Rodin link ‘boosts UK claim to Elgin Marbles’
British Museum exhibition will reveal how disputed Parthenon sculptures inspired the artist
THE British Museum is to stage a show with works by Rodin alongside the Elgin Marbles, as the institution reasserts its claim to the disputed treasures.
Auguste Rodin visited the London museum for the first time in 1881 and more than a dozen times thereafter, sketching the marbles and using them as inspiration for his work.
The exhibition will explain that The Kiss, one of the artist’s most famous works, was inspired by a section of the east pediment of the Parthenon featuring two goddesses. The two works will be displayed together.
The marbles were brought to Britain in the early 19th century by Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, who removed them from the ruins of the Parthenon. They have been on display at the British Museum since 1816, despite a campaign by Greece to have them returned to Athens.
The Greek government enlisted help from Amal Clooney, the human rights lawyer. She suggested that the case be taken to the International Court of Justice, but the Greek culture minister ruled that out in favour of a “diplomatic and political” approach.
Hartwig Fischer, the director of the museum, said the Rodin exhibition demonstrated how influential the treasures had been from their home in London. “If we are to understand the place of the encyclopedic museum and its influence in world culture, we have to acknowledge the extraordinary creativity in art and thought it has engendered,” Mr Fischer said.
The issue of the marbles’ return to Greece “will forever be debated”, he added, but Rodin “was at ease with the fact that you have … parts of the Acropolis in a museum that placed them in the context of world cultures and allowed you different ways of seeing”.
When he was appointed in 2016, Mr Fischer said the marbles belonged in Britain. “There are many, many people who cherish the fact that they are here – I am one of them,” he said.
Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece, which opens on April 26, will feature 80 works lent from the Musée Rodin in Paris.
“He [Rodin] was bowled over by the experience of seeing the sculptures,” said Ian Jenkins, the exhibition’s curator. “What we see in The Kiss is two figures carved from the same block of stone and melting into one another. Their faces are hardly visible but their bodies are highly expressive.” Asked what the artist would have made of the calls to return the marbles to Greece, Mr Jenkins said: “He wouldn’t have understood why something, which is installed in a museum, made publicly accessible, should be shunted halfway across Europe.”