Auguste Rodin

Amidst the expected, punning advertisements for data companies lining the drive into San Francisco, one passes a lone cultural billboard depicting Klimt’s The Virgin (1913). The image advertises Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter at the Legion of Honor. Below the image of entwined pale, female flesh against a tapestry of vibrant color are the words: “Gives off seriously sexual vibes,” excerpted from a review in San Francisco Magazine. Klimt & Rodin showcases the two male artists’ interest in depicting the white female subject, an art historical mainstay since the splash of Praxiteles’s naked Aphrodite of Knidos. Vibrant colors and gilt dominates the non-figural spaces of Klimt’s canvases, but not the subjects’ bodies, which are rendered in light flesh tones, highlighted with pale yellows and pinks. Rodin’s sculptures, in contrast, are hewn from monochrome materials—marble, bronze, clay—with no surface treatments. If the “seriously sexual vibes” advertised on the billboard come from the expected space of white female (and feminized) subjectivity, the “artistic encounter” on display is one of medium—of painting’s uncontested polychrome in contrast to the insistent monochrome of modern sculpture.

Desde los inicios de la aparición de obras de escultura, en la historia de la humanidad, el paradigma fue la representación de la realidad. A lo largo de los siglos sufrió muy escasas modificaciones tanto en las técnicas como en los modelos hasta llegar al hartazgo y la decadencia en el siglo XIX. Era necesaria una reacción y esta comenzó a finales del XIX, fundamentalmente a partir de Rodin y de las teorías de Adolf von Hildebrand. El artículo recoge las grandes transformaciones que experimentó la escultura a lo largo del siglo XX hasta un nuevo renacimiento.

The balance in an artistic creation between opposing forces of originality and reproduction, between the unique work of art of an artist and the foundry produced versions, has long been regarded as a crucial problem. More than a differentiation of the tradition-laden past, creative originality may be conceived as a literal origin, a birth. The artist self as origin is the way an absolute distinction can be made between a present experienced de novo and a past. The purpose of the analysis of the statues of “Aphrodite” and the torso of the “The Walking Man” is to understand the relationship established by Rodin between the original and the copy.

Les préoccupations de Rodin, Brancusi et Hesse concernant le renouvellement de l’œuvre par le biais de la répétition, apparaissent comme des tentatives de conciliation de l’immobilité et du mouvement. Ce texte montre que la forme répétée brise l’unité de la sculpture, l’obligeant à se tenir dans un état transitoire pour sans cesse reformuler l’écart entre saisie et rythme.

This article discusses the ways in which Auguste Rodin came to associate the poetical universes of the Divine Comedy and Les Fleurs du Mal. It concentrates par- ticularly on the original edition that the bibliophile Paul Gallimard commissioned to Rodin, the different drawing techniques Rodin used, and the ways in which he drew on former sculptures for his monumental and unfinished Gates of Hell. It goes on to examine several drawings – Une charogne, La Béatrice and Les Bijoux – that embody a peculiar link to Baudelaire's poetry.

Il Nobel per la medicina mette di fronte la mente umana e l’ambiente intellettuale viennese fra 1889 e 1914, tracciando un ritratto stimolante dell’intensa simbiosi che si viene a determinare. Le prime tracce della possibilità di comprendere la mente in termini biologici cominciano a diffondersi proprio in quella città di due milioni d’abitanti, incrocio fra una quindicina di nazionalità e decine di lingue e dialetti, fulcro di splendore e decadenza dell’Impero più antico d’Europa ancora in vita nel 1900 – anche se si tratta ormai di sopravvivenza. Chiedersi come ricordiamo, impariamo, percepiamo e darsi risposte attendibili sul piano scientifico è consentito dalla fine del secolo scorso grazie alla fusione fra psicologia cognitiva (scienza della mente) e scienza del cervello (neuroscienza). Ma il punto d’arrivo, costituito dalla possibilità stessa d’indagare i processi neurologici di formazione di fenomeni come empatia e pensiero, coscienza e giudizio estetico, questo punto parte da artisti e scienziati che Kandel identifica in specie nei cinque protagonisti delle sue pagine.

Lecture for the inauguration of the "Medardo Rosso" exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, UK on 13 July 1994, organised by Robert Hopper at the Henry Moore Lecture Theatre, Leeds City Art Gallery.  The lecture introduces Rosso's work in the context of Italian 19th-century art, the first Venice Biennale and Rosso's relation to French Impressionism and European Modernism.

Ecourile simboliste în sculptura româneascã, desi efemere, au reusit sã zdruncine conceptia academicã încã dominantã la începutul secolului XX si sã promoveze o esteticã a intimitãtii si a sentimentului.
Spre deosebire de tãrile vecine, noua sculpturã – impregnatã deopotrivã de estetica rodinianã si de cea münchenezã, de facturã Secession – nu si-a propus sã revolutioneze mediul artistic al vremii, majoritatea sculptorilor români optînd pentru acest nou limbaj mai degrabã în cãutãrile lor personale.

Attraverso alcuni documenti inediti conservati presso gli archivi della Biennale di Venezia (ASAC) e del Museo Rodin di Parigi, il testo arricchisce le conoscenze già acquisite sulla partecipazione del celebre scultore francese alle prime mostre internazionali lagunari, proponendo alcune nuove riflessioni critiche, anche alla luce dei più recenti studi apparsi sull’argomento. Se, infatti, il materiale documentario, costituito soprattutto dalla corrispondenza intercorsa tra gli organizzatori della rassegna e Rodin, fornisce nuove informazioni sulle modalità che portarono alla sua partecipazione alle mostre  veneziane e sulle opere effettivamente esposte (o su quelle che avrebbero dovuto esserlo), questi stessi dati offrono lo spunto per ulteriori considerazioni sulla ricezione dell’opera del maestro francese in Italia, osteggiata dalla stampa e dalle istituzioni più tradizionaliste, ma talvolta mal compresa anche dai commentatori più aggiornati. Dalla prima Biennale, nel 1895, all’undicesima del 1914, l’ultima diretta dal segretario generale Antonio Fradeletto, Rodin, com’è noto figura centrale della scultura francese di quegli anni, fu al centro del dibattito critico, ma anche organizzativo che caratterizzò le vicende della famosa esposizione veneziana, con il coinvolgimento di diversi suoi responsabili istituzionali o collaboratori a diverso titolo: lo stesso Fradeletto, i critici italiani Ugo Ojetti e Vittorio Pica e quelli francesi Léonce Bénédite e Gustave Soulier, lo scultore toscano Domenico Trentacoste, il pittore francese Jacques-Émile Blanche

Fin-de-siècle Prague, a provincial capital city in the Habsburg empire, was a site of Czech-German nationality conflict. In 1902 it was also home to the largest exhibition of Auguste Rodin's art outside France during his life. Due to the nationalism that enveloped Czech culture and politics, the Rodin spectacle was no mere display of modernism. National activists in the Manes Association of Visual Artists, including Stanislav Sucharda and Jan Kotěra, designed the Rodin exhibition to advance Czech cultural maturity through cosmopolitan art and to convince foreigners of the Czech nation's singularity, unity, and progressiveness. Ultimately, though, the events surrounding the exhibition of Rodin's works in Prague projected Czech disagreement over the meanings of folk heritage and western progress for national identity. Still, the blending of modern display and cultural diplomacy strengthened French-Czech relations and in small but significant ways helped secure Czechoslovakia's creation at the end of World War I.

Musée Rodin, Paris, 9-10 novembre 2017

Pour le Centanaire de la mort d'Auguste Rodin, le second volet de "Rodin - L'Onde de choc" est l'occasion de poursuivre les réflexions et les échanges qui ont animé le colloque organisé au Grand Palais en mars 2016.
"Dans cette histoire riche de rencontres nous croiserons des personnalités attendues comme Michel-Ange, Brancusi ou encore l'helléniste Mario Meunier, et d'autres beaucoup moins, comme Gaston Bachelard et Günther Anders qui, sensibles à l'art de Rodin, ont publié leurs réflexions sur le sculpteur."

Pour écouter la conférence : http://www.musee-rodin.fr/fr/agenda/activite/rodin-londe-de-choc-ii

Ce texte est paru en italien sous le titre "Senza riparo in moto perpetuo. Günther Anders su Rodin" dans l'ouvrage La scrittura dell’esilio oltreoceano. Diaspora culturale italo-tedesca nell’Europa totalitaria del Nazifascismo. Riflessioni interdisciplinari (dir. E. Saletta), Aracne, 2020.

Auguste Rodin, segundo hijo de un modesto funcionario de la prefectura de policía, nació en París el 14 de noviembre de 1840. Sus padres se preocuparon de cuidar atentamente la edu­ cación religiosa y de guiar los estudios de sus hijos, pero Auguste Rodin era un alumno mediocre y distraído hasta el día en que pudo dar rienda suelta a su pasión por el dibujo. En 1854 se inscribió en la Escuela Imperial de dibujo y matemáti­ ca, familiarmente llamada "la pequefla escuela". Siguió los cursos de Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, excelente maestro que basaba su enseflanza en la ejercitación de la memoria. Las copias de los maestros del siglo XVIII, las sesiones en el Museo del Louvre para hacer croquis de las esculturas de los antiguos maestros y los primeros ensayos realizados tomando modelos vivos en la Manufacture des Gobelins, a la noche son completa­ dos con bocetos "de memoria", fruto de las impresiones reci­ bidas durante el día. En 1855 se le revelaron a Rodin las posibi­ lidades del modelado de la materia yen medio de la euforia de un descubrimiento que le permitió crear formas entrevió su ver­ dadera vocación: la escultura. Dos años después, cuando sus estudios ya terminaron, su familia, preocupada por su futuro, siguió el consejo de un escultor entonces cotizado, Hippolyte Maindron, quien juZgó favorablemente los trabajos del joven estimulándolo para que se presentara en la Escuela Nacional Superior de Bellas Artes, la única que podía facilitar el recono­ cimiento oficial de un talento. Lo esperaban tres fracasos con­ secutivos, pero el joven persiguió su ideal con pertinaz entu­ siasmo. Las modestas condiciones materiales en que vivía su familia lo obligaban a aceptar trabajos de cualquier tipo, como decoraciones, muebles y orfebrería. Un duro golpe para Auguste Rodin fue el deceso de su hermana menor, María, acaecida en 1862. El sufrimiento que le causó esa muerte lo lle­ vó a ingresar en la Congregación de los Hermanos del Santísi­ mo Sacramento. El Reverendo Padre Eymard, superior de la Congregación, consintió en posar para el joven novicio y no tardó en convencerlo de que su vocación no era la vida religiosa sino ser escultor. Realizado en 1863, ese busto es su primera es­ cultura fechable con seguridad. Pasados algunos meses de reti­ ro y meditación, Rodin volvió a su familia madurado por la ex­ periencia sufrida. El año siguiente, 1864, fue decisivo: por pri­ mera vez intentó exponer en el Salan des Artistes fran(:ais, ingresó en el taller de Carrier-Belleuse, escultor que seguía el estilo de la época del Segundo Imperio y conoció a Rose Beuret, que sería la compañera de su vida. A pesar de la miseria y los disgustos la joven pareja era feli7 y esta sencilla felicidad inspiró al artista obras fascinantes, en un único ejemplo de las favorables condiciones brindadas a su labor por una atmósfera de serenidad y de confiada esperanza. La colaboración con Carrier-Belleuse dio nuevo impulso al destillo de Rodin, nueva­ / (i '.,. iJ~~ mente comprometido por la guerra franco-prusiana de 1870. La caída del Imperio provocó el cierre de los talleres parisien­ ses y los artistas buscaron fortuna fuera de Francia. Carrier­ Belleuse fue invitado a radicarse en Bruselas para participar en los trabajos de decoración de la Bolsa de Comercio, y en esa ciudad abrió un taller del que Rodin formaría parte entre 1871 Y 1877. El viaje por Italia emprendido por Rodin en 187510 pu­ so en contacto con las obras de Miguel Ángel. De regreso en Bruselas realizó el trabajo por el que, por fin, lograría la aten­ ción del mundo artístico: La edad del bronce (lámina II); Ex­ puesta en 1877, esta figura provocó un escándalo por la auda­ cia de su "novedad": el modelado, que da la ilusión de que es algo viviente. A pesar de la violencia de los ataques que tuvo que soportar, Rodin no claudicó y prosiguió por el camino que se había trazado. El período entre 1880 y 1900fue el másfecun­ do de su vida. Además de esculturas individuales realizó traba­ jos oficialmente encargados, como el grupo de Los burgueses de Calais (1884-1895, véase un modelo en yeso en la lámina 4), la Puerta del Infierno (/880-1917, véase un modelo en yeso en la lámina 2 y un detalle en la lámina 3), el Monumento a Claude Lorrain (Nancy, 1889), el Monumento a Victor Hugo (/893, véase el modelo en yeso en la lámina 5), el de Balzac (/892-1897, lámina XV), y el Monumento al Presidente Sar­ miento (Buenos Aires, 1895). Además de las obras derivadas de la Puerta del Infierno y de muchos retratos, su personalidad encuentra su más viva expre­ sión en esculturas individuales. La eterna primavera (1884), El beso (/886, láminas VI-VII) y El idolo eterno (1889) exaltan la belleza de la pareja humana. Con Orfeo (1892) Rodin alcanza la cima más elevada de su inspiración. La m;jno de Dios (/897, lámina XIII), La Catedral (/908, lámina XVI) y El secreto (1910) testimonian la observación y el estudio de manos, a las que Rodin considera tan expresivas como el rostro humano. Escultor de lafigura en movimiento, para Rodin la danza debía ser una inagotable fuente de estudio. Tanto dibujando como modelando fijaba las poses instantáneamente y los croquis rea­ lizados con posterioridad al Monumento a Balzac constituyen en el último período de su vida la parte más original de su pro­ ducción. Rodin murió el 17 de noviembre de 1917. El Museo Rodin fue fundado gracias a la donacíón que él realizó de sus obras y de su colección a Francia, su país natal.

A Mímica Corporal proposta e exercitada pelo francês Étienne Decroux [1898-1991] foi profundamente marcada pelo contato, pela troca e mesmo pelo embate estético e ideológico com outras manifestações artísticas, como a dança (especialmente o balé
clássico), a escultura e a música, destacando assim o caráter intencionalmente multidisciplinar do seu trabalho, tanto pela apropriação de elementos formais e éticos (entendendo estética e ética como elementos inseparáveis), quanto por sua negação.

At its height in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japonisme had a tremendous impact on Western art. In this publication, author Ricard Bru approaches the cultural phenomenon of Japonisme from an innovative standpoint. He presents an in-depth discussion of the influence of Japanese printed erotic imagery by ukiyo-e masters such as Kitagawa Utamaro and Katsushika Hokusai on European artists, including Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustav Klimt and Pablo Picasso, as well as writers, critics, and collectors, such as Edmond de Goncourt, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Émile Zola. With over 160 color illustrations sourced from public and private collections, Erotic Japonisme demonstrates the rich artistic dialogue that existed between Europe and Japan.

Using a series of Rodin's drawings after Michelangelo's Medici Chapel as a springboard, this chapter discusses Rodin's identification with Michelangelo in light of the Florentine sculptor's shifting reputation in the 1870s.  I argue that queer identification (and disavowal) was instrumental to Rodin’s development of his artistic persona, with its emphasis on the nude body and sexual desire as his primary signs of artistic subjectivity and expressivity. The example of Michelangelo was catalytic, but Rodin turned away from the Renaissance artist's potential homoeroticism to reassert, defensively, an account of the dimorphism of the sexed body and of a heteronormative relationship to it.

Die Untersuchung setzt sich zum Ziel, Rilkes Kunstansichten in seinen Monographien, Aufsätzen, Tagebüchern und Briefen zu rekonstruieren. Der Gegenstand der Analyse sind die frühen Tagebücher und die Kunstmonographien Worpswede und Auguste Rodin sowie Teile aus seinem Briefwerk, insbesondere Die Briefe über Cézanne und Die Briefe an einen jungen Dichter.
Es wird am Anfang die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass Rilkes Kunstansichten eine Kontinuität aufweisen, deren Kern in den drei von der Kritik bestimmten Schaffensperioden im Großen und Ganzen unverändert bleibt.
Die Untersuchung macht die konzeptuellen Ähnlichkeiten zwischen Rilkes Kunstansichten und dem Antiperspektivismus in der bildenden Kunst deutlich und behandelt die Hauptelemente der Rilkeschen Kunstansichten Einsamkeit, Ding, Armut und Arbeit. Rilkes „Dingtheorie“, die mit den aufgezählten Begriffen eng verbunden ist, übt eine wichtige Funktion in der Ausformung der poetischen Sprache des Dichters aus.

This book is a unique and comprehensive illustrated dictionary of French Art Nouveau Ceramics. A census conducted in 1901 indicated the existence of some 209 producers of pottery in France, employing a total of around 5,800 full-time labourers. This great activity stimulated a parallel development in the arts, including the search for new expressions in art pottery, giving birth to l'art nouveau, a great and eclectic synthesis of a number of other art styles. Largely through British arts and crafts, and the work of artists like the Manxman Archibald Knox, it reached far back into the prehistory of Celtic art. To this were added later medieval elements, through the gothic revival championed by William Morris.

En 1878, "Le Sommeil" de Courbet est exposé publiquement pour la première fois, à l'occasion de la rétrospective organisée en hommage au peintre franc-comtois, mort l'année précédente. Terminée en 1866, le tableau était jusqu'alors resté dans le secret des appartements de Khalil-Bay, un commanditaire. C'est la première fois qu'une oeuvre d'une cette taille est présentée lors d'une exposition publique de telle envergure alors qu'elle représente deux femmes nues assoupies dans les bras d'une de l'autre, sans ambiguïté quant à la nature de leur relation. A cette époque, les images éroticopornographiques convoquant le thème saphique ne sont pas rares, mais elles se créent et s'échangent dans la sphère privée sous peine d'être censurée dans la société moralisatrice française de la fin du XIXe siècle et au risque de provoquer le scandale. C'est donc la première fois qu'une oeuvre traitant de l'homosexualité féminine, en outre dans une tonalité érotique, acquiert une telle visibilité. Sans marquer un tournant décisif dans la production d'images homo-érotiques féminines et dans leur visibilité pour le public, l'événement peut être compris comme un signal de la lente évolution qui s'opère en cette fin de siècle et jusqu'au lendemain de la Première Guerre Mondiale, non pas tant au niveau du motif du couple de femmes que de son statut et son traitement, par l'homme artiste et surtout par la femme artiste, dont le statut évolue à cette même époque. [...]

Today we are going to introduce and so to speak to taste Dante’s Commedia.  The poem opens with a poet, also named Dante, who finds himself lost in a wood.  The ghost of the ancient Latin poet Vergil appears, and offers to guide him on the first part of a journey that will take him through all the cosmos, starting in Hell, going up through Purgatory, and finally, ascending into skies, with another guide. The poem tells the journey of the poet himself throughout the 3 realms, with the many encounters and dialogues. According to Genette’s definitions, then, its narrator may be defined "intradiégétique" et "homodiégétique".

 We will focus on his cosmology, which plays a large part in the poem. To this end, we must compare the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, while also reading a literary account of the unpredictable consequences of the new cosmology.
 Going on we will see which is the origin of Hell, according to Dante, and comparing it with the modern/ancient view in Milton’s Paradise Lost.
 We shall clarify the structure of Dantean Hell: before from a physical after from a moral point of view. With the prior expression, I mean its orography and hydrology, and even its architectural parts (walls of Ditis’ town, Malebolge).
 With the latter one, I mean the ethical criterion for the discernment of sin, in comparison with that which divides the sins in Purgatory. Again, I will explain you an annotated list of many, but not all, sinners and some of their pains.
 At the end, if we have time, we will read one of the most famous and relevant episode of Inferno.

Through an original and extraordinarily fruitful reading of the Hegelian conception of negativity, Catherine Malabou developed the concept of plasticity which she keeps working on as one of her cardinal concepts even to this day. Engaging in the problematic of unity in Hegel, the paper takes on the task of trying to answer the question whether plasticity is one or are there several plasticities. The author argues that one must be careful not to reduce the inherent multiple of plasticity to a single plasticity which becomes plasticity par excellence: the plasticity of plastic explosion, of an abrupt and absolute break, to be distinguished from a creative or productive plasticity of habit. Malabou claimed that Hegel was – contrary to what Deleuze read in him – a philosopher of conceptual multitude as a  multitude which cannot be reduced to only one image, the image of unity. If this is true, then the concept of plasticity itself with which she grasped the essence of Hegel’s dialectics, should  be understood at least as a “unity in conflict”, if not as an inorganic, inhomogeneous, composed unity – and perhaps even as a unity of the pack.

Today, in addition to the Om sign or the image of Ganesha, the image of the dancing Shiva is one of the best-known Hindu symbols in the world: the Nataraja is not only omnipresent in museums; his image adorns holy cards, posters, holiday brochures, as well as countless websites and diverse esoteric and academic book covers. This article examines how this image could attain such great popularity. It focuses on processes of cultural appropriation and reinterpretation. Originally a southern Indian processional bronze, the dancing Shiva became a museum artwork and a universal icon. This paper traces the different actors, networks, and interactions behind this career from southern Indian temples to the stages of the Western world.

Dominik Brabant
Rodin-Lektüren
Deutungen und Debatten von der Moderne zur Postmoderne
DOI: https://doi.org/10.16994/bah
English Summary
Interpreting Rodin
Debates and Discussions from Modernity to Postmodernity

With the works of Auguste Rodin, modernity finally reached the art of sculpture. One might think for example of the French sculptor’s innovative depiction of the human body as a living organism (The Age of Bronze) and of the playful proliferation of iconographic and literary
references (The Gates of Hell). But how, one could ask, did this art historical knowledge come into being? How did the work of the French sculptor become an iconic ›incarnation‹ of modernity itself?
While art historical research and exhibitions usually tend to use the notion of »modernity« as a conceptual framework which helps to describe the newness of Rodin’s works, this study in contrast turns to the historical emergence of this modernist discourse in some of its key
moments. Its main focus is on the highly divergent approaches to the sculptor and his work, as they appeared for example in the art criticism of the naturalist and symbolist schools, but also in vitalist philosophy, in sociology, in cultural criticism, in the rather conservative art
historical research of postwar Germany, in the American debate on modernism and in postmodernist interpretations. In the debates about Rodin, every new ›reading‹ of his works and of the artistic persona seems to take up earlier interpretations and reinterprets them. The
reader of this study is therefore invited to take part in the encounter of a dense network of ideas and concepts about modernity in search of itself.
The second chapter, entitled Einfühlung und Diagnose, is devoted to Rodin’s famous sculpture The Age of Bronze (1877) and to the notorious scandal that this work evoked at its first presentations in the Salons of Belgium and France. Rodin’s naturalistic exaggeration of
the traditional modes of representation of the human body has traditionally been interpreted by art historians as a proof of his outstanding craftsmanship. As can be read in many studies,
the artist had, with this work, achieved a new degree of sculptural immediacy in the empirical description of the human body. In contrast to that, the focus of this chapter will be more on the ways how contemporary art critics, in their early comments on this work, and later art historians have exerted the ambivalence of their own receptive attitude towards the work – and how this ambivalence has become an important catalyst for the discussions about Rodin’s modernity. As shall be demonstrated, these early critics verbalized an indecisive oscillation
between an enthusiasm for the aesthetic presence (which seemed to directly emanate from this sculpture) on the one hand and an accusation that this work might have been produced by the use of a mechanical reproduction of a living body on the other hand.

Life and death, presence and absence, an intuitive way of experiencing art and a diagnostic
gaze, an apologia for artistic originality and a looming reproach for mechanical reproduction: these seemingly opposing terms are intermingled in an indissoluble way since the early
debates about the sculptor – up to the highly polemical dispute between Rosalind Krauss and the Stanford art historian Albert Elsen in the 1980s which will be discussed in the last

chapter.

The third chapter addresses the recent research on Rodin. In addition, some theoretical and methodological reflections are presented. A central challenge of this study lies in the question of how the reception history of Rodin’s works can be described without falling back into antiquated notions of creative genius and artistic »intentionality« on the one side and radically constructivist methods on the other side. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, a theorist of science studies, has created the concept of »Experimentalsysteme« in order to be able to describe the
emergence of new knowledge in the process of knowledge-making. This notion can help us to come to terms with the fundamental contingency of the discourse on Rodin and the project of
modernity.

The fourth chapter with the title Figurenkunst und Künstlerfigur turns to the art-critical writings on the Gates of Hell (1880). In this chapter, famous art critics and writers such as Edmond de Goncourt, Gustave Geffroy, Anatole France and Arthur Symons are at the center
of interest. For the generation of the symbolist art critics, for example, the Gates of Hell  became an icon of their own melancholic art doctrine insofar as the art work seemed to stage a temporality of deferral and hesitation which could be understood as a counter-image to an
all-too-optimistic belief in historical progress. At the same time, Rodin’s apparent inability to bring this work to an end seemed to betray a very similar understanding of time.

Rilke’s and Simmel’s interpretations of Rodin’s work, which are at the core of the following chapter, are described as theoretically ambitious attempts of emulating the art-critical debate at the turn of the century by using innovative narrative strategies of coalescing biographical
patterns and reflections on art (Rilke) or by declaring Rodin’s work to be the ideal object for an analysis of modernity in the context of contemporary sociology (Simmel).

The sixth chapter, entitled Verlust und Wiederbelebung, turns to two interpretations by German-speaking authors in the years around 1950: the philosopher Günther Anders and the art historian Josef Schmoll. gen. Eisenwerth. Anders, who was also a student of Edmund
Husserl, described Rodin’s sculptural images of the human body as artistic expressions of an historical experience of loss and isolation, as objects which could stimulate a deepened reflection about modernity as crises. Josef Schmoll gen. Eisenwerth’s investigations of the
motif of the torso, which emerged in the 1950s, rather tried to describe the fragmented body as the »symbol« of an aesthetic experience of totality and holism. Obviously, the art historian’s strategy of emphatically denying the disturbing aesthetic effects of some of Rodin’s torsos can be – at least from today’s perspective – conceived as a way of dealing with the historical experience of the collapse of civilization.

The last chapter of the study is entitled Auf dem Weg in die Postmoderne. It focuses on the writings of Leo Steinberg and Rosalind Krauss since the 1960s. While Steinberg was mostly interested in the diverse ways of how Rodin constructed and deconstructed the meanings of his sculptures with the help of the art forms of the »montage« and the »assemblage«, thereby ostentatiously demonstrating the sculptural »semiosis«, Krauss emphatically turned to the problem of ›reading‹ Rodin’s images of the human body. For her, Rodin’s sculptures became
emblems of an ›opaque‹ subjectivity and therefore the first artistic realizations of a radically new paradigm of aesthetic reception: Instead of clinging to the traditional notions of psychological and hermeneutical depth in the beholding of sculptures, in her view Rodin’s
sculptures emphasize the material surface as the original site of the production of meaning.

"This dense treatise by philosopher DeLay (Before God) puts scripture in conversation with classic works of art to address fundamental questions of faith and existence. 'Existence assumes the form of faith, for it becomes a task of stretching forth, a perpetual exodus always in patience seeking after the heavenly city,' DeLay writes, suggesting that art and literature speak to this existential desire by depicting human longings that find resolution in the teachings of the Bible. For example, DeLay asserts that the miserable figures depicted in Adriaen van Ostade’s painting Drunkards in a Tavern lay bare the 'spiritual crisis' of the human condition, and the solution is to partake in the 'waters of life' as revealed in John’s gospel. Caravaggio’s painting Narcissus portrays Ovid’s character as the epitome of 'transcendental egoism,' which DeLay argues results from not humbling oneself before God. DeLay’s prose is dense, abstract, and at times meandering, but the author’s interpretations of works by such artists as Doré, Pissarro, Poussin, and Rodin are original and insightful. This dynamic volume will make a thought-provoking addition to scholarly collections." - Publishers Weekly

Review of Journey in Sensuality – Anna Halprin and Rodin
Documentary dance film produced and directed by Ruedi Gerber

Dance that pushes sensual temporal boundaries and sculpture that pushes formal permanent boundaries have had a solid connection while simultaneously remaining in distinct opposition. In Ruedi Gerber's moving and thought-provoking one-hour film Journey in Sensuality – Anna Halprin and Rodin (2014) this flowing of temporary motion and the fixed permanence of solid art objects again comes into a stimulating dialogue. Spanning multiple decades and generations, Gerber beautifully chronicles avant-garde dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin as she takes inspiration from the sculpture of Auguste Rodin and passes Rodin's dramatic gesticulations along to her students...

Venedik treninde, altı kişilik kompartımanda yolculuk yapıyoruz. Pencere kenarında iki yaşlı kadın ve genç bir çift ile birlikteyiz. Sıdıka’yla biraz sohbet ettikten so
nra, o kitap okumaya ben de Milano’ya geldiğim gün aldığım defterime, Antalya’dan itibaren yolculuğumu yazmaya başlıyorum.