Art is divine

Of Souls and Marble

by Micha Christos

MUSEE BOURDELLE

Paris

From October 2, 2024 to February 2, 2025

 

RODIN - BOURDELLE

BODY TO BODY   

Bourdelle Museum workshop - photo © Pierre Antoine

 Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

Before creation n.d. Graphite pencil, print, watercolor, gouache on paper Paris, Rodin Museum © Rodin Museum

Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) Love of Centaurs After 1912 Graphite pencil and watercolor on vellum paper Paris, Bourdelle Museum

 

 

 

 

This major exhibition re-establishes the eternal dialogue between Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) and Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), twenty years his senior. Bourdelle worked for fifteen years as a practitioner in charge of carving marbles for Rodin. The master saw in this unruly heir a “scout of the future”.

 

Their parallel trajectories, their fraternity as well as their antagonisms created the major issues of modernity through more than 160 works, including 96 sculptures, 38 drawings, 3 paintings and 26 photographs.

 

The soul of the stone united their hearts fascinated by marble and this magnificent aesthetic of the unfinished.

 

Their art collections have this in common and express their insatiable curiosity for Greco-Roman antiquity, Egyptian, Hindu, Japanese and Persian works that inspired them and made them dream.


Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) The Centauress 1887 Bronze Cast Godard, 1969 Paris, Rodin Museum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both were fascinated by the bodies in pieces, head, hand, torso which take on in their art powerful symbols in marble for Rodin’s Hand of God or in bronze for Bourdelle’s Desperate Hand.

 

Their sculptures unfold in space to increase tenfold the proportions of their monumental works. Rodin and Bourdelle drew from the inexhaustible source of mythology to freely explore all the potential of form in its metamorphoses and hybridizations

Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) Adam, life-size model 1889 Bronze Fonte Susse, 1990 Paris, Musée Bourdelle  


Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) France, monument of the Pointe de Grave December 30, 1922 Brown ink, watercolor, white gouache highlights and colored pencils on three pieces of transparent paper joined together and glued to cardboard Paris, Musée Bourdelle 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two great masters opened the door to a lineage of avant-gardes who are also presented during this superb exhibition. Rodin’s Walking Man accompanies Bourdelle’s Self-Portrait Without Arms to meet Henri Matisse’s Serf and Alberto Giacometti’s Man Crossing a Square.

 

 

 

This dream of two giants opens doors worthy of Olympus

and humbly invites us to share its power

and palpable emotion at rock level.


Antoine Bourdelle (1861-1929) Apollo, mask 1900 Plaster Paris, Rodin Museum

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) Arched torso of a young woman, large model 1909 Plaster Paris, Rodin Museum


Bourdelle Museum garden 2 - Photo © Terra Luna Benoit Fougeirol.