Auguste Rodin Sculptures and Drawings
Auguste Rodin Sculptures and Drawings
ISBN: 9781566199063
出版社: Barnes Noble
出版年: 1995
定价: 130.00
装帧: Hardcover
内容简介
Between Rodin and sculpture it was love at first sight, total
identification, for better for worse, a mystical marriage that he
contracted in his seve~teenth year. "For the first time," he said
afterw~ds, "l saw separate pieces, arms, heads or feet, then 1
attempted the figure as a whole. Suddenly, I grasped what unity
was... I was in ecstasy... For the first time, 1 saw sculptor s
clay; I felt [ was ascending into heaven."
During the day, Rodin earned his living as a plasterer, giving
shape to the numerous monuments lavished by the architect
Haussmann upon the new Paris he was building for Napol6on
IlL At night, Rodin worked on his own sculptures. Amongst
these was the The Man with the Broken Nose (p.20), inspired
by BiN, an old workman with the features of a Greek statue.
The clay was split by the cold, but Rodin put it forward for the
1864 Salon nevertheless. It was, of course, rejected. Subse-
quently, one of his friends, to whom Rodin had generously
given it, exhibited this work at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
claiming that it was a superlative classical bust that he had
discovered in a junk store. It caused a sensation. Whereupon
the friend, triumphantly: "Well, let me tell you, the man who
made that, a man named Rodin, failed this school s entrance
exam three times, and this piece which you take for classical
was rejected by the Salon!"
Rodin spent six years in Belgian exile. He collaborated f!rst
with Carrier-Beneuse, then with van Rasboarg, on decorative
works which not only made him a living but matured his tech-
nique. Before settling in France, he visited ltaly; Raphael,
Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel made an overwhelming
impression on him. In 1906, he wrote to Bourdelle: "My lib-
eration from academicism came through Michelangelo, who,
by teaching me (through observation) rules diametrically op-
posed to those 1 had been taught (the school of lngres), freed
me... His mighty hand was held out to me. He was the bridge
by which 1 crossed from one circle to the other..."
Now he was free to create his own masterpieces. No aca-
demic poses for Rodin; his models wandered freely around the
studio. The lithe, sinewy contours of one such masterpiece, The
Age (~( Bronze (p. 17), were as immediately admired in some
quarters as suspected in others. The work was too perfect, and