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Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006 - 9:28 a.m.

This is Part 2 of a two-part entry. Part 1 is here.

So, the Rodin museum was pretty cool, but I discovered that if you're not really crazy about a subject, an entire museum - and I'm talking a big one - full of it is a tad much. Or maybe it's just an entire museum of nothing but sculpture is a bit much. Either way, I like sculpture, and I can handle Rodin, but I really just kinda glanced at the last 2 rooms, like, "Huh; look at that. Sculpture." And I was outta there. Though, it could also be that I've been up since 1am, and it's 6:07pm here now; you never know. Seeing the original cast of The Thinker (Le Penseur) all real and life-size and stuff was cool, but they had it really high, so I'm sure my pictures will suck, because with the crappy weather, the sky is the hated white, so I'm pretty sure the big lug will pretty much just show up as a big black* blob against a field of white. Which is too bad, because he actually has features. I couldn't see them, but they were there. They had several of the sculptures set against windows, and it was kind of annoying, because I really couldn't see their details. Black objects against bright backlighting pretty much equals silhouette and not much else. Considering Rodin meant his sculptures to be viewed as a mass of light and shadow, I personally think throwing the entire front of one into shadow defeats the purpose of display, but whatever.

* Unlike the image on Wikipedia, the casting of The Thinker at the Rodin museum here in Paris is not that green. It does have green, but not as much as that image does. It's mostly dark. And almost all the scultures inside the house, like The Gates of Hell, are black.

The house that serves as the museum is pretty cool. It's called the Hotel Biron (bee-roan), and Rodin lived and worked there (so did Isadora Duncan, Henri Matisse, and Jean Cocteau - it was divided into 4 apartments) from 1908 until the city of Paris bought it in 1911. Later on, Rodin gave a bunch of his sculptures to the city with the stipulation they be displayed in the Hotel Biron. I guess he really liked it there. I was about to say I would have liked more information on the house, but I just noticed that the recorded tour *did* have it, and if I'd used my guide once I got inside the house instead of depending on the little signs, I would have gotten the skinny. Damn. :( That's really disappointing, because the house is really cool. I liked the house more than the sculpture, almost. I could totally kick myself. :( Let that be a lesson to you, kiddies. When you buy the audio tour, and they give you a guide, USE IT. It wasn't very easy to follow outside, and several of the pieces it supposedly identified were obviously not the same pieces, so by the time I got inside, I was kinda over it and just followed the little numbered plaques instead.

So, The Thinker is pretty cool, and so is The Kiss. I liked the terracotta model of it better, because the details showed up on it better, but still, it's a pretty keen sculpture. And there was one called The Fish-Woman that was interesting. Some small ones of Victor Hugo were pretty neat, and they have a full, finished casting of The Gates of Hell that's pretty interesting and kinda creepy. That was actually cast after Rodin's death because during his lifetime he was never happy with it and kept changing it. It's been exhibited in various incarnations, but never in a final, finished form, until after his death. He got the commission in 1880, and it was supposed to be finished for the Universal Exhibition of 1889 (which is what the Eiffel Tower was built for), but pretty much everyone knew by then that he was never gonna finish it, even though he insisted on having it near him for the remainder of his life. After Rodin's death, they found a big wax model of it (I think the size of the one in the garden), and castings of the figures that are on it, and it was all labelled exactly where he wanted the figures to go, so they went ahead and cast it in bronze in 1917, and mounted it in the garden of Hotel Biron in 1937. I forget where they exhibited it before that. The Thinker is actually a component of The Gates. Rodin constantly recycled his sculptures, so there's a miniature version of The Thinker in the center of the pediment, and a lot of the components of the Gates are also full-size sculptures. He originally used The Kiss for it too, but he decided that one was out of place. The figures in The Kiss are in The Gates, but they're in different positions. I couldn't find them, probably because it's a mass of black and was speckled with dust and water spots, as well as a few cobwebs, so it was kinda hard to sort some things out. Rodin doesn't always go for detail, either. I like his earlier works much better than the stuff he did later on in his career, because he paid more attention to detail. Or perhaps it's more correct to say the detail was more subtle and lifelike. Later on, he would leave big globs of clay on the figures, rather than smooth them out, and I don't really care for that rough-hewn sculpture look.

I'll post pictures when I get caught up, but I'm really way too tired to deal with it right now. I don't think you grasp how much sculpture there was. I mean, seriously. It's really sort of impossible to grasp. I've never seen that much scupture in one place in my life before. It was total sculpture overload. And if you think I'm saying "sculpture" a lot in this small paragraph, that should give you some idea of how much sculpture there was at the Rodin museum. We're talking a LOT of sculpture, people. And lots of art students, of all ages, from 9 or 10 up to college age. The cutest thing ever, though, were the little kids, like 5 and 6, who were there with their teacher and two class mothers. So adorable. :) And now I really have to eat and pass out...hopefully in that order.

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008

 

 

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