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If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy...
Auguste Rodin
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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
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Mere exactitude, of which photography and moulage [life casting] are the lowest forms, does not inspire feelings.
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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.
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I admit, that the commonplace man can never, by copying, produce a masterpiece; he notes every detail but he does not really see - the artist penetrates below the surface into the very heart of nature; for him everything is beautiful because beauty in art consists of character.
Auguste Rodin
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What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.
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Barye... did not teach us much ; he was always worried and tired when he came, and always told us that it was very good.
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I am pervaded by the marvel of this art; but I cannot as yet explain it to myself. The Gothic is the world foreshortened. Where am I to begin? For more than thirty years I have been accumulating and comparing my observations. Perhaps eventually I shall succeed in deducing the rule, the law of divine intelligence; but perhaps I shall not have sufficient time. Then it will be the task of another, younger than myself, who will start his researches earlier, and who, besides, will have been informed by me.
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The search in modem life is for utility; the endeavor is to improve existence materially. Every day, science invents new processes for the feeding, clothing, or transportation of man; she manufactures cheaply inferior products in order to give adulterated luxuries to the greatest number — though it is true that she has also made real improvements in all that ministers to our daily wants. But it is no longer a question of spirit, of thought, of dreams. Art is dead.
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Or he may study the hidden mind of the animal. A mixture of feelings and of thoughts, of dumb intelligences and of rudimentary affections, he reads the whole humble moral life of the beast in its eyes and in its movements.
He is even the confidant of nature. The trees, the plants talk to him like friends. The old gnarled oaks speak to him of their kindliness for the human race whom they protect beneath their sheltering branches. The flowers commune with him by the gracious swaying of their stalks, by the singing tones of their petals — each blossom amidst the grass is a friendly word addressed to him by nature.
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Yes, they are beautiful... The shirt, the blouse are garments the folds of which yield simple planes and effects that, rightly rendered, are those of true sculpture. But there is something better still, and that is sackcloth. If I had clothed my 'Burghers of Calais' in sackcloth, they would certainly be more beautiful. I did not dare to. Some one else will do this and will succeed. It is sufficient to express an idea and leave it to its destiny.
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In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred even when it takes for a subject the worst excesses of desire; since it has in view only the sincerity of observation, it cannot debase itself. A true work of art is always noble, even when it translates the stirrings of the brute, for at that moment, the artist who has produced it had as his only objective, the most conscientious rendering possible of the impression he has felt.
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When I was quite young, as far back as I remember, I drew, but the gift is nothing without the will to make it worth while. The artist must have the patience of water that eats away the rock drop by drop.
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Now color — it is to this remark that I wished to lead — is the flower of fine modelling. These two qualities always accompany each other, and it is these qualities which give to every masterpiece of the sculptor the radiant appearance of living flesh.
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The great difficulty and crowning glory of art is to paint, to draw, to write, naturally and simply.
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For to me, this word Art, in its largest sense, signifies those who take pleasure in their work... Artist-carpenters who adjust with joy dovetails and mortises; artist-masons who handle lovingly their trowels; artist-cab drivers, proud of treating their horses humanely-what an ideal state of society that would be.
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But today, mankind believes itself able to do without Art. It does not wish to meditate, to contemplate, to dream; it wishes to enjoy physically. The heights and the depths of truth are indifferent to it; it is content to satisfy its bodily appetites. Mankind today is brutish — it is not the stuff of which artists are made.
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It is too evident that if the drawing is bad, the color false, the deepest emotion must fail to express itself.
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Admiration, is a joy daily kindled afresh... I talk out of the -fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense larger than that of ownership.
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The sculptor represents the transition from one pose to another he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. In his work we still see a part of what was and we discover a part of what is to be.
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An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.
When a good sculptor models a torso, he not only represents the muscles, but the life which animates them — more than the life, the force that fashioned them and communicated to them, it may be, grace or strength, or amorous charm, or indomitable will.
In the works of Michael Angelo, the creative force seems to rumble; in those of Luca della Robbia it smiles divinely. So each sculptor, following his temperament, lends to nature a soul either terrible or gentle.
Auguste Rodin
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No sudden inspiration can replace the long years of arduous labor necessary to train the eye to observe, the hand to reproduce.
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Drawing is but a means to an end. One imagines that drawing can be beautiful-it is not the lines which are beautiful, but what they signify, the sentiments which they translate. In reality, there is no such thing as beauty in drawing, or color beauty lies alone in revelation of truth.
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I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.
But, after all, the only principle in Art is to copy what you see. Dealers in esthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal. There is no recipe for improving nature.
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A critic recently denounced my Victor Hugo, declaring the treatment belonged not to sculpture but to music. He said it reminded him of a symphony by Beethoven. Heaven grant that he spoke the truth!
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It is a false idea that drawing in itself can be beautiful. It is only beautiful through the truths and the feelings that it translates. The crowd admires artists, who, strong in subject, elegantly pen contours destitute of significance, and who plant their figures in pretentious poses. It goes into ecstasies over poses which are never seen in nature, and which are considered artistic because they recall the posturings of the Italian models who offer themselves at the studio door. That is what is generally called beautiful drawing. It is really only sleight-of-hand, fit to astonish boobies.
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An artist must possess consummate technique in order to make us forget it.
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The artist who parades his drawing, the writer who wishes to attract praise to his style, resemble the soldier who plumes himself on his unif onn but refuses to go into battle, or the farmer who polishes the ploughshare instead of driving it into the earth.
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The streets of Paris, with their shops of old furniture, etchings, and works of art, are a veritable museum, far less tiring than official museums, and from which one imbibes just as much as one can.
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I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.
Auguste Rodin
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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
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