Having spent a great deal of time examining Rodin’s lesbian erotic drawings, it would be interesting for us to look into his erotic sculpture. While the lesbian couples are not featured as prominently in his sculpture, love is nevertheless a repeated theme. As Bernard Champigneulle writes, “Songs and sighs of love, cries of pleasure and pain, cries of pain and pleasure mingled, the eternal call of woman, the call of man, the restless summons of the human body - all found expression in his work” (Champigneulle 151). But might these “restless summons of the human body” prove to be more than purely erotic? We have discovered an interpretation beyond eroticism in Rodin’s sketches; we ought not to put it past him to manipulate his sculpture in the same way.
Rodin produced most of his erotic sculpture during the decade between 1885 and 1896, the most famous of which is The Kiss (left). He studied sculpture lovingly and regarded it with the same fervor and adulation as he did the living, breathing women who modeled for him. This vitality shows itself plainly in his own sculpture. In L’Emprise (right, below), which depicts a female faun and a man entwined in an almost violent embrace, the energy of the figures is so vibrant that they almost lose themselves in one another. Instead of manipulating lines, here Rodin manipulates stone, dissolving it as easily as he had his pencil marks. 
In some places the separation between the two bodies blurs: the faun’s breast fades into the man’s chest, their two heads become one. In such throes of passion, their bodies transcend the physical and melt together to become one pulsating shape, full of life. We remember this well from Rodin’s lesbians sketches - it seems that in his depictions of love, he was never content to leave passion bounded by the perimeter of physicality; rather, in his mind, what was interesting and exciting about love and passion lay beyond the threshold of the body.
Indeed, in the words of Champigneulle, “Rodin’s work has nothing in common with the laboured eroticism of conventional pornography. With him, passion is so exalted that it purifies the audacity of his lovers” (Champigneulle 155). We certainly found this to be true of his lesbians - regarding their audacious embraces, what stood out in the end was not so much the erotic qualities as the artistic ones. In these drawings, art, in a sense, “purified” sex. And thus it is with Rodin’s sculpture as well. It was Rodin’s passion for art itself, rather than the passion his figures described, that ultimately emerged as the supreme quality of his work.
top: Auguste Rodin. Photograph. “Auguste Rodin.” Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia. Janurary 2006. http://encarta.msn.com
left, above: Rodin, Auguste. The Kiss. 1886. Musée Rodin, Paris. Rodin. By Bernard Champigneulle. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1967. Plate 79.
right, below: Rodin, Auguste. L’Emprise. 1888. Musée Rodin, Paris. Rodin. By Bernard Champigneulle. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1967. Plate 80.