Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece at the British Museum
RODIN AND THE ART OF ANCIENT GREECE
AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
ON THE 15TH OF JUNE 2018
Auguste
Rodin (1840-1917) visited London in 1881 to view the Parthenon sculptures,
commonly known as the Elgin marbles, to encounter ancient Greek culture,
thought at the time to be superior to all others. Rodin said, “the sculptures of ancient
Greece…remain my masters.” He never
visited Greece and London became his substitute for Athens.
Key
works by Rodin such as The Gates of Hell
and The Burghers of Calais are
compared with important Greek sculptures from the Parthenon which served as a
basis for Rodin’s work. The armless,
headless fragment is also considered and highlighted as an independent art form
and included in works like The Gates of
Hell, inspired by Dante’s Inferno
and Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleur du Mal. Rodin himself said, “they are no less
masterpieces for being incomplete.”
Indeed, when Lord Elgin brought the Parthenon sculptures back to London
he asked the sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822) to complete them but he
refused because he considered it to be an unwise interference in Pheidias’s
original design.
Rodin
was inspired by Pheidias (c.480-430 BC) the architect and sculptor, who
designed the Parthenon. Many of
Pheidias’s original sculptures are lost such as the statue of Zeus at Olympus,
one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the statue of Pallas Athena
that once stood inside the Parthenon.
Pheidias designed original sculptures in clay for his school of
apprentices to carve in marble, a process which was almost identical to
Rodin’s. Indeed, many of the tools which
Rodin used for working on marble were the same as those used by Pheidias. The exhibition also shows us the tools used
by sculptors who worked with marble, from chisels which broke off individual
pieces of stone to fine tools used for smoothing and polishing. Rodin said, “no artist will ever surpass
Pheidias.”
Rodin
was also considering the attributes of another typical sculpting material,
bronze. By Rodin’s time bronze was only
used for sculpture, becoming recognised as symbolic of antiquity, a
non-utilitarian metallic alloy used only for artistic purposes. Rodin’s work The Age of Bronze (1877) was inspired by The Dying Slave (1513-16) by Michaelangelo (1475-1564) now in the
Louvre, Paris and by the Roman marble copy of the Greek bronze original Doryphoros (spear bearer) by Polykleitos
dated 440-430 BC. (Naples Archaeological
Museum). Rodin is less concerned with
the arithmetically calculated perfection of the original than with his own
which is suffused with emotion but also seems pompous and contrived to modern
eyes. Rodin also used a photograph as
the basis for his design, that of a Belgian soldier, Auguste Neyt, the model
for the work. The figure is lithe not
muscled like Rodin’s The Thinker and
implies sensuality rather than the unity of mind and body. Artistic collaborators like Camille Claudel
and Gwen John are also considered, as practitioners and lovers.
The Kiss
by Rodin also alludes to an antecedent, Canto Five of Dante’s Inferno known popularly as Francesca da Rimini, which recounts the
adulterous passion of Paolo and Francesca.
The lovers are about to be killed by Francesca’s husband, Paolo’s
brother, but their abandonment to passion soon became a universal symbol of
love and the negative allusions were dropped.
This implies the abandonment of a frowning Christian judgemental
attitude in favour of the secular worship of spontaneous human feeling. Compassion is always present in Rodin’s art
although it may be misunderstood. He
sought to become a new creative force like nature itself, not a slavish
imitator of that nature. This can be
compared to Pheidias’s intuitive phantasia.
As the Roman statesman Cicero said of Pheidias: “A sort of extraordinary
apparition of beauty resided in his mind, and concentrating on it and intuiting
its nature, he directed his art and his hand towards reproducing it.” The
Kiss is displayed in plaster, Rodin often exhibited new work in plaster
casts. If the work attracted a buyer, it
would then be cast in bronze or marble.
However, today plaster is usually regarded as an inferior material used
only for replicas. The Kiss is compared to Goddesses
in diaphanous drapery, figures L and M from the east pediment of the Parthenon
(c.438-432 BC marble). Drapery and warm
flesh seem to leap out of the cold marble, but the incompleteness of the work
surmounts the original intention, for the arms and heads are lost. In 1911 Rodin said of this work, “(the
goddesses) pose is so serene, so majestic, that they seem to participate in
something grand that we do not see. Over
them reigns, in effect, the great mystery: immaterial, eternal Reason obeyed by
all Nature.”
Rodin’s
work The Gates of Hell (c 1880-1881)
was originally commissioned by the French state, bronze gates for a new museum
in Paris. Although the museum was never
built, pictorial elements from the work recur in Rodin’s art for the rest of
his life. He constantly reinvented
figures from the Gates to make new monuments, fragments and assemblages. The
Gates of Hell alludes to Lorenzo Ghiberti’s doors to the Baptistry in Florence
known as The Gates of Paradise
(1425-52) which incorporated images from Dante, for instance Paolo and
Francesca and another Canto 33 from Inferno,
Ugolino who is said to have devoured his own children after being locked in a
tower by Archbishop Ruggieri. In Canto
33 Ugolino devours Ruggieri’s head, both men are condemned for their betrayal
of family and kin, but Ugolino is Ruggieri’s tormentor for eternity. There are ten ordered compartments, as in
Ghiberti’s work, and above the tympanum is a prototype of The Thinker. Rodin sought to
liberate these sculptures from their architectural setting. Rodin’s secretary, the poet Rainer Maria
Rilke had this to say about the work: “…set within the quiet, enclosed space,
is the figure of The Thinker, the man who sees the whole immensity and all the
terrors of this spectacle because he thinks it.
He sits silent and lost in meditation, heavy with visions and thoughts
and with his whole strength (the strength of a man of action) he thinks. His whole body has become a skull and all the
blood in his veins has become brain.” (1902)
Rodin’s
sketches of the Elgin marbles are also included and his sources and influences,
also his collaboration with photographer and friend Eugene Druet
(1867-1916). Again, Rilke says: “If, at
this period, he ever received encouragement and confirmation of his aim and of
his quest, it came from the works of the ancients…Men did not speak to
him. Stones spoke.” (1902)
Rodin’s interest in the Parthenon sculptures
was their emotional energy as in the vivid portrayal of mythical beings on the
metopes. He took inspiration from the
uncensored emotion of Greek myth which might be contrasted with the repressive
Victorian morality of his own time. In
1889 he completed Monument to the
Burghers of Calais (bronze). The
sculpture alludes to an episode during the 100 Years War, six burghers decided
to sacrifice their lives so that the siege of Calais by the English might be
lifted. Rilke says of the work: “Each
had come to his own decision in his own way and lived through this last hour in
his own manner with solemn rejoicing of spirit and suffering of the body, which
clung to life.” This exhibition is
vibrant with allusions to the ancient Greeks, the statues speak volumes but so
do the words of Rodin and Rainer Maria Rilke.
This is clearly an important exhibition in a correct context. Rodin comes across most of all as a man who
speaks not with words but with marble and bronze.
Paul
Murphy, the British Museum, June 2018
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