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Auguste Rodin
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Auguste Rodin is well-known as the most important sculptor of the nineteenth century. Throughout his career... he produced not only sculptures but also book illustrations, etchings and drawings of nudes, mostly women. It was especially in the last decades of his life that he began to do erotic drawings of his female models. At the time, this kind of experimental work was considered obscene and indecent. Using pencil and watercolour, Rodin produced pictures of great expressive power, with skilful strokes and erotic evocations. The exhibition contains a selection of seventy works belonging to the Musée Rodin in Paris.
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In the last years of his life, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was hailed as a magician and miracle worker, poet and philosopher, sublime genius, and master sculptor. By 1900, Rodin was already considered to be France's greatest living artist. No other modern artist has been so controversial, yet had such extravagant epithets and honors, nor (with the exception of Picasso) has had such international impact. In giving form to the suffering, malaise, and ennui of the late 19th century, as well as celebrating the human form, Rodin effectively liberated sculpture from the didactic, moralizing monuments of the past. To understand Rodin's accomplishments, it is necessary to place his career into the context of the Paris Sculpture Salon and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, whose high-minded academic standards had dominated French art and patronage since the 17th century. With the hierarchy of artistic authority stemming from these government institutions, breaking from tradition was both daring and extremely risky for artists hoping to succeed in France.
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The French artist Auguste Rodin had a profound influence on 20th-century sculpture. Born François-Auguste-René Rodin to a working class family in Paris, he is often given a pivotal role in the history of modern sculpture, as both excelling at and rebelling from the Beaux-arts tradition. His unique, virtuoso ability to organize a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface set him apart from the figure sculpture traditions before and since his time. Despite the talent evident in his portrait of the local priest who helped him discover his vocation, Rodin was denied admission to the Beaux Arts academy. He was accepted... at a trade school for decorative sculpture, and later moved to Belgium to work in a studio that produced that kind of work. One of his early works, The Age of Bronze, created during his years in Belgium, looked so realistic that he was accused of surmoulage (taking plaster moulds from the live model).
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Auguste Rodin redefined sculpture by blurring the distinctions between abstraction and naturalism. For expressive effect, the artist often stripped his figure of inessential details. He ... introduced the partial figure. Rodin showed his first major work, The Age of Bronze, in Paris in 1877. The figure was so naturalistic that critics accused the artist of casting it from the living model. Nonetheless, Rodin won several public commissions during the 1880s and 1890s, including The Burghers of Calais (1885-1889) and a monument to the writer Honoré de Balzac.
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French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) heralded the modern age. His achievement is celebrated in this major retrospective. Ten chronological themes explore Rodin’s inspiration, from his studies of unposed models to his love of antiquities. The exhibition is organised like a journey. It begins with Rodin’s early contacts and first recognition, introduces his special relationship with Britain, and explores how the support of a few artists, writers, business men, politicians and aristocrats led to recognition by an international public. The Gates of Hell and a large version of The Thinker feature amongst 300 pieces of the highest quality, borrowed mainly from the Musée Rodin and the sculptor’s home in Meudon, France.
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Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was rejected from entering the Ecole des Beaux-Arts three times, due to his earlier training at a technical school of drawing and mathematics. So instead, at the age of 24, Rodin studied under Barye, and several years later studied with Carrier-Belleuse. He finally made an appearance at the Salon in 1875, and sculpted his first major piece, 'The Age of Bronze', in 1876. In 1844 the town of Calais opened a competition for a monument commemorating the resistance of the town for eleven months against the King Edward in 1346-47. Rodin worked for ten years (1876-86) on a composition of the six burghers that were held hostage. The Municipality felt that the figures were not heroic enough, and many of his contemporaries did not understand his group.
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Auguste Rodin