Page 50 - Studio International - March 1970

The Arts Council exhibition of Rodin's sculp- in Rodin's art, without conveying the feelings publicly realised, the sculptor at work could
ture, drawings and biographical material of boundless energy and prodigality, the lack be a monument himself, an object of con-
at the HAYWARD GALLERY Will no doubt of limit or definition on individual works in tinuous public attention and feeling. How-
prove to be enormously popular, but its time or space, of process rather than product, ever personal, intimate, Rodin's art may be,
presentation and organization do little to which one gains from seeing the work in the it is never private, as Brancusi's was to become.
confront us with any new or unfamiliar aspect untidy profusion of the Musée Rodin. The centrifugal nature of Rodin's sculpture,
of Rodin's art, or increase our understanding Rodin's greatness does not lie in a successful moreover, with its direct assault on the feelings
of his contribution to modern sculpture. emulation of Michaelangelo or the Greeks, or and sensations of the spectator, relates to his
The exhibition explicitly purports to show in the renewal of a decadent tradition of major achievement in terms of the history of
Rodin as the 'sculptor of the figure or part public monumental sculpture: rather, in the sculpture—the isolation of modelling, not as
figure' on the assumption that 'this is the kind creation of the conditions for sculpture as an mere technique, but as a mode of thought and
of Rodin sculpture that interests us today' independent art. What seemed most impor- feeling, a relationship with matter itself,
(Alan Bowness, in an interview with Henry tant to him, the figure, was in fact the vehicle giving a character to the work more funda-
Moore, published as an introduction to the for a reconsideration of all the vital abstract mental than subject-matter, function, even
catalogue). This is consistent with Rodin's constituents of sculpture. That Rodin was the imitation of the human body. In the final
own conception of his achievement, and with largely unable to realise the independent consideration, Rodin's work is modelling,
the sensibility of the English sculpture of the status of these elements in his own work is not clay, handled with an imagination and a
1950s; but, in the face of the total body of important—what he did was to release them resource previously unequalled. The poverty
Rodin's work, the result of a selection on this for the next generation. The sprawling in- of the European sculpture tradition immedia-
basis seems tasteful and well-mannered. completeness of his work gives it the character tely before him explains the pervasiveness of
The particular difficulties of showing Rodin's of material for his successors, a mine rather his achievement in his own time, and the
work in a museum situation without falsi- than a monument. strength of the reaction against it from about

fying its nature are admittedly large, and The context which Rodin created was one in 1907. Rodin created one wing of a dialectic
derive from the larger consideration of the which the sculptor could potentially work that continues to inform sculpture.
lack of a cultural con text in which the artist with the freedom of the painter or poet, his It may seem grudging to question the value of
himself worked. These sculptures such as the own choice determining the content and a show which certainly does not diminish the
Age of Bronze and the St. John the Baptist which direction of his art. One thing that does stature of an artist whose greatness few today
were conceived and designed as Salon pieces emerge from this exhibition is the degree to would deny. Nonetheless I feel London is
seem to me to work best in the Hayward which Rodin, through his tremendous belief entitled to something more than this. One
installation: they have an order and a com- in his own capacity, reversed the roles of might ask whether the exhibition was really
pleteness, a rightness of size and proportion patron and artist so humiliating to his pre- justified at all, when so much of Rodin's work
relative to their spatial isolation in the present decessors, and so degrading to sculpture in is on permanent display at the Tate, especially
setting. The Balzac, though initially enor- general: in the case of the Gates of Hell, the if the alternative had been the comprehensive
mously impressive in the first hall of the commission was virtually a licence to make Brancusi show presently at the Guggenheim,
gallery, after a while begins to look freakish whatever sculpture he pleased. But Rodin organized jointly with the Philadelphia
and colossal in an indoor situation for which still needed the concept of the commission— Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.
it was never intended. The studies for the the public task—even when financially well Perhaps one could have hoped for an exhibi-
Balzac and the Burghers of Calais, the sculp- established, to give a shape and a direction to tion illustrating the influence of Rodin on
tures deriving from the Gates of Hell, the por- his flow of ideas. Brancusi, Matisse, Picasso, Duchamp-Villon,
traits, the small studies of dancers, are all One feels also that he needed the conflicts that etc—which would have been an event of real
arranged in various rooms with a tidiness, an arose front his commissioned work, as he visual and historical interest.
evenness of emphasis, that unfortunately needed the response of his models, assistants WILLIAM TUCKER
bring out the obsessive and repetitive elements and admirers : if the monuments were rarely