FROM SEXOLOGY TO SHAPE:
reading between the lines in rodin's lesbian drawings
Fiona Miller, Princeton Class of 2009
For Auguste Rodin, “eroticism was a model of art, and art was a model of eroticism,” according to art historian Anne-Marie Bonnet (Bonnet 25). Indeed, the two appear inextricably linked in Rodin’s work — and not only in his famous sculpture, but in his lesser known drawings as well. For instance, in examining his sketches of lesbian couples, one will find that in fact, Rodin interwove art and eroticism so closely as to render them almost the same thing. In these drawings, Rodin portrays women in all forms of erotic gesture, posture, and relation: women embracing, kissing, laying together, caressing each other, and having sex. He made no attempt to mask his dramatization of the erotic; his couples fairly flaunt themselves (Thorson 121). This dramatization suggests Rodin’s preoccupation with lesbian sexuality, which is more than evident in the actual artwork. There is nothing ambiguous about Rodin’s homoerotic intentions here (especially since such displays of sexual excess did not, obviously, occur in his studio), meaning that these lesbian compositions were purely of his own imagining (Bonnet 15, 21). In the opinion of Arthur Symons, Rodin’s drawings are concerned with only one thing: “The principle of Rodin’s work is sex, sex that is conscious of itself … And all this suffering, tortured flesh is consumed by lust, by the fever of those who have but a short time to enjoy the fruits of desire” (Symons qtd. Bonnet 11). Symons’ words are in keeping with the ideas of the majority of the comparatively few art historians who have studied Rodin’s late drawings. The sketches are imbued with a particularly flagrant brand of homoeroticism — one that Rodin obviously intended, and that must necessarily operate as crucial to the artistic import of the drawings.
However, what these critics have consistently failed to discuss is the metamorphosis of the drawings over the course of the twenty-year-long period during which they were being executed. Because Rodin did not date his drawings, it is difficult to ascertain without significant ambiguity any sort of chronology; however, with an understanding of the artistic process Rodin employed, it becomes clear how, over time, Rodin’s lesbians became less and less explicitly formed and more and more amorphous. In examining the deterioration of Rodin’s contour line in these lesbian drawings, we can see how detail waned and the bodies of the women began to bleed together, becoming evermore fluid and nebulous. And as detail diminished in the drawings, so did eroticism. This suggests that Rodin’s latest sketches are really no longer concerned with the erotic at all. Rather, his concentration has refocused on the purely aesthetic composition of the drawings: women’s bodies are seen no longer as bodies imbued with erotic or emotional connotation, but simply as shapes. Rodin’s erotic drawings of lesbian couples, as opposed to his drawings of women in general, provide a unique example of this shift in focus for two reasons. Not only are they among his most voyeuristic (and thus erotic) drawings, therefore allowing us to witness an unequivocal waning of such eroticism, but they also depict multiple forms in relationships with each other, allowing us to notice even more plainly how Rodin’s preoccupation with shape relationships heightens with time. We assume these lesbians to be unquestionably erotic, and yet through the very vehicle of their intertwined forms Rodin challenges our assumption by dissolving them. Indeed, how could eroticism have been at the heart of these drawings, when, as Brigitte Mahuzier points out, “unlike much lesbian erotica made for the male gaze, these drawings do not present the female body as traditionally beautiful” (Mahuzier 404). Instead, he presents them as increasingly amorphous shapes. This is important because it reveals that, contrary to art history’s general opinion, Rodin did not use drawing as an excuse to explore the female body; rather, he used the female body as an excuse to explore the artistic freedom offered by drawing. It shows how he was obsessed not so much with sex as with art.
the exhibition
the method behind the madness: a possible chronology
pencil sketches
watercolors
papiers découpés
conclusion
works cited
about the author
the gallery
rodin's symbolic drawings
rodin's erotic sculpture
becoming rodin: ernst durig's forgeries
the women in rodin's life