Rodin (eng)

Antoinette Le Normande-Romain, Linda Hinners (red), Véronique Mattiussi, Aline Magnien, Liisa Lindgren, Line Clausen Pedersen, Vibeke Röstorp, Åsa Cavalli-Björkman. Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), the outsider, changed sculptural art forever. With the passage of time, many of his groundbreaking sculptures have become very well known, like The Kiss and The Thinker, of which countless reproductions exist. Today, an Internet search for “The Thinker” produces thousands of hits. But when Rodin’s sculptures were exhibited in the closing years of the 19th century, the critics were divided, regarding them either as too daring and realistic, or else as unfinished and lacking in narrative context. Rodin’s focus was always on the human form, and in a single figure he could capture both a realistic body and a powerful emotional expression. He can be seen as one of the last of the classical sculptors, at the same time as his lively, spontaneous idiom was progressive and innovative. What others considered incomplete could, to Rodin, represent the height of perfection. In everything, he believed, the artist discovers the “inner truth” that shines within the form. This book was published in conjunction with the exhibition Rodin and is the result of a collaboration between the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, the Ateneum Art Museum/The Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki and the Musée Rodin in Paris.