Page 46 - Studio International - July/August 1967

view; how to avoid rigid symmetry; where were the The expression on his faces is no more intense than the
flexible parts of the body such as those in the head, neck, rest of the figure. Facial expressions, a smile, a grimace,
thorax, pelvis, knees and so on, and that these axes should are not profound. Actors can do those things even with
not parallel each other. These are ways of giving the masks. The face shows superficial expressions. Much
figure vitality. Rodin perfectly understood Michel- deeper indications of a person's feelings will be found in
angelo ... Rodin had great sensitivity to the inner work- action, all movements of the body, how they hold them-
ings and balance of the body.... He could make you feel selves. Look at someone from a distance where you can't
his modelled feet gripping the ground as in the Walking see their hands and face. By their movement you recog-
Man. Rodin helped give me that insight into empathy, nize who they are. You recognize their spirit by their
feeling in to his sculptures. In my own works I have to general rhythms and general proportions.'
feel the disposition of their weights, where the pressures One reason why the Walking Man is so favoured by
are, where the parts make contact with the ground ... I Moore over other works by Rodin, such as the series of
like in Rodin the appearances of pressures from beneath embracing couples, like The Kiss or Eternal Idol, is its
the surface ... Rodin may not have been able to make absence of the sentimental and literary. 'The head and
sculpture for architecture, but he certainly knew the hands are important from a literary point of view.'
architecture of the body.' Rodin had himself commented on the expressiveness of
For Henry Moore the beauty of the chest area alone his Italian model's bearing, and it is this aspect, the
would have been Rodin's motive for making the original carriage of the Walking Man, that for Moore gives it
torso of the Walking Man. He believes that Rodin, like spirit and makes the head irrelevant. Both sculptors
Michelangelo, felt that the body could be as beautiful, share aversion to forms that suggest inertia or death. The
forceful, dramatic and eloquent as the face, in fact, more Walking Man speaks directly and eloquently of their
so. Knowing how important the partial figure had been common idea of a virile and vital existence for the body,
in his own art, which I believe is another significant life and sculpture. One of our last conversations ended
influence of Rodin on his work, I asked Moore if he with Moore's comment, 'You can't believe in energy
thought the absence of the head in the Walking Man or and not have an optimistic belief in life.' r
on a Michelangelo study deprived the figure of its
humanity.
`A torso fragment has a condensed meaning. It can
stand for an entire figure, just as Rembrandt's Self-
1 Rodin's Reflections on Art, recorded by H. C. E. Dujardin-Beaumetz,
Portrait can tell me more about his life view than the
reprinted in Elsen, A., Auguste Rodin: Readings on His Life and
Night Watch with all its figures... Michelangelo knew Work, Prentice Hall, 1965, p. 166.
that the human body could express the intellect and the 2 Judith Cladel, Rodin: sa vie glorieuse, sa vie inconnue, 1935,
definitive edition. Grasset, p. 132.
highest feelings. Look at Michelangelo's drawings and
3 Judith Cladel, Rodin, Editions Terra et Editions Aimery Somogy,
use of the body. Michelangelo never was a portraitist.... 1948, pp. xvi—xix. My thanks to Ruth Mirolli for this reference.