Bust a Move:
Dynamic Poses in Rodin’s Academically-Themed Sculptures
Brian Greeley, Princeton Class of 2009Commissioned and completed in the late 1880’s in what would be the most creative period of his life, Auguste Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais seemed to embody the academic spirit that the sculptor imbued in his art. Immortalizing the medieval story of six men who volunteered to sacrifice their lives to a British king for the safety of their besieged city, Rodin went to great lengths to accurately detail these heroes of Calais, staying faithful to the famed French historian Jean Froissart and his authoritative account of the siege. (Elsen, 67) In The Burghers of Calais, we can see Rodin’s dedicated attention to academic subject matter — in this case, a historical account — which, according to John Tancock in his book The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, “link[ed] him to his academic contemporaries” and also “removed him from the modern world of the Impressionists” (Tancock, 24). Nor was this definition of Rodin as “academic” and not “Impressionist” just imposed on the artist by contemporary critics: Rodin himself appeared to outline an un-Impressionistic approach to his work, stating in an interview that his only ambition was a “servile fidelity” to the truth, and he highlighted his dedication to detail in his artwork (Rodin, 12). It follows, then, that meticulous detail in academic art was Rodin’s forte; it was the tool he utilized to differentiate his work from the Impressionist style then in vogue and was also the method he employed to revitalize otherwise traditional subjects with strong, emotional expressions.
However, is it solely the immense detail in Rodin’s academic sculptures that, to this day, still drives the immense power of his works? Or could there, in fact, truly be a sense of Impressionism in these sculptures? When looking again at Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais, what is most striking about the sculpture is not the subject matter of the six figures, but rather the powerful image that Rodin captured through their respective poses. In what could pass for a snapshot, these men appear to be caught still in impassioned, lively poses in various stages of action. At the same moment, each and every man has come to accept his responsibility and impending death; they are at once dejected yet proud, hesitant and yet resolute. In other words, Rodin’s work encapsulated the instant — the impression — of the fateful decision of these six men to sacrifice their lives for the salvation of their beloved city. Moreover, this commitment to capturing such spirited poses - whose concentration on action captured in an immediate visual moment epitomizes Impressionist art - is evident not only in The Burghers of Calais, but rather manifests itself in the great majority of Rodin’s sculptures. Thus, while his dedication to academic subject matter may be construed as indisputably proving that Rodin in fact was not an Impressionist, it is through the dynamic poses of his figures that Rodin indeed illustrates the inherent Impressionism of his art. Eventually, Rodin’s increasing focus on Impressionism, readily shown through the increasingly forceful poses of his academic figures, would lead the artist to ultimately liberate his sculpture from the need for a subject entirely.
Table of Contents
A Fortunate Event
Awakening to a New Age
Stepping Forward
Adding to the Legacy
A Monumental Leap
Conclusion
Works Cited
About the Author
Gallery
The Story Behind the Sculpture
Rodin's Classical Training
Standing at the Gates
Walking into Modernity
