Page 48 - Studio International - January 1973

RODIN: the language of sculpture II

William Tucker

Although 'nature' was and remained Rodin's
own touchstone, and the quality of his
modelling has been the aspect of his work that
has elicited most attention and admiration in
this century, both these strands in his
sculpture, though continually present and
important, overlay and often conceal the
fundamental modernity of the work, its
character as 'making'. I would now largely
revise my earlier view that Rodin was primarily
modelling in clay in favour of the view that he
was constructing with and within the figure; in
choosing poses and models from nature; in
physically modelling; in the continuous
process of casting that went on in his studio as
the work proceeded, simultaneously creating a
record and new components; in the process of
addition or reduction of figures or part figures
until they separately became 'sculpture'. The
given structure of the figure, revealed and
affirmed by a new freedom in modelling, is used
at the same time as the main structural factor
internal to the organization of the sculpture, and
externally, as the means of identifying the
spectator with the sculpture in terms of his own
body responses. The experience of the virtually
open-ended commission for the Gates of Hell
from 188o, in which figures could be assembled
and positioned freely without regard to gravity
or particular demands of subject matter gave
Rodin the confidence and freedom to develop
this fundamentally abstract constructive
direction. For a moment, also, it must have
seemed likely to take care of Rodin's perennial
problem, that of 'where to finish', as had the
exact correspondence of the natural and the
invented in the Age of Bronze. However, as
many of the separate figures from the Gates
were detached and enlarged as independent
sculptures and the Gates themselves were
unfinished at his death 37 years after their
inception, the problem had clearly re-presented
itself with increased urgency.
Although Rodin claimed to 'produce slowly',
and indeed all his best sculptures up until the
last period were plainly the fruit of prolonged
effort and consideration, a great deal of work also
emerged from his studio, including many
substantial and physically ambitious pieces,
that were vulgar, facile, unthought-out and
pandered to just that Salon taste which he had
explicitly challenged with the Age of Bronze.
Almost all the marbles must come under this
criticism, including such monsters as Eternal
Spring (1884), The Eternal Idol (1889), The Kiss
(1882). It is not surprising that in this category
may be found the most popular of Rodin's
sculptures. Rodin was here unable or unwilling
to alter or modify an initially banal or Jean d' Aire, nude c. 1889
Bronze 83 x 27 x 24 1/2 in.
sentimental conception; the grouping and Rodin Museum, Paris

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