Auguste Rodin envisioned "The Gates of Hell" as the portal to a museum that was never built. His inspiration was Dante's great work, The Inferno. Rodin's sculpture was criticized during his lifetime because his work was not decorative, symbolic, and formulaic. He never intended to openly rebel against the predominant thinking of his era, his aesthetic was just more of a natural style. While the sculpture of his time period drew heavily from sculpture of the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, the sculpture of the time had become derivative. Rodin looked to such sculptors as Michangelo. He once traveled to Italy and studied the works of Michelangelo. It was a revelation.
Rodin's sculptures "The Kiss" and "The Thinker" are amongst the most famous sculptures in the world. Strength and fluidity flow in the bronze. One can feel the passion of the kiss and the concentration of the man sitting and contemplating great thoughts.
Rodin's work reinvigorated sculpture and his style set the tone for modern sculpture. Amongst Rodin's works he sculpted an elderly man from his neighborhood. Rather than striving for an exact representation of the gentleman, he captured the personality of his subject. The work was criticized for being only a partial sculpture of the man's whole head-- he didn't sculpt the back half of the skull. Another sculpture was of a spear bearer, "The Age of Bronze," he removed the spear and made the sculpture infinitely more ambiguous and meaningful to a country that had experienced the Franco-Prussian War. When I see Rodin's work, the energy of the subjects, the power of living flesh, and the embodiment of thought and emotion are displayed before me. His work stills me.
0 comments:
Post a Comment