Auguste Rodin: Sculptures E-Book

Deanna Muller

• Herausgeber: Deanna Muller
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Auguste Rodin was a French sculptor, usually considered the progenitor of modern sculpture. But actually Rodin did not set out to revolutionary against the past. He was educated traditionally and desired academic respect, although he was never accepted into Paris's leading school of art. Many of his most notable sculptures were severely criticized during his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, modeled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character. It was the freedom and creativity with which Rodin used these practices – along with his activation surfaces of sculptures through traces of his own touch and with his more open attitude toward bodily pose, sensuality, and non-realistic surface – that marked Rodin's re-making of traditional 19th century sculptural techniques into the prototype for modern sculpture.

Leseprobe

Auguste Rodin:Sculptures

ByDeanna Muller

First Edition

Copyright © 2015 byDeanna Muller

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Auguste Rodin: Sculptures

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Foreword

"Nothing, really, is more moving than the maddened beast, dying from unfulfilled desire and asking in vain for grace to quell its passion."

Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917) was a French sculptor. Although he is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.

Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. Many of his most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, modeled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character and physicality. Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, but refused to change his style. Successive works brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.

From the unexpected realism of his first major figure — inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy — to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, Rodin's reputation grew, such that he became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin's work after his World's Fair exhibit, and he kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists. He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives. His sculptures suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades, his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.

Rodin was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression thanwith character and emotion.Departing with centuries of tradition, he turned away from the idealism of the Greeks, and the decorative beauty of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the individual and the concreteness of flesh, and suggested emotion through detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow. To a greater degree than his contemporaries, Rodin believed that an individual's character was revealed by his physical features.

Rodin's talent for surface modeling allowed him to let every part of the body speak for the whole. The male's passion in The Thinker is suggested by the grip of his toes on the rock, the rigidness of his back, and the differentiation ofhis hands.Speaking of The Thinker, Rodin illuminated his aesthetic: "What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."

Sculptural fragments to Rodin were autonomous works, and he considered them the essence of his artistic statement. His fragments – perhaps lacking arms, legs, or a head – took sculpture further from its traditional role of portraying likenesses, and into a realm where formsexisted for their own sake.Notable examples are The Walking Man, Meditation without Arms, and Iris, Messenger of the Gods.

Instead of copying traditional academic postures, Rodin preferred his models to move naturally around his studio.The sculptor often made quick sketches in clay that were later fine-tuned, cast in plaster, and forged into bronze or carved in marble. Rodin's focuswas on the handling of clay.

As Rodin's practice developed into the 1890s, he became more and more radical in his pursuit of fragmentation, the combination of figures at different scales, and the making of new compositions from his earlier work. A prime example of this is the bold The Walking Man (1899–1900), which was exhibited as his major one-person show in 1900. This is composed of two sculptures from the 1870s that Rodin found in his studio – a broken and damaged torso that had fallen into neglect and the lower extremities of a statuette version of his 1878 St. John the Baptist Preaching he was having re-sculpted at a reduced scale.

Without finessing the join between upper and lower, between torso and legs, Rodin created a work that many sculptors at the time and subsequentlyhasseen as one of his strongest and most singular works. This is despite the fact that the object conveys two different styles, exhibits two different attitudes toward finish, and lacks any attempt to hide the arbitrary fusion of these two components. It was the freedom and creativity with which Rodin used these practices – along with his activation surfaces of sculptures through traces of his own touch and with his more open attitude toward bodily pose, sensual subject matter, and non-realistic surface – that marked Rodin's re-making of traditional 19th century sculptural techniques into theprototype for modern sculpture.

Sculptures

Age of Bronze, 1870

Young Girl with Roses on Her Hat, 1870

Bacchante, also known as Grapes, ca. 1874

Bust of a Smiling Woman, 1875

Titans, Support for a Vase, c. 1877