Page 49 - Studio International - January 1973

Dance Movement A c. 1910-I I Dance Movement D c. Dance Movement H c. 1910-I I
Bronze 12 1/4 x 5 1/2 x 3 in. Bronze 13 3/4 x 11 1/2 x 4 in. Bronze 11 x 4 x 5 1/2 in.
Rodin Museum, Paris Rodin Museum, Paris Rodin Museum, Paris

disposition of the figures is dictated not by hard of a bunched fist; within it arms and legs, lower legs are simply omitted, and the sculpture
thought or the constructive process, and in any knees and shoulders are torn from their original is detached from a continuous base. It thus
case, once the sculpture was in the marble no structural role, their forms and functions anticipates the great series of partial figures — the
significant change could take place. Constructed deliberately confused in a wilful re-assembly of Torso of a Seated Woman Clasping her Left Leg,
groupings of existent sculptures from the Gates, the body as a bundle of lumps and axes. The the Flying Figure, and Iris, Messenger of the
for example I am Beautiful and Fugit Amor, Prodigal Son, though opposite in its openness Gods, of 189o-91, in which some or all of the
are more successful, but the individual and extension, is not so much a kneeling figure extremities are omitted — in every case the
components such as the Prodigal Son and the as a figure in which the lower legs have been obtrusive and non-structural head — and no
Crouching Woman, invariably look much better folded back into the horizontal to support its specific orientation is prescribed. These
on their own. With the exception of the total vertical-diagonal sweep. The sculpture has fragments are not arbitrarily or wildly expressive,
Burghers of Calais where the figures are the character of a single limb, an arm or leg : the each sculpture is taut and tightly structured, with
conceived separately and hardly touch, let alone proportion and structure of the torso confuse it the arm or arms bonding to the leg to achieve a
support each other, Rodin's figure groups are with leg: the legs and arms penetrate and constructive unity, that can still, by reference
bad sculptures : it is not that 'he could not occupy the body: the arms, with the lower legs to our own body experience, be felt as
compose', 'had no sense of architecture', etc. removed, also read as 'legs'. In both figures the anatomically 'real'. Of all Rodin's sculptures
but that composition, architecture, structure, head is reduced to yet another lump; the neck if those in this group probably appeal more to
could only 'carry' within the limits of the single anything assumes a greater expressive role. contemporary taste, both through their
figure : duplication of figures cancels the These two sculptures were made shortly character as 'objects', by which they were so
distinct expressive potential of each by defining after the rhetorical Adam, Eve, and The influential on Brancusi and the next
the 'dramatic' too literally, ie in a dramatic Thinker, and before the naturalistic Belle generation in Paris, and by their quality of
`situation', and by sheer visual overstatement. Héaul-mière and the studies for the Burghers of abstract structure which relates them to the
Both the gravity-free conception of the figures Calais. In these sculptures the poses, though best sculpture being made today. Yet their
in the Gates and expressively violent nature of far from 'natural', were a good deal more abstractness should be taken with caution, for it
the subject-matter opened up new relaxed and static than either the Gates or the resulted from a desire to express a sense of the
possibilities for structuring the figure. Up till Michelangelesque pieces. With the over-life- figure with increased force : the figure functions
this point, Rodin's figures had been generally size studies for the Burghers, and notably with as the vehicle of abstraction. In intention, in
upright, self-supporting, the poses derived the gorilla-like jean D'Aire, Rodin took feeling, they are possibly no more abstract than
from classical or Renaissance models, designed naturalism in terms of the 'life-like' as far as it the Age of Bronze: the Iris figures in fact
to display the expressive performance of an can be taken in sculpture. Like the Age of represent a later stage in Rodin's exploration of
essentially Renaissance anatomy. With the Bronze, it is a tour-de-force, and unrepeatable. the congruent limits of the figure with the
Prodigal Son and the Crouching Woman, an The Torso of Adele was made about the same sculpture. Although the various stages in this
entirely new concept of anatomy emerges, in time as the Prodigal Son (1882), and similarly is process overlapped — for example, the partial
which the human body is re-structured in terms one of the sculptures from the Gates. It shares figure may have started as early as 1877 with the
of the posture. Thus the Crouching Woman the re-structured anatomy in terms of a unified Walking Man, and there is an intense naturalism
assumes the compact, closed form, for example, overall form, this time of a small arch, but the about several of the Balzac studies from the mid
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