Throughout Auguste Rodin’s career and life he has created amazing work of art but left very little in terms of writing. Towards the end of his life, Paul GSell, a French journalist & author, was able to document some of the Rodin’s ideas, techniques & commentaries on art in a series of very intimate conversations with the artist. It was published in 1911 as the book L’Art & is a great Opium of Art.
These conversations ranged from the primacy of Nature over the contrivances in art to the social utility of artists. It gives a view into a creative mind in ways of thinking, feeling and seeing art.
The piece above has a special significance. It is a preparatory plaster work for ‘I am beautiful’, of a naked, muscular man carrying a young woman, was found in a Biarritz storage unit. Patrice Carrère, an auctioneer discovered it in 2013 and it took experts four months to authenticate the work created in 1885 and which is valued at €700,000.
This article is a series of quotes on modeling and models & how a true model could be as much a part of the process of creating art as of the creation itself.
Quotes from the Chapter 3 – Modeling.
About the marble torso of Medici Venus, a copy that Rodin kept to stimulate his own inspiration while he worked, lit by a lamp:
“Isn’t it marvelous?” he said. “Admit that you did not expect to discover so many details. Look! Look at the infinite undulations of the valley between the belly & the thigh. Relish all the voluptuous curvatures of the hip. And now, there, in the back, all those adorable dimples.”
He spoke softly with a devout ardour. He bent towards this marble as if he were in love with it.
“This is real flesh!” he said. Beaming, he added “It must have been moulded by kisses & caresses!”
L’Art Auguste Rodin in conversation with Paul GSell
[…] the Ancients, because of their cult of the ideal, scorned the flesh as vulgar and low and that they refused to reproduce in their works the thousands of details of material reality.
[…] to give lessons to Nature, by creating with simplified forms an abstract Beauty that addressed only the intellectual & did not consent to gratify the senses.
[…] So they correct, castrate Nature, reducing it to dry cold contours, whose very regularity has very little to do with reality.
L’Art Auguste Rodin in conversation with Paul GSell
My personal philosophy is to retain the fine art model’s originality, personality and attitude. I do not wish for my models to assume personas, or to stack up layers of make up or even to participate in stereotyping poses but continue to persist that comes naturally to them. My fine art and nude works represent the raw, Natural, inherent personalities under circumstances presented to them. I find it amazing to see how individuals either adapt or react to the themes, making each image unique in its own ways.
Rodin reflects on the most valuable advice on the “science of modeling” from his early teacher Constant:
[…] never think of forms as planes, but always as volumes. Consider a surface only as a protruding volume – as a tip, however wide, pointing as you. This is how you will acquire the “science of modeling.”
[…] Instead of imagining the various parts of the body as more or less flat surfaces, I represented them as projections of interior volumes. I endeavored to express in each swelling of the torso or the limbs the presence of a muscle or a bone that continued deep beneath the skin. And so the trueness of my figures, instead of being superficial, appeared to grow from the inside outward, as in life itself.
L’Art Auguste Rodin in conversation with Paul GSell
Camille Claudel, a French artist and sculptor known for her stone creations with rough surfaces & sensual styles, was a long time model for Rodin. She studied at the Académie Colarossi under Alfred Boucher, and it was through Boucher that Claudel first met Rodin. These two artists had a long standing love affair with Camille being a model for some of Rodin’s most exquisite creations that includes the famous Portrait of Camille.
Incidentally, an interesting piece that Camille sculpted herself, was Sakuntala, a Hindu mythological woman created by the poet Kalidasa, whose story was told in the Indian epic Mahabharata.
Though Camille’s life ended in a very tragic way, the lovers’ relationship between Rodin & Camille left us with wonderful, Natural creations. Though she destroyed most of her creations during her later days, the Camille Claude Museum now has the 70 remaining pieces of her sculptures, including a bust of Rodin.