(continuing a series)
I love this drawing of a horseman by Rodin:
Over the years he evolved from meticulous drawings (usually drawn from plaster casts or classical prints) to loose, fluid drawings where expressiveness was more important than anatomical proportion. He decided that many of the details he originally labored over were trivial. He became more interested in "large, rhythmical contours," which were often little more than wispy sketches. As his drawings became simpler and more abstract they sometimes gained in power.
Rodin took his drawings as seriously as his famous sculptures. He insisted, "Drawing is the key to knowledge.... Without drawing, no truth."
Rodin drew as simply and naturally as he was able. Interestingly, as Rodin became more famous and his drawings became simpler, numerous counterfeiters and fakers tried to imitate his work. There have been museum exhibitions dedicated to distinguishing Rodin's "authentic" loose, airy drawings from the numerous counterfeit loose, airy drawings-- a challenging task.
30 comments:
That female figure with a sheet of paper still white would look awfully modern.
Like rare comets, these.
Hippopísthia last seen in in 2013, before that '06... erratic orbit?
Do you have a link to the original interview where the quote, "Drawing is the key to knowledge.... Without drawing, no truth." comes from? Would love to see the context.
The best long form interview with Rodin I've ever found is his "Conversations with Paul Gsell." Cheaply available in the Dover edition. Contains excellent discussions on not only drawing, but movement, modelling, and mystery as well.
An interview with Judith Cladel in 1914, according to Christies. Might be somewhere here ? - https://archive.org/details/rodinmanhisart0000clad/page/n7/mode/2up
Bill
Kev Ferrara-- The quotes are from the book, The Drawings of Rodin (Praeger Publishers 1971) published in connection with the National Gallery of Art. The first quote is cited as coming from the Claudel interview. The second is cited as coming from Dujardin-Beaumetz, "Rodin's Reflections on Art" reprinted as a chapter in Albert Elsen's 1965 book on Auguste Rodin at p.161.
Modern art is Jewish art.
Dickhead troll.
Bill
"Dickhead troll.
Bill"
I'm not sure why this upsets you. What is wrong with art that reflects Jewish experiences and intellect especially if the consensus is that Modern Art is great achievement in the history of human art because of its many innovations?
The second part of your statement, sadly, requires so many clauses and exceptions to it as to render it functionally untrue, before it can be properly stapled back to onto your forehead.
I'd never associate the Jewish culture and intellect with such garbage.
(It's amusing how leftists incessently vent their antisemitism by trying to ventriloquise it through others.)
Bill
The quotes are from the book, The Drawings of Rodin (Praeger Publishers 1971)
Thanks guys. Unfortunately in neither French nor English - via search engine nor in the various online book resources - can I find the quotes in their original context online. Not even in close paraphrase. The citation for the 1913 Cladel interview, which is available readily in many searchable forms, seems like either a misattribution or a misquote. However, the sentiments certainly sound like Rodin.
”I love this drawing of a horseman by Rodin”
I've always assumed the horse and rider watercolor was a prelim; a note to himself. Although it does having passing similarities to some of the blunt “illustrations” from Twenty Seven Poems from the Flowers of Evil.
I understand Rodin's desire, in the open life-drawings, to get to the essence of a figural gesture with the minimum of fuss and tension. Not just because he’s trying to capture necessarily fleeting poses by his models, so there’s no time for digging in. But also because his more serious and ambitious sculptural work is so obviously suffused with expressive and anatomic intensity and created with such evident physical effort over extended periods of time that blithe graphic work feels like the perfect complement to it. A palette cleanser, so to speak.
The particular drawing chosen in your post is unusual in that it captures more anatomic knowledge in the outline than most of the others in the oeuvre. Rodin’s unique combination of knowledge, confidence, and design skill makes him counterfeit-proof. When he gets too sloppy-quick, the work becomes almost generic in authorship.
Presumably, Picasso is indebted to Rodin for not only legitimizing such graphic work publicly as “fine” work, but also for pioneering it. (Insofar as we can say that Rodin wasn’t just inspired by ancient graphic line art, but actually altered or added something to it.)
Couldn't find any more on it either. Maybe she was paraphrasing Rodin on this; I think she catalogued his drawings, and that this was arranged during his life (?), so both an area of her special concern and something they must have discussed.
Alas, the Dover editions aren't as cheap as they used to be, used to snag loads for a pittance. Rodin could identify essential truths in words pretty often, so I'd be very interested in seeing the interview you mentioned.
Bill
(In case anyone else is - https://archive.org/details/artconversations0000rodi/page/n7/mode/2up )/B.
Well hallelujah and god bless anyone who is not only here to talk about the ideas of art but is also willing to do their homework. Let me see if I can be more helpful for such a worthy cause. The book I cited, The Drawings of Rodin, contains a long essay by J. Kirk Varnedoe entitled "Rodin As A Draftsman-- A Chronological Perspective." That essay says the Cladel quote can be found at page 26 of the 1950 definitive Grasset edition of "Rodin, sa vie glorieuse et inconnue." The second full quote reads "Only the knowledge of drawing permits one to compare, judge, express simplicity in fixing the essential... without drawing, no truth." Varnedoe says this quote can be found at page 161 of the 1965 Prentice-Hall book, "Auguste Rodin: Readings on his life and work."
The drawing of the horseman was in Alfred Stieglitz's personal collection of Rodin drawings until he donated it to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it resides today. I don't know anything more about its intended use.
Kev Ferrara-- I too have been struck by the contrast between the dense structural integrity of Rodin's sculptures and the light, airy nature of his drawings. I suppose everybody has been. Especially because Rodin attached such importance to his drawings. It would be one thing if they were just random musings to be thrown away, but they weren't. A palette cleanser? Perhaps. But they almost seem more like a separate channel for a type of Rodin's creative inspiration that could never be cast in bronze or carved in marble.
For me, an interesting piece of the puzzle is that so many people who could not successfully copy Rodin's sculptures felt it would be so easy to copy his scribbled drawings. So many bandits and so many admirers plagiarized his work because they thought they could, and historians have had a deuce of a time trying to distinguish the authentic drawings from the phonies. I'll ask the same question that so many use to impugn abstract art: "If these drawings are so dang special, why are they so easy for any art student to plagiarize?"
When the avenue to fully-realised three dimensional form was open to him, perhaps there was little point in 'feigning' or emphasising that over the movement that's in the drawings ? Some of which seem concerned with a passage of gesture or movement, beyond a frozen moment in it.
Bill
"The greatest difficulty that one encounters in art, that which must be surmounted before everything else and which dominates all others, comes from the necessity of drawing well; only the knowledge of drawing permits one to compare, judge, express simplicity in fixing the essential. By means of drawing, the work takes on the power of natural things; without drawing, no truth.
Thus it is important to exert the mind and eye constantly to see, to understand in order to render well.
Study by contours is a magnificent tool: but it demands great mental tension to render in all their character and truth the multiple forms which it shows successively.
In order to render the contours, one must follow nature with tireless patience and determination.
I may add that the will to follow nature exactly develops taste, exercises the reason, shows wisdom.
It gives calm within strength, serenity within the fullness of expression of life.
In any case, it's the observation of nature, the personal vision which the artist's work reveals."
"If these drawings are so dang special, why are they so easy for any art student to plagiarize?"
I don't think all of them are 'dang special' - a few are pretty ephemeral. Part of their esteem maybe has elevated them above similar sketches by other greats because of the emphasis he gave to this part of his work ?
Bill
Versus this
"Above all, establish clearly the large planes of the figures that you are sculpting. Accentuate vigorously the orientation that you give to each part of the body, head, shoulders, pelvis, legs. Art requires decision. It is through the well-stated lines that you are able to catch depth. When your planes are set, all is found. Your statue is already alive. The details grow and place themselves out of their own.
When you model, do not ever think in terms of surface, but of relief. Let your mind conceive all surface as the extremity of a volume that is pushed out from the back. Imagine the forms as being pointed towards you. All life surges from the center, then grows and blossoms from the inside towards the outside. In the same way, in beautiful sculpture one can always feel an interior impulsion. This is the secret of the antique art.
You, painters, observe in the same way the reality in depth. Look, for instance, at a portrait painted by Raphael. When this master shows a person from the front, he makes the chest go obliquely and gives you thus the illusion of the third dimension. All great painters have tried to sound space. It is in this notion of depth that their strength resides. Remember this: there are no traits, there are only volumes. When you are drawing, don’t worry about the contour, but about the relief."
Bill
Bill wrote, "I don't think all of them are 'dang special' - a few are pretty ephemeral."
I agree. In fact a LOT of them seem pretty ephemeral (although I suppose one can't be sure how many of those are the counterfeits). But some of them are so wonderfully imaginative and original with the liberties they take with the human body (https://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2013/10/simpler-is-better.html ) I can understand how Rodin might need to build up momentum with lesser scribbles in order to achieve those leaps.
>>>"A palette cleanser, so to speak."
I see what you did there! Points for the Double Kiss/skill shot!
~ FV
I too have been struck by the contrast between the dense structural integrity of Rodin's sculptures and the light, airy nature of his drawings.
For myself I see no essential mismatch between the Rodin's "light, airy" drawing style and the materiality of his sculptures. Rodin used clay, a mailable substance particularly sensitive to haptic gesture, which is to say his conception of form was of the modelling kind rather than the carving kind. Secreting rather than disclosing. Building rather than abrading. This is why his aesthetic facture resembles that of the volcanic rather than the eroded. All to say I believe his graphic work perfectly reflects the modelling proclivity.
Thanks for typing those out Bill.
I scouted around for more context on those excerpts and noticed different takes on presumably the same utterances by Rodin:
1. "You, painters, observe in the same way the reality in depth. Look, for instance, at a portrait painted by Raphael. When this master shows a person from the front, he makes the chest go obliquely and gives you thus the illusion of the third dimension. All great painters have tried to sound space. It is in this notion of depth that their strength resides. Remember this: there are no traits, there are only volumes. When you are drawing, don’t worry about the contour, but about the relief."
2. "Art only begins when there is an inner truth. Let all your forms and colours show feeling. You, painters, observe truth in depth. Look, for example, at a portrait painted by Raphael. When he shows a person facing you, he makes the chest recede obliquely, giving the illusion of a third dimension. All painters are probing space. Their strength lies in the notion of depth." Remember this; there are no lines, there are only volumes. When you draw, do not worry about the contours, think only of the relief. It is the relief that determines the contours.”
I'd guess that the first version you found online is a mechanical google or AI translation from the French. Whereas the second was done by a human interpreter who, luckily, knew a thing or two about art.
Either way, there's a lot of gold in these quotes. And I'm particularly struck by just how identical Rodin's thinking was to what was being taught here at the same time. With almost no difference at all between advanced sculpting and painting theory. Even down to the bargue-like understanding of the figural envelope.
I should add that these lines:
"By means of drawing, the work takes on the power of natural things; without drawing, no truth. Thus it is important to exert the mind and eye constantly to see, to understand in order to render well. Study by contours is a magnificent tool: but it demands great mental tension to render in all their character and truth the multiple forms which it shows successively.
In order to render the contours, one must follow nature with tireless patience and determination. I may add that the will to follow nature exactly develops taste, exercises the reason, shows wisdom."
...do not seem to reference his quick life sketches, which probably are five minute poses at absolute maximum, more likely three minute apiece.
I also don't think Rodin is speaking of drawing in terms of writing instruments; pencils and pens. Rather I think he is speaking of drawing as a general matter, as the means by which expressive accuracy - in relation to the subject or object - is achieved: Proportion, anatomy, sculptural form, gesture, and naturalism.
The first unsigned 'anon' one wasn't from me. I'm not sure where it's from but seems to be the source of part of the earlier quote.
The one I cut and pasted below that - no laborious typing - is from Rodin's 'testament'/advice to young painters and sculptors. (Just sourced from a blog, supposed to be human-ly translated, but who knows.) Cheers for the alternate version. That last sentence is very important.
Re - your remark below, is 'drawing' (or the french equivalent term he used) ever used in a manner that can include or is specific to sculpting, in the same way 'sketch' is sometimes used by sculptors (eg, Lanteri) for trial or other work without 'finish' ? Which would cover the broader sense you give.
(Bill)
"Re - your remark below, is 'drawing' (or the french equivalent term he used) ever used in a manner that can include or is specific to sculpting, in the same way 'sketch' is sometimes used by sculptors (eg, Lanteri) for trial or other work without 'finish' ? Which would cover the broader sense you give."
I can't claim to know the full suite of connotations of French art terms as used in 1911. However, I have often heard and read sculptors talk about sculptures being "out of drawing." Which surely translates to "inaccuracy in mimesis" rather than "poorly penciled." The terms "rendering", "contours" and "lines" are used extensively in sculpting, also not in reference to graphite dragging on paper. It stands to reason that a sculptor would mostly use clay/volumes to practice mimesis, study form, and record natural observations, rather than pencil or pen. Rodin's sketching was almost always him walking around his studio manipulating a handful of clay in response to his models' poses.
David, would you ever think about doing a book on Ben Stahl as part of the Auad line?
Check out the new OpenAI multi-modal image generation model
Wow, its stealing and creating instant hack work even better now!
~ FV
David if your taking requests it would be interesting if you did an article on Don Rosa and his troubles with the Disney corporation.
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