Some art thieves made off with seven Rodin bronze statues from a museum in Amsterdam, one of which was The Thinker. Luckily, there are several of these. To make things even more ignorant, the police think they were after the value of the metal--which implies they will be melting them down. I guess they don't want to try their hand at the Black Market Art world, or they have absolutely no clue about the value of these works--or worse yet, don't care.
The Thinker is a timeless piece, to be sure. What I love about Rodin is what a "painterly" sculptor he is, his knowledge of anatomy, and his flexibility in expression of anatomy. When I say he is a "painterly" sculptor, I'm referring to the surface treatment of his sculptures. He doesn't make everything clean and shiny, and even though his work is in hard material, the forms are expressed softly and expressively. These qualities also make his work seem more "animated" and alive. His work looks effortless in terms of anatomy. It looks as though he could sculpt the figure accurately blindfolded. He's also not afraid to keep things loose (such as hair) or distort forms slightly in terms of proportion (usually the terminating points--head, hands, feet). He understands mass, weight, volume, expression, gravity, poetry, and beauty.
The Thinker is positively iconic; but I have preferred many others over this sculpture. One of my favorites is The Kiss, which most people are familiar with. He understands sensuality and eroticism very acutely, and even created wonderful watercolors incorporating these subjects. Besides The Kiss, one of my favorite sensual pieces of Rodin's is The Eternal Idol. While he grasps sensuality and eroticism, tragedy is not lost on him either. The Burghers of Calais shows off his virtuosity with expression and surface treatment and shows the great sadness and resolution of the subject. Finally, he captures personality in an astute and humorous way. One of my favorite portraits is Naked Balzac, a sculpture of the 18th century writer Honore de Balzac.
Passion exudes from Rodin's art. He took the classical idea about the sculpted human figure and made it modern in a way that I personally believe still has no parallel.
The Eternal Idol
The Burghers of Calais(click to see large image)
Naked Balzac
No comments:
Post a Comment