him, including the Czech sculptors Josef Maratka and Joseph Kratina. He created a number of society portrait busts, especially for wealthy American collectors, and began presenting fragmentary sculptures, which in his opinion contained the essence of his artistic statement, like Meditation without Arms, Iris, Messenger of the Gods and The Walking Man.

Although they shared an atelier at a small old castle, Rodin refused to relinquish his ties to Rose Beuret, his loyal companion during his years of poverty in Belgium and birth-mother of his son Auguste-Eugène Beuret (born January 18, 1866). He never fulfilled a contract with Claudel to give up all contact with other women, and marry her. After nearly 15 years, the couple parted. Claudel followed her own path artistically, but found herself isolated.

[edit] Last years

During his last creative years, Rodin concentrated on small dance studies (ca. 1915), and produced numerous erotic drawings, sketched in a loose way, without taking his pencil from the paper or his eyes from the model. An exhibition of these drawings in Weimar in 1906 caused the so-called Kessler scandal, and Harry Count Kessler was dismissed as curator of the Weimar Museum.

On January 29, 1917, Rodin finally married Rose Beuret; she died two weeks later, on February 16.^[9] Rodin was ill that year; in January, he suffered weakness from influenza,^[10] and on November 16 his physician said that "[c]ongestion of the lungs has caused great weakness. The patient's condition is grave."^[9] Rodin died the following day, age 77, at his villa in Meudon, Île-de-France, on the outskirts of Paris.^[2] A cast of The Thinker was placed next to his tomb in Meudon.

[edit] Locations of sculpture

Rodin's works are widely distributed because he explicitly authorized copies. The Burghers of Calais is found in 14 cities.^[8]

• Musée Rodin, Paris - The pre-eminent collection
• Musée Khalil, Giza, Egypt
• Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany
• Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, United States
• University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, United States
• Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland, United States - The Thinker
• Boulevard Raspail, near Boulevard Montparnasse, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris - a statue of Honoré de Balzac
• Calais Hotel de Ville - The Burghers of Calais
• California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California, United States
• Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan, United States
• Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, Russia
• High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, United States
• Maryhill Museum of Art, Maryhill, Washington, United States
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, United States
• Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas - Eve
• National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., United States
• National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
• National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Japan
• Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California, United States - The Burghers of Calais
• Rodin Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States - Largest Rodin collection outside of Paris
• Stanford University, Sculpture Garden, Palo Alto, California, United States
• Trammell Crow Center, Dallas, Texas
• Vatican Museums, Rome, Italy
• Victoria Tower Gardens, Palace of Westminster, London, United Kingdom - The Burghers of Calais
• the World Room, Journalism Hall, Columbia University, United States - a bust of Joseph Pulitzer

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Janson, H. W. (1986). History of Art, 3rd edition, New York: Harry N. Abrams.

[edit] External links

• Musee Rodin, Paris
• Rodin Museum, Philadelphia
• Auguste Rodin works presented by Insecula
• Views of the Musée Rodin
• Rodin-Web.org: independent academic platform on Rodin, with collections overview, biography, photos, books, events
• Auguste Rodin: Virtual Gallery
• The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.
• The Brooklyn Museum
• Maryhill Museum of Art, Maryhill, WA
• Review of retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy