Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [84]
RODIN: FIRST MODERN SCULPTOR
According to the twentieth-century sculptor Brancusi, “In the nineteenth century, the situation of sculpture was desperate. Rodin arrived and transformed everything.” In fact, sculpture had declined into little more than decorative public monuments. Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) singlehandedly revived sculpture as a medium worthy of an original artist.
As a young sculptor, Rodin was rejected three times by the École des Beaux-Arts. The rejection probably saved him from rigid academic formulas, as he developed his own innovative style based on the live model. A trip to Italy where Rodin studied the work of Donatello and Michelangelo marked his turning point. Michelangelo’s “Bound Slave” inspired Rodin’s first major, full-sized work, “The Age of Bronze.” It also aroused the first major controversy in a career beset by public misunderstanding. The statue’s extreme naturalism — a definitive break with the current idealizing style — so astonished critics that they accused Rodin of making it from life casts. Rodin defended the nude’s realism, saying, “I obey nature in everything, and I never pretend to command her.”
As compensation for maligning Rodin’s reputation, he was granted the commission for a large (18’x12’) sculptured portal in 1880. Based on Dante’s “Inferno,” the project, called the Gates of Hell, occupied Rodin until the end of his life. Although he never completed the doors, Rodin spun off many of the nearly 200 writhing figures in separate full-size sculptures, such as “The Thinker” and “The Kiss.” Heavily influenced by Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” the anguished figures on the Gates tumble headlong, the intense emotion heightened by the expressive power of the human body.
To arrive at dramatic poses revealing inner feelings, Rodin refused to use professional models frozen in stock postures. “They have stuffed the antique,” Rodin said of Neoclassical sculpture based on ancient Greek statuary. For Rodin, official art was too distant from real life. He hired can-can dancers to stroll about the studio assuming unusual, spontaneous poses. Compulsively modeling in clay, he followed them to capture their every movement.
The body in motion was Rodin’s means of expressing emotion. “I have always endeavored,” he said, “to express the inner feelings by the mobility of the muscles.” Once his wife charged into the studio in a fit of anger, stomping around the room yelling. Rodin modeled her enraged face without looking at the clay. “Thank you, my dear,” he said at the end of the tirade. “That was excellent.”
This emphasis on personal experience as the source of art differed drastically from academic art but fit perfectly the Impressionists’ focus on responding directly to the modern world. Rodin revolutionized sculpture just as his Impressionist contemporaries did painting.
Rodin,“The Age of Bronze,” 1876, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Rodin revitalized sculpture by abandoning the Classical tradition to present a realistic, rather than stylized, nude.
MORE THAN RODIN’S MODEL
Stunningly beautiful and extremely talented, French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943) become Rodin’s model, lover, and collaborator when she was 19 and he 43. Claudel excelled at anatomy, so she contributed the hands and feet to Rodin’s works. She wanted control of more than hands and feet, however. She wanted Rodin’s heart. They quarreled fiercely, with frequent ruptures. Sexually insatiable, Rodin made no secret of his lust for his models. His liaisons were incessant and open. He even propositioned rich society ladies who paid him 40,000 francs each for portrait busts. After