Art Articles & Reviews

Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession, at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1040 Moss Street, 384-4101, until July 29. These are thought-provoking times at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. The headline attraction is a huge show of Rodin’s bronze sculptures. It is accompanied by a remarkable collection of Persian steel objects. And the tiny contemporary space is taken by bits of plastic beach litter suspended from the ceiling under the title The Fortress of History. Clearly we are going to have to come to terms with sculpture - the dramatic, the domestic or the discarded. In my allotted space, I’ll concentrate on the dramatic. Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is the most famous French sculptor you could name. His iconic images - The Kiss, The Thinker, The Burghers of Calais, Balzac and The Gates of Hell among them - are presented here in four galleries, and in various forms and sizes. This show comes from the largest private collection of Rodin’s work, the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation of Los Angeles. Rodin was a late Romantic. His subject is the human condition, as expressed in a fleshy and muscular presentation of suffering: what has been called “the sweep of the human tragedy”. Human tragedy is what The Thinker is thinking about, as he sits on the lintel of the massive Gates of Hell. Above him The Three Shades, heads and arms hanging down, preside over our swirling doom. In this project Rodin was inspired by Ghiberti’s doors for the Baptistry in Florence. While Ghiberti created The Gates of Paradise (1425-52), Rodin’s attitude was almost entirely downcast. Can we deduce anything from Rodin’s nature? Like Picasso, he was a short man, just 5 foot 4 inches tall and notably shortsighted. He was certainly a sensualist. His first model was a woman of “the physical vigour of a peasant’s daughter” who bore his only child and modelled for him long into the night. During the coming years, she was set aside while he pursued his “countless affairs”, though she stuck with him. He married her 50 years later, one month before her death. The artist was rejected by the establishment many times in his early years but pursued his vision with dogged persistence. His rugged forms flew in the face of the smooth finish and narrative detail so popular in the salons of his time. Often emerging from inchoate masses of matter, Rodin’s muscled humans writhe in torment, his fingerprints still visible on their torsos. When the clay or moulds broke, he preserved the broken pieces, finding that the fragments could convey meaning as complete works of art. Eventually there arose a brisk market for Rodin’s torment and eroticism. Between 1898 and 1917 his Eternal Spring was cast 231 times, and The Kiss was cast 319 times in four different sizes. The Gates of Hell , standing 20 feet tall and incorporating 93 separate low-relief sculptural groups, were commissioned as the entrance to a museum of decorative art (which was never built). As I made my way through the galleries of Rodin’s sculptures, I found it hard to concentrate. The bronzes are typically licorice-black and glossy, and strong lighting casts the eye sockets in deep shadow. Monochromatic, bulging and overheated with emotional excess, these statues don’t invite calm contemplation. There is a constant contradiction between the hard surface of the bronze and the intended softness of the human skin. My enjoyment of the beauty of his forms was constantly undermined by Rodin’s intensity of expressive gesture. Unexpectedly, a tiny hand just 4 3/4 inches tall captured my attention. And there is something unforgettable about the monumental head of Pierrre de Wiessant, much bigger than human size. Modest standing figures - The Age of Bronze, and Saint John the Baptist Preaching - were particularly appealing. But again and again the sadness of Eve, the sorrow of Adam and Eve, and the despair of the Falling Man brought me down. During the excellent 55-minute film about casting the Gates of Hell, I caught a glimpse of the considered calm of Michaelangelo’s marbles. And I reflected upon the meditative aura of the Buddhist sculptures of India and China, suffused with the breath of life. The current exhibit of Persian steel, also on show at the AGGV, offers a perfection of functional form, embellished with arabesques of unbelievable delicacy. Each of these sculptural genres presents an expression of timeless enrichment. Make no mistake: the Rodin exhibition is a wonderful opportunity for Victoria to experience an extensive and informative display of an outstanding sculptor. Personally, though, I find his approach emotionally overwrought.