In 1913, photos of The Nataraja bronze from the Chennai Museum inspired Auguste Rodin's text The Dance of Shiva. Written at the end of his life, this vision of Shiva, Lord of actor/dancers, revealed the underlying links between Rodin's dance sculptures (1910), the Cambodian dancer drawings, and his private collection of antique Venus and Buddha sculptures and wood carvings from India. In this book, historians, artists and poets both French and Indian, bring us a new international vision of Rodin's work.
It's 1906 and the court dancers in the Cambodian royal palace are abuzz with news of a trip to France for the Colonial Exhibition. Little Sap, a poor country girl who joined the dance troupe to give her family a better life, is apprehensive about travelling to a faraway land. In Paris the artist August Rodin is captivated by the classical beauty of Cambodian dance. He insists on sketching the dancers, especially Little Sap. As Rodin's pencil sweeps across his paper, Little Sap's worries melt away and she realises how far she has come in fulfilling her duties to her family.
August Rodin was one of the foremost sculptors of the modern age, influencing every sculptor who came after him. This handsome book by Catherine Lampert offers new insights into the creative processes of this great French artist.
Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) produced some of the most powerful and expressive portraits of modern times. Accompanying a major London exhibition that focuses on one of Soutine's most important series of portraits - of cooks, waiters and bellboys - this is the first time that this outstanding group of masterpieces has ever been brought together.
This definitive monograph from the Musée Rodin in Paris on the pioneering artist who paved the way for modern sculpture is now available in an affordable compact format. Revered today as the greatest sculptor of all time, whose expressive style prefigured that of the modernist movement and abstract sculpture, Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) stirred up much controversy during his lifetime, and his sculptures often met with hostility and incomprehension from his peers. This monograph traces the life and work of the artist, from his youth and early poverty-stricken years of apprenticeship to his most celebrated works—The Kiss, The Thinker, The Gates of Hell—which have become veritable icons; and from his passionate and tumultuous relationship with Camille Claudel to his extraordinary studio, working methods, and sources of inspiration, and his final years marked by war and illness. Written by experts from the Musée Rodin in Paris, this richly illustrated volume includes drawings, watercolors, engravings, and archival documents, as well as specially commissioned photographs of Rodin’s sculptures, completed by a chronology, bibliography, and history of the Musée Rodin—housed in the artist’s former studio in the Hôtel Biron. Providing insight into the many facets of his creative genius, this new compact edition of the Musée Rodin’s definitive reference on the artist and his oeuvre coincides with museum’s reopening in September 2015.