The Artist's Studio
Imagine a drawing atelier as big as the Roman forum
Imagine an art drawing class using a nude marble statue as the model...
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Imagine an art drawing class using a nude marble statue as the model...
( Read more... )
I must warn you, the internet is full of bullshit. I'm surprised the Rodin Museum would have something so stupid.
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ha-hah!
well, that's like an 8 year old trying to figure out the meaning of sex. and from the museum itself. what does it say about who is running that show? thanks for pointing that out
and i never thought that about rodin, until seeing the statues on the internet now for the first time.
i only knew of the one in the robe. shows you how naive i can be sometimes
; )
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I have a great story for you about Rodin's Balzac statue:
"In 1891, the writer Emile Zola became president of the French literary body, Société des Gens des Lettres, and appointed 50-year-old Rodin to create a monument to the late novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac.
“Balzac had been dead for forty years and he and Rodin had never met.”
Moreover, Rodin couldn’t simply fashion a bold, muscled likeness of the writer, since “the giant of French literature had been a short tubby man, ungainly in appearance and by his last years physically ravaged from the effects of overwork.”
Nevertheless, Rodin sought to capture the late writer’s likeness. He studied photographs and portraits of the man, and even travelled to Touraine in central France where Balzac had been born, to examine the body types common in that area.
The more he looked, the more problems emerged. “The awkwardly protruding stomach,” Mayo Roos explains, “would be hard to conceal if the figure were dressed in contemporary garb.”
He made several studies (the naked ones) and the final sculpture was clothed. (OMG that was true?!?)
Zola lost his position as the Société in 1894, and, the organisation's new management began to question whether its former president had been too high-handed in his dealings with the sculptor. It demanded a quick completion; Rodin demurred, and, finally two parties compromised. “A contract was drawn up whereby Rodin agreed to return the 10,000 francs he had been given, and the money was placed in a special account that could be accessed only upon completion and of the monument.”
Yet completion was still difficult. “Overworked and pressured from all sides,” writes Mayo Roos, “he began to show the strain.” The commission was worked and reworked, often in ways that captured the artist’s greater frustrations, rather than the spirit of the subject itself. “In several studies Balzac’s right hand grasps the end of his penis and holds it several inches outwards.”
Rodin smoothed out these difficulties, and eventually exhibited his complete statue at the National’s Salon of 1898 in Paris. Public reception was mixed. Commentators described the work as being like “a block, a rock, a monolith”, “a toad in a sac”, “a snowman”, and “a penguin”.
“To be sure,” Mayo Roos goes on, “the statue was a far more original interpretation than the Société was willing to accept. Taking a Symbolist approach, Rodin evoked Balzac’s power as a creator, and the figure soars upwards from a small, rectangular base. Radiantly original in its conception, the Monument to Balzac simulates the unfolding of creative force and the ferocious immersion of the author of his work.”
Initially, it was unclear whether the Société would accept the work. Rodin feared rejection, and told the press: “Make no mistake this refusal of my Balzac would be disastrous for me. Don’t forget that I worked on it for five years and that, consequently, if the Société des Gens des Lettres does not pay me for my work, I will have uselessly employed at my age, five years of my life, without profit, without advantage.”
Unfortunately, politics were not on the sculptor’s side. Zola was, at this point, embroiled in the Dreyfuss affair, and any earlier commission of his was tainted. On 9 May 1898 the Société declared that it “refuses to recognise the state of Balzac,” withheld Rodin’s fee, and passed the commission to another artist.
Although distraught, Rodin kept work, in its raw plaster form, shipping the uncast monument to his house in in Meudon, where it languished until well after his death. Indeed, Monument to Balzac was only cast in bronze, in 1939, well after his death.
https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2014/november/12/auguste-rodin-s-battle-with-balzac/
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what a surprise
you've really put this into perspective for me
i never knew that much about it
it was more a curiosity
but now, who knows what it may inspire in me
and i'll have you to thank for that
thank you
regards
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