AUGUSTE RODIN
In this edited extract from Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece, a book produced by The British Museum to complement its eponymous exhibition, we discover that Rodin was a keen antiquarian, and learn how his collection in luenced his work…
In celebration of the British Museum’s exhibition, explore how the ancient world in!uenced Rodin
In the mid 1890s, Auguste Rodin’s passion for antiquity took him in a new direction as he began to assemble a vast collection of over 6,000 antiquities, many of which were fragments. He considered the fragment to be complete, so to speak, and it inspired him to become the ! rst modern sculptor to make the headless, limbless torso into a genre of art in its own right. In 1900, he designed a building to house his collection of Greek and Roman statues with a facade and colonnade in the style of a classical temple, and the following year he extended it by dismantling the pavilion he had created for the Exposition Universelle, reconstructing it next to the Villa des Brillants (his home and studio at Meudon, outside Paris). He modi !ed the curved entrance to create a regular peristyle, in which he put the larger Roman statues, along with the great columns, complete with capitals. The columns also spread into the interior of the pavilion, as they had at the exhibition, when several of his own sculptures had been placed on top of them.
‘A column standing as if in prayer has a particular beauty; it seems to have come from the Underworld. Now, like us, it stands in the sun and is part of the landscape, as if the sculptor of Pluto’s Palace has brought his genius, his mind’s secret thoughts, into the daylight to ennoble our vision.’
As soon as spring arrived, Rodin would move his collection, together with his own sculptures, out into the grounds of the Villa, transforming them into a fusion of Italian garden and open- air studio: ‘As I’m sure you know, statues lose their potency when viewed indoors; they need to be outside – especially in that marvellous Hellenic se"ing among the ruins of the Acropolis and the Parthenon.’
Around 1908- 09, one of Rodin’s secretaries, Maurice Baud (1866-1915), drew up a list of outstanding works from the collection, with their estimated values. According to this document, which Rodin himself had almost certainly requested, they all had impressive provenance, and the words ‘ Parthenon’, ‘ Michelangelo’ and ‘ Pheidias’ o#en appeared alongside the names of the works. In photographs of Rodin, we see him manipulating his own image and presenting himself as an ancient sage.
As spring arrived, Rodin would move his collection, together with his own sculptures, out into the grounds of the Villa.
Consciously or unconsciously, Rodin also created his own myth and immortality by perpetuating the traditional practice of ‘ The Sculptor’, adopting the intuitive, sensory approach of classical sculptors, which focused on looking, listening and touching. His writings from 1900 onwards placed him in a direct line with the great analysts of classical sculpture of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Denis Diderot (1713- 84), Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Johann Go!fried von Herder (1744-1803), as well as his contemporary, the philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941).
Without leaving home, Rodin could literally come into daily contact with the 800 or so Greek and Roman statues in his collection. It is hard to imagine him resisting the temptation to run his hands over the Parthenon statues in the Louvre or The British Museum, as he did in the National Museum in Rome in 1915, when he was seen trying to discover through touch how the Venus of Cyrene had been sculpted – a practice that went back to the earliest days of sculpting, when the artist would a!empt to internalize the shape of an object by feeling it. In so doing, Rodin would get to grips with the life within it, decipher the mysteries of what had come to resemble a familiar human body. ‘At certain times, he simply stands before his relics, meditating… How his "ngers tremble when he touches these old stones with their polished, golden or occasionally grey patina! And “It’s like real #esh!” he would say… It was as if it had been petri "ed by kisses and caresses… Touching this torso, one half expected it to feel warm.’
Rodin also spent time just looking at the sculptures and would take visitors to study them by the light of a lamp or a candle, discovering "rst their
‘skin’, brought to life by the unevenness of the surface, then their shape, which revealed the ‘skeleton’ of these ancient marble statues:
‘If I move the lamp to and fro over the marble, it seems to throb as !eeting shadows dance across it; when I hold it still, they come to rest… Then they create other e"ects, re# ning and exploring its contours; and suddenly my admiration for this momentous work grows and pierces my heart with joy. But I pull myself together and force myself to learn from this wonderful lesson.’
Rodin would then refocus his a$ention, using a cloth or simply shielding his eyes to block out the weakest parts of the sculpture, concentrating only on the fragment that interested him. Like Pygmalion, Rodin wanted to create something new from even the most humble items in his collection.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), who came to Paris to write a monograph on Rodin and was for a time his secretary, wrote: ‘Of an evening, when we entered the rooms by lamplight and roused these objects, one by one, they come back to life, hesitantly, like animals a %er a heavy dream – to something larger than life, as [Rodin] gives to all things, with his blessed hands.’ The ancient world, and particularly the Parthenon, was always alive in Rodin’s imagination when he contemplated the contemporary world around him. The sculptor spoke to the ancient fragments and listened to what they had to say. And in his studio, he associated the timeless poses of life models with the ancient sculptures of an imaginary museum.
The sculptor spoke to the ancient fragments and listened to what they had to say.