#rodin100

Several weeks before Auguste Rodin’s death in 1917, one of his assistants made a life cast of the sculptor’s right hand. In the hand was placed one of Rodin’s tiny models of a female torso, which probably dates from the 1880s when he created many similar figures for The Gates of Hell. Although small, the torso is incredibly animated. It is being held aloft, as though the being contemplated or offered to the viewer. Today is the final day to the Rodin at the Brooklyn Museum: The Body in Bronze.

After a two-year hiatus, Access Programs for individuals who are blind or have low vision are back (and better than ever before). Verbal Description and Touch Tours will employ various approaches to understanding and examining art. A teaching artist will describe artistic work through rich, precise, and detailed language. Visitors will also be invited to touch selected objects in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection, under the guidance of the Access team.

The first program will visit Rodin at the Brooklyn Museum: The Body in Bronze on February 22nd, 6-7:30 pm. Visitors will learn the context and motivations behind Rodin’s sculptural work, and after donning cotton gloves, individuals will explore these works through touch. This program is free with Museum admission. Space is limited, and registration is required. To register over the phone, please call (718) 501-6520.

Additional programs will take place on March 22, April 26, and May 24.

At the heart of Rodin’s creative process was a technique known as marcottage: reusing and reconfiguring existing sculptural forms to generate new compositions. Rodin would sculpt the body in clay, typically working from a live model, and then have one or more plaster casts made of the work. These plasters were cut apart and stored in his studio, where they could be referenced in future works. By recombining his own plaster fragments and figures, Rodin redefined sculpture as always in flux and never finished—a very modern concept.

This bronze bust was originally created for Rodin’s Monument to Victor Hugo as part of an allegorical female muse speaking in the author’s ear. Some shocked critics decried it as an unfinished deformity. Others felt her shifting features effectively symbolized the fluid processes of genius. What remains startling today is the degree to which Rodin abandons lifelike representation in this work. Instead, the focus is on the emotional impact and the artist’s visible manipulation of the material.

The Head of Sorrow is one of Rodin’s most often recycled body fragments and appears four times in The Gates of Hell. The anguished face is androgynous, allowing Rodin to reuse it for both male and female figures. A small version is found on the male figure in Paolo and Francesca, and the larger version appeared in The Prodigal Son.

The human body was at the heart of Rodin’s sculptural practice. Rather than depicting static, lifeless forms and stale narratives, the artist vigorously modeled his work to look and feel like the body. His figures’ turbulent surfaces, along with their contorted poses and allusive gestures, can convey emotional, carnal, and psychological experiences in all their felt complexity. With Rodin: The Body in Bronze, we are able to experience the emotive, subjective quality that makes his sculpture human.