Rodin's works are known around the world: "The Kiss," The Thinker," "The Gates of Hell." One hundred years after his death, the sculptor who took on the modern world continues to enthrall art lovers around the world.
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100 years of Rodin's sculptures
To mark Rodin's centennial anniversary in France, two exhibitions in Paris featured the sculptor's work, highlighting his impact on contemporary artists.
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'The Thinker,' yesterday and today
Rodin's renowned sculpture depicts the poet Dante, pondering over his latest work. Created by Rodin between 1881 and 1883, the iconic sculpture also had a great influence on 20th century art. Beside it, a sculpture by Georg Baselitz can be seen — although the modern version is outfitted with platform shoes.
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Citizens as victims
During the siege of Calais in 1347, British King Edward III is said to have demanded that the city's most respected citizens surrender themselves to free the city. The city in northern France commissioned Rodin to create the monument, "The Burghers of Calais," in 1884. The original bronze cast of the six figures stands in front of the Calais town hall.
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Portrayal of passion
"The Kiss," from the 1880s, is one of Rodin's best-known and most popular sculptures. It shows an intimate couple so intertwined that the viewer becomes, as it were, a voyeur. Originally titled "Francesca da Rimini," the sculpture portrays the tragic relationship between Paolo and Francesco at the Gates of Hell (as described in Dante's "Inferno"). Such naked passion broke with taboos of the time.
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Celebrating the incomplete
Rodin was a master of depicting incomplete subjects. In his time, presenting fragments of finished sculptures was revolutionary. With this preliminary version of his work "The Walking Man," Rodin opposed the smooth surfaces preferred by art academies in the second half of the 19th century.
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Desperation
Four sculptures, four different eras, four different artists: Ossip Zadkine, Georg Kolbe Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Rodin. Each subject stretches its arms as if hit by lightning or anticipating help from God. These pained figures were influenced by Rodin's 1905 sculpture (at right), "The Prodigal Son."
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The persona of Balzac
Rodin was the second sculptor to receive a commission from the writer's association "Societe des Gens de Lettres" to create a monument to honor the great French author, Honore de Balzac. Rodin concentrated on the "shape of the mind," and thus on thought. But the plaster model triggered a scandal in 1898. It wasn't until 1939 that a bronze statue was created and placed at an intersection in Paris.
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Peace and tranquility
Rodin's "Sleep" portrays the beauty of a sleeping woman whose facial features are soft and subtle. She radiates deep peace and tranquility but also solitude. Rodin excelled at expressing such extreme emotions in his works.
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Rodin as a role model
Rodin's striking giant bronze figure "The Walking Man" (at right) is surrounded here by works of art that refer to this masterpiece, or have been directly influenced by it. Created in the style of classical Greek or Roman statues, most especially "Venus de Milo," "The Walking Man" shows the decapitated figure of John the Baptist who is also mutilated, with Rodin leaving off his arms.
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Kiefer in dialogue with Rodin
"Auguste Rodin: The Cathedrals of France" is Anselm Kiefer's striking painting, seen here at the Musée Rodin. Pictured are gigantic church towers, which Kiefer created with lead, among other things. Works by Kiefer and Rodin were juxtaposed for the first time at the Grand Palais show. In all their contrasting layers, they combine the search for a new approach to both materials and stories.
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German artist Markus Lüpertz revered Auguste Rodin from an early age. Indeed, the latter's 1877 sculpture "The Walking Man" so impressed Lüpertz as a teenager that he never forgot it. Many artists have had similar first encounters with the world of Rodin.
The melancholy, the imperfection, the worldliness and the erotic effect of Rodin's sculptures and drawings have a way of drilling into one's consciousness. Case in point: Lüpertz's sculpture "Der Morgen oder Hölderlin" shows a head hidden behind a mask, the limbs chunky, the legs spread apart. The resemblance to Rodin's "The Walking Man" is undeniable.
Rodin's "The Kiss" has been reproduced around the world, such as here in clay at Art Basel 2017Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Oelrich
Rodin's legacy
An exhibition earlier this year at the Grand Palais in Paris was more than a classic retrospective marking the centenary of Rodin's death on November 17, 1917, in Meudon, southwest of Paris. This is partly because the artist's work can be seen year-round in the Musée Rodin on the left bank of the Seine, just two metro stations away from the Grand Palais.
Catherine Chevillot, director of the Musée Rodin and curator of the Grand Palais' exhibition, said the artist was not a typical avant-gardist but one who paved the way for others. His innovations were embraced and furthered by myriad artists.
The curators of the retrospective instead asked: how has Rodin's work been received and reinterpreted by subsequent artists, the public and collectors? How alive is Rodin's work today, 100 years after his death?
Much has been said about how Rodin's work dealt with the crises and new challenges facing the modern world in the late 19th and early 20th century. He represented the tumultuous times through anatomically incomplete figures, such as the fragments of a torso, or sculptures lacking heads, arms and legs. They were not studies but finished works that became Rodin's trademark.
Did Rodin, who was born in 1840, also take part in the contemporary fascination with the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud? Not necessarily, said Chevillot. According to the curator, Rodin was not an intellectual and did not read a great deal. His true interest was the investigation of form and matter.
With his twisted bodies and plaster castings of feet, heads and screaming or distorted mouths, Rodin became a key sculptor of the "fin de siècle" era — the end of the 19th century — and perhaps the most radical artist of his time.
Rodin's sculptures reflected an unsure, changing worldImage: DW/S. Oelze
The "Exposition Universelle," a world's fair held in Paris in 1900, was the turning point in Rodin's career. He sold 150 works in his own pavilion at the Place de l'Alma; his commissioned sculptures alone earned him huge profits. Indeed, artists and collectors came to Paris because of Rodin. Young modernists also began to study and emulate his work.
Countless colleagues visited his studio in the following years, including the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who worked as Rodin's secretary. The writer penned a monograph in 1903 in which he idealized the artist as the father figure of modernity.
Between the two world wars, figurative sculptures began to be considered old-fashioned, causing the now-deceased Rodin to fall into obscurity. But in the immediate aftermath of World War II, an intensive examination and rediscovery of the art form was led by artists like Germaine Richier, Henry Moore and Per Kirkeby. Each created torsos or installations with feet, arms or heads that drew on Rodin.
Rodin's special way of breathing life into sculptures also reverberated with Alberto Giacometti, who created his own long-legged version of the "Walking Man" with "L'Homme qui marche" in the 1960s.
Rodin's work has influenced artists, including Alberto Giacometti and his "L'Homme qui marche" (left)Image: DW/S. Oelze
A visit to the Musée Rodin is proof of continuing interest in the sculptor. In conjunction with the 100-year anniversary, the museum showcased German artist Anselm Kiefer's own presentation on the modernity of Rodin. Kiefer, who lives in southern France, visited Rodin's studio in Meudon for the first time in 2013. There, the German learned of the existence of the book "The Cathedrals of France" that Rodin wrote and illustrated in 1914.
At the museum's request, Kiefer worked with the little-known manuscript to create his own artist's book showcasing Rodin's fascination for architecture. While the two artists are very different, they each create a relationship between tradition and modernity, experimenting with materials and looking for a new artistic language.
Rodin's lover, sculptor Camille Claudel, gets museum in France
Camille Claudel was a talented sculptor in her own right who spent 10 fiery years as August Rodin's muse, assistant and lover. She finally has her own national museum in her hometown Nogent-sur-Seine, southeast of Paris.
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Claudel's sculpture 'L'abandon'
Embracing couples was a major theme in the work of sculptor Auguste Rodin. The motif is explored here in a work by Claudel that adopts a similar style but has clear artistic nuances. Claudel was Rodin's lover, muse and assistant for 10 years.
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Claudel's 'The Gossips'
Claudel's "The Gossips" marked a divergence from her mentor and lover. Scholars suggest that she might have been inspired by a scene a on train. However, when the museum director was asked if it could be the voices of paranoia in the artist's head, she agreed that perhaps it was the start of Claudel's mental illness.
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'Joan of Arc' by Paul Dubois
A plaster for a Joan of Arc statue by Paul Dubois is also on display at the museum. Commissioned for the square in front of Reims Cathedral, the statue of the iconic French heroine riding a horse into battle made Dubois especially famous during his lifetime.
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Exhibition room
Entering the museum, visitors are first greeted by a damaged sculpture by Claudel. The collection then explores other works by important local sculptors before the grand finale, which is dedicated to Claudel's work.
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Golden age
The 19th-century was known as the golden age of French sculpture. The museum explores the evolution of the art through a series of themes including technique, movement in sculpture, adornment and experimentation, as well as takes a look at work from Rodin's studio.
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Celebrating the human body at work
The works of 44 sculptors give a picture of the artistic environment in which Claudel developed, worked and expressed her own personality. The key phases in the careers of the sculptors of her generation are presented, as well as the diversity of the stylistic movements she encountered. This exhibition room is dedicated to sculptures paying tribute to labor and the strength of the human body.
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Works by sculptor Marius Ramus
Four generations of important sculptors are linked to Nogent-sur-Seine, home to the new museum. Artist Marius Ramus moved to the town in 1845 and the plaster for his "First Thought of Love" is shown in the museum. Paul Dubois and Claudel's first mentor, Alfred Boucher, also features prominently in the collection.
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Portrait of a young Claudel
Claudel was just a young girl when she made her first sculptures. Her father showed sculptor Alfred Boucher some of her work, and he quickly recognized her talent. Boucher was Claudel's first teacher and subsequently introduced her to Rodin, for whom she was student, muse, confidante and lover during a tumultuous 10-year affair.
Image: musée Rodin
Claudel's family home
Claudel's family home has been transformed and extended into a national museum dedicated to the artist. The structure is a three-story, 1,283-square-meter exhibition space designed by architect Adelfo Scaranello, and constructed of handmade bricks that blend well with the local architecture.
Image: M. Illuminati
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One hundred years after the death of Rodin, fascination with the sculptor continues unabated.
