Page 28 - Studio International - December 1972

RODIN: the language of sculpture I

William Tucker

Auguste Rodin was born in Paris in 1840, in encouragement from older artists; in fact from academic-commercial sculptor of the period,
the same year as Monet, Renoir and Sisley. the controversy over The Age of Bronze while continuing his private apprenticeship
Cézanne was born the year before; Degas in onwards, he found a support from some in art in his spare time. In his reading — his
1834, Manet in 1832, and Pissaro in 1830. members of the Academy and influential public ambition confirmed by a visit to Rome and
Rodin was thus the exact or virtual officials which probably exceeded that given Florence in 1875 — his handling of clay and
contemporary of each of the painters whose to the Impressionists at the time: and treatment of the figure, he was thus virtually
work emerged during the 1860s as the because of the traditional elements which self-educated; his contacts were with fellow
prototype of modernism. By 1877, the year in persisted in his sculpture and the craftsmen and academic 'superiors': the two
which Rodin completed his first major controversies aroused by the commissioned older sculptors of talent and independence
sculpture, The Age of Bronze, to be accepted monuments, Rodin's public reputation soon whose classes he attended, Barye and
by the Salon, the Impressionists too were overhauled that of his radical contemporaries Carpeaux, had no exchange with him. The Age
already holding their third group exhibition, in painting, until by 1900 he was probably of Bronze in the Salon in 1877 caused a
the first having taken place in 5874. Rodin's the most famous artist in the world, enjoying sensation not only for its evident internal
sculpture began to appear at the time when the during his final years the same kind of qualities, its challenge to everything the
Impressionists had already established not reputation that Picasso has today. The later Academy stood for, but because it was a
only their public presence (if they were still far and profoundly important developments of sculpture apparently without antecedent, by
from commercial success), but also the Impressionism, in Cézanne, and in the an artist whose preparation for envisaged
fundamental and radical principles of their sculpture of Degas, took place in virtual greatness, for a new role for sculpture itself,
art: thus Rodin's mature sculpture follows obscurity. Today we are only beginning to had been utterly private, isolated and obscure.
the effective emergence of modern painting; disentangle the various strands in the art of Nineteenth-century sculpture was wholly
moreover, in comparison with the directness, Rodin: to extract what is distinctively modern unprepared to sustain serious aesthetic
simplicity and objectivity of the new painting, from the confusion and rhetoric of the purpose: since the establishment of the
the statement in sculpture seems tentative, nineteenth century with which both an Academy none of the great issues that had
half-formed and weighed down by a burden impoverished tradition and too great a torn painting apart, between Ingres and
of Romantic and dramatic subject-matter, commercial and public success encumbered it. Delacroix, colour and line, for and against the
moral and public 'function', which the What is intrinsic in Rodin to the development realism of Millet and Courbet, the rise of pure
Impressionists had been able to do without of modern sculpture — the independence of the landscape, had left sculpture untouched.
from the first. work from specific subject-matter or function, Romanticism in sculpture was accommodated
The reasons for the late arrival and confused its 'internal' life, the concern with material, by the prolonged exclusion of Préault from
intentions of the new sculpture lie partly in the structure, and gravity as ends in themselves — the Salon. Much of what must seem diffuse
physical character of sculpture and painting, these elements have to be elucidated, for they or rhetorical in Rodin's subsequent ambition
partly in their relative development in Europe are clearly there: but without special pleading, and subject matter derives from his attempt to
since the Renaissance, partly in the specific and with a full awareness of the historical include in the repertory of sculpture themes
conditions of patronage and public taste which conditions under which his art emerged. long exhausted in painting. In terms of a newly
obtained in nineteenth-century France: but If one compares Rodin's early years with conceived independence for sculpture Rodin
most importantly in the existence of a radical those of his immediate contemporaries, Monet, must be Géricault, Delacroix, Courbet,
tradition in French painting since the Renoir and Cézanne, significant distinctions simultaneously with Manet and Cezanne.
neo-classicism of David had been adopted as emerge not only of circumstance and The contrast with the earlier years of the
the official art of the Revolution, in which a personality, but of the wholly different Impressionists is remarkable. Most of the group
number of the most talented and ambitious opportunities open to a young artist of came from middle-class, even well-to-do,
artists, Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Rousseau ambition in painting and sculpture in the families. Only Renoir had a similar background
and the Barbizon painters, Boudin and 1850s, and thus of the clearly separate paths to Rodin; but none had the rigorous
Jongkind, prepared the ground for the through which a specifically modern idiom apprenticeship in craft from an early age, nor
Impressionists and in some cases were still at could be channelled in either art. As a result of experienced the bitterness of repeated
hand to advise and encourage the younger men his father's limited means (he was employed as rejection by the Beaux Arts. All the important
at the outset of their careers. Though a clerk in a Government Department) and his members of the group, except Pissaro and
Géricault, Préault, Daumier, all made own apparent incapacity to learn anything at Cézanne, studied at the Beaux Arts: all were
sculpture that is now retrospectively claimed school, Rodin was allowed at the age of from an early date acquainted with other
as the fore-runner of modernism, their fourteen to enter the free Petite École to do young men with similar aims and ambitions in
'pioneer' work was at the time unknown or the one thing that interested him, drawing. art, and with radical artists of an earlier
not taken seriously as sculpture. At this school he discovered the modelling generation — Jongkind, Boudin, Courbet,
Only Carpeaux, whose La Dance for the class; 'I saw clay for the first time, and I felt Corot.
Paris Opera engaged the antagonism of the as if I were ascending into heaven . . .' he During the two decades when Rodin was
Academy in 1868, can fairly be claimed to have wrote later, and decided on the instant that he earning a solitary living as a craftsman and
played the same kind of role for sculpture, as, would become a sculptor. By the age of 17 producing little personal work of substance,
say, Courbet for painting; Carpeaux in fact he had applied to, and been rejected by, his contemporaries in painting developed a
taught Rodin briefly at the Petite École, but the 'Grande École', the Beaux Arts, three common ambition and purpose in the
had no further connection with him before times. For the next 20 years Rodin had to make presentation of a totally and identifiably new
his early death in 1875. That is not to say a living as a craftsman and assistant notably to movement in art and produced a great number
that Rodin, once established, lacked Carrier-Belleuse the most successful of fine and personal paintings, including
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