Rodin Paper
Directions:
Summarize the following article on Rodin in 1 page.
Include and talk about this information in your summary (tell me what the article says)
Success Criteria:
Clear, big headlines
Neat, clean handwriting
All information on hand out is included.
Images are neatly cut out and glued into the process journal.
NO tape or staples. If an image is hanging off the page it will not count
Summarize the following article on Rodin in 1 page.
Include and talk about this information in your summary (tell me what the article says)
- The Thinker
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
- Balzac
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
- The Burghers of Calais
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
Success Criteria:
Clear, big headlines
Neat, clean handwriting
All information on hand out is included.
Images are neatly cut out and glued into the process journal.
NO tape or staples. If an image is hanging off the page it will not count
Rodin:
Bringing Clay to Life
Does this brooding figure shown to right look familiar? He’s been reproduced thousands of times, in ads, cartoons, book covers, and TV commercials.
It seems whenever a person is called upon to think, this sculpture, The Thinker, created by 19th-century French artist Auguste Rodin, makes an appearance. The figure has become such a part of culture, it’s hard to imagine a time when it didn’t exist. Just who is The Thinker, what is he thinking about, and how did this sculpture become so famous?
Auguste Rodin was born into a poor Parisian family in 1840. He hated school, and left at 13. “I always felt I was being held prisoner,” he said later. The only subject Rodin liked was drawing, so he went to a trade school for applied artists. At 17, he began to work in studios that produced decorative art. He made ornaments for a living and in his free time he did his own sculpture. In 1870, France was invaded by Germany (The Franco-Prussian War, 1870-’71) and Rodin left Paris for Belgium. Later he traveled to Italy, where he first saw the work of the great Italian Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo. When he returned to France, Rodin began working on series of large figure sculptures.
During the 1870s, Paris was the center of the art world. But French art was controlled by a powerful organization, the Academy of Fine Arts, and artists had to follow strict guidelines in order to have their work exhibited. As a result of these rigid rules art had become, for the most part, artificial and lifeless.
While a group of young French painters, known as Impressionists, were challenging the Academy’s ideas about painting, bringing light, color, and spontaneity to that medium, most sculpture remained frozen, bland and unoriginal. It was in this atmosphere that, in 1877, Rodin’s first major work- a life-size figure sculpture- was accepted by the Academy. However, the sculpture was so lifelike that some critics accused Rodin of simply having cast the work directly from the model’s body.
A few critics, though, were impressed by the sculptor’s creativity, and Rodin was offered his first important commission: a pair of giant doors for a decorative arts museum. Rodin decided to sculpt his version of Hell. It contained more that 180 writhing figures, watched by the brood figure of The Thinker. Even though the museum was never built, Rodin worked on The Gates of Hell during the next 40 years.
In 1884 Rodin obtained several commissions for large memorials. One was to commemorate an event that had happened in French city of Calais. The sculpture Rodin created, The Burghers of Calais, is now regarded as one of the greatest examples of modern sculpture.
Sculpting the Soul
By 1891 Rodin had become a very controversial artist. Many people had criticized The Burghers of Calais. A few loved it. One of those who admired Rodin was France’s most famous writer of the time, Emile Zola. When the literary society of which he was president wanted to build a memorial to the French author Honore de Balzac, Zola persuaded them to choose Rodin.
The sculptor began by trying to re-create Balzac’s appearance and personality. But this giant of French literature wasn’t very heroic looking. Rodin decided to sculpt the person within. He worked for seven years, modeling more than 40 clay studies of Balzac. He made him athletic, distorted, fat, thin. He sculpted portrait heads. He did full length studies of the writer wearing suits, cloaks, or nothing at all. The few sketches he showed the society greatly upset them. Time went by and the society threatened to have Rodin dismissed.
In his research, Rodin learned that Balzac had worked throughout the night, wearing a long dressing gown. He found the tailor who had made Balzac’s clothes and had him make up a dressing down to Balzac’s measurements. Then he covered the gown with plaster. When he unveiled his finished Balzac in 1898, the result horrified most people. A huge white slab towered over the crowd, its rugged features slashed into the mask-like head on top. To many, it looked like a mistake, not a sculpture. Critics called it “an obscenity”, “a toad in sack” and “a lump of plaster kicked together by a lunatic.” The literary society rejected the sculpture as unworthy of Balzac’s memory. Rodin repaid the money they had given him and kept the sculpture.
Why was the sculpture rejected at this time? And why is now considered a modern masterpiece? The work doesn’t look like Balzac. It has been compared to a prehistoric stone, a huge primitive monolith. This sculpture of Balzac, is not just a memorial to a specific person; it celebrates and symbolizes the abstract quality of creativity.
The Balzac controversy depressed the artist, but it also made his work world famous. At the Paris Exposition of 1900 (something like a modern World’s Fair), Rodin built his own exhibition hall containing more than 150 of his sculptures. The project was a huge success and brought him orders from around the world. Towards the end of his life, the sculptor stopped doing large figures. He preferred small, highly polished works like the hands in Cathedral. Rodin died at his villa outside Paris in 1917. His work had a great influence on modern sculpture, giving it a new sense of freedom, emotion and spontaneity.
A Moving Tribute
In 1883 Rodin received a commission to create a public monument for the French city of Calais. The memorial was intended to celebrate the city’s past. During the Hundred Years’ War (1338-1453) between England and France, Calais was captured by the English Army. The English king was about to destroy the city when six of its leading citizens or burghers, offered their lives in exchange for city’s safety. The kind was so impressed by their courage, he spared both the citizens and Calais.
The mayor of the city and his committee had a very traditional memorial in mind- a single, large, formal figure symbolizing civic virtue, to be set high on a pedestal. Rodin began reading accounts of the 1347 event he was going to sculpt: “the six men, trailed by a weeping crowd, set off to the English camp bareheaded, barefooted, with ropes around their necks and the keys to the city in their hands.” When the committee saw that Rodin was planning to use a group of figures, they were outraged. Rodin threatened to drop the project, so they reluctantly let him go ahead.
It wasn’t surprising that the Calais monument committee was so upset with Rodin’s ideas. The finished sculpture of The Burghers of Calais was completely different from the usual public monument. To the 19th-century eyes, the six ragged, life-size figures with their large hands and feet, rough features, and powerful bodies looked more like laborers and city officials. Rodin had created a new kind of sculpture. Instead of a closed, balanced idealized figure, he present an informal, open, straggling group who seemed to wandering across a stage. And the spaces in between are as important as the figures themselves. Instead of the smooth, calm, unbroken surfaces of traditional monuments, the rough textures in this sculpture produce highlights and shadows that give a feeling of energy and tension.
For the viewer walking around the work, a sense of movement is set up. The figures can be seen as one person in various stages of motion, or as a group that changes constantly. And as the group progresses toward its fate, each man experiences the thought of death differently. One bow his head in sorrow; another is stiff with anger; the body of one twists with agony; one man hides his eyes in terror; another holds his head in despair. The youngest stands doubtfully and looks behind him, as if he is having second thoughts.
Rodin designed the original monument to be seen at eye level, so that the viewer could identify with each figure. But the committee insisted on a pedestal. When the finished sculpture was finally unveiled in Calais in 1895, it was placed on a high platform-something like a coffin- surrounded by a little iron railing. Today The Burghers of Calais stands at ground level, as Rodin intended, one of the most famous visual symbols of courage ever created.