Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin Quotes
65 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
Why then should I clothe him to make him look ridiculous in the foolish masculine fashions of his time? There is nothing more banal than these statues of recent notabilities, to be seen in every big city of Europe, masquerading as tailors' models of their ugly period. Man's naked form on the other hand belongs to no particular moment in history ; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated. It is the joy of the intellect which sees clearly into the Universe and which recreates it, with conscientious vision. Art is the most sublime mission of man, since it is the expression of thought seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
The artist must learn the difference between the appearance of an object and the interpretation of this object through his medium. The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy...
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Now, to the great artist, everything in nature has character; for the unswerving directness of his observation searches out the hidden meaning of all things. And that which is considered ugly in nature often presents more character than that which is termed beautiful, because in the contractions of a sickly countenance, in the lines of a vicious face, in all deformity, in all decay, the inner truth shines forth more clearly than in features that are regular and healthy.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
As paradoxical as it may seem a great sculptor is as much a colourist as the best painter, or rather the best engraver. He plays so skillfully with all the resources of relief, he blends so well the boldness of light with the modesty of shadow, that his sculptures please one, as much as the most charming etchings.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Mere exactitude, of which photography and moulage [life casting] are the lowest forms, does not inspire feelings.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
If the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Of course, there is drawing in art as there is style in literature. Style that is mannered, that strains after effect, is bad. No style is good except that which effaces itself in order to concentrate all the attention of the reader upon the subject treated, upon the emotion rendered.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I do not need.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
I believed before that (journey to Italy in 1875)... that movement was the whole secret of this art, and I put my models into positions like those of Michael Angelo. But as I went on observing the free attitudes of my models I perceived that they possessed these naturally and that Michael Angelo had not preconceived them, but merely transcribed them according to the Personal inspiration of human beings moved by the need of action. I went to Rome to look for what may be found everywhere : the latent heroic in every natural movement.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Michelangelo, revealed me to myself, revealed to me the truth of forms. I went to Florence to find what I possessed in Paris and elsewhere, but it is he who taught me this.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Gsell: What astonishes me, is that your way is so different from that of other sculptors. They prose the model. Instead of that, you wait till a model has instinctively or accidentally taken an Interesting pose, and thon you reproduce It. Instead of your giving orders to the model, the model gives orders to you.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Were this thoroughly understood, industrial art would be entirely revolutionized — industrial art, that barbarous term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth.
He has only to look into a human face in order to read there the soul within — not a feature deceives him; hypocrisy is as transparent as sincerity — the line of a forehead, the least lifting of a brow, the flash of an eye, reveal to him all the secrets of a heart.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
You would not believe my suffering... Death would be sweeter... I can't go another day without seeing you. Atrocious madness, it's the end. I won't be able to work any more. Malevolent goddess! And yet I love you furiously.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
The sculptor must learn to reproduce the surface, which means all that vibrates on the surface: spirit, soul, love, passion — life.... Sculpture is thus the art of hollows and mounds, not of smoothness, or even polished planes.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Hair in disorder, eyes lost in a dream, a genius who, in his little room, is able to reconstruct bit by bit the entire structure of his society and to expose life in all its tumultuousness for his contemporaries and for all generations to come.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
To-day, artists and those who love artists seem like fossils. Imagine a megatherium or a diplodocus stalking the streets of Paris! There you have the impression that we must make upon our contemporaries. Ours is an epoch of engineers and of manufacturers, not one of artists.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
I am not at their orders, but at those of Nature! My confreres doubtless have their reasons for working as you have said. But in thus doing violence to nature and treating human beings like puppets, they run the risk of producing lifeless and artificial work...
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
I obey nature, I never presume to command her. The first principal in art is to copy what one sees.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Take more room, examine my 'Gate' from a little farther off, and you will see once more the effect of the whole — the effect of unity which charms you when it is deprived of its ornamentation. You must understand that my sculpture is so calculated as to melt into the principal masses. For that matter, it completes them by modeling them into the light. The essential designs are there: it is possible that in the course of the final work I may find it necessary to diminish such or such a projection, to fill out such or such a pool of shadow; nevertheless, leave this difficulty to my fifty years of artisanship and experience, and you may be sure that quite by myself I shall find the best way of finishing my work.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
If in looking at a picture you have been profoundly moved by it, but have not noticed the color or drawing, you may be sure that they are technically perfect.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
I sacrificed to the mania of the age, which is to overload things. My modeling is there, the eloquence of the gesture also. The rest would only spoil the essential things. It is a stroke of genius. I am going to write to the under-secretary of state that my monument is ready.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
The artist who parades his drawing, the writer who calls attention to his style, is like the farmer who devotes his energies to polishing farm implements and never uses them.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
Painting, literature, music, are more closely allied than the public usually admit. They are merely different means of expression.
Auguste Rodin
Source
Report...
If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul; that alone matters; it is that which the sculptor or painter should seek beneath the mask of features.
Auguste Rodin
1
2
3
Quote of the day
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.
Edward Dahlberg
Auguste Rodin
Creative Commons
Born:
November 12, 1840
Died:
November 17, 1917
(aged 77)
Bio:
François Auguste René Rodin, known as Auguste Rodin, was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past.
Known for:
The Thinker (1902)
The Kiss (1889)
The Gates of Hell (1917)
The Burghers of Calais (1889)
The Age of Bronze (1877)
Most used words:
art
nature
artist
truth
beautiful
drawing
life
character
work
sculptor
models
reproduce
human
man
spirit
Auguste Rodin on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Auguste Rodin Quotes
Auguste Rodin Short Quotes
Quotes about Auguste Rodin
French Sculptor Quotes
Sculptor Quotes
19th-century Sculptor Quotes
Related Authors
Camille Claudel
French Sculptor
Michelangelo
Italian Architect
Constantin Brâncuși
Romanian Artist
Edgar Degas
French Artist
Alberto Giacometti
Swiss Sculptor
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes