Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is generally considered to be one of the founders of modern sculpture. While traditional sculpture prior to Rodin tended to be decorative, formulaic, or thematic, Rodin portrayed the human body with realism and celebrated individual character and physical features. Rodin was considered a naturalist who focused on character and emotion rather than on monumental expression. During his life, his works were often criticized and were somewhat controversial.
While Rodin showed artistic talent at a young age, he was a poor student. He attended the Ecolé Impériale Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématique where he learned modeling and drawing. He applied to get in to the noted Ecole des Beaux-Arts and was rejected three times. Humiliated by this failure, Rodin went to work for commercial decorators and sculptors. However, he had a compulsion to sculpt and opened his own studio.
Rodin spent six years in Belgium during which time he journeyed to Italy to visit the fourth Michelangelo centennial. Rodin began to depart from the accepted style of French sculpture, focusing on investigating the human form as a vehicle to express human emotion.
The Maryhill Museum of Art near Goldendale, Washington, has a collection of Rodin’s works. According to the Museum display:
“The Auguste Rodin collection at Maryhill Museum is a lasting tribute to the strong bond of friendship, respect, and admiration that existed between Rodin and Loïe Fuller, an innovative American dancer who performed in Paris at the turn of the century.”
Concerning the Italian model used for Eve, Rodin would later write:
“Without knowing why, I saw my model changing. I modified my contours naively following the successive transformations of every-amplifying forms. One day, I learned that she was pregnant; then I understood. The contours of the belly had hardly changed; but you can see with what sincerity I copied nature in looking at the muscles of the loins and sides.”
The Museum display reports:
“The work was immediately criticized for its vague subject matter. Worse, Rodin was accused of surmoulage, or casting directly from the live model. He was eventually exonerated and the French government commissioned a bronze cast.”
Fragments
While the academic tradition of the nineteenth century viewed fragmentary objects are incomplete, imperfect, and not works of art, Rodin embraced the fragment as a complete and independent work of art. According to the Museum display:
“Rodin’s critics viewed his use of partial figures as morbid, ugly, and in violation of established ethics.”
Rodin, however, continued to experiment with fragments and made casts of heads, torsos, arms, legs, hands, and feet with which he created new figures. He considered fragments to be whole and aesthetically beautiful in their own right.