Art Of The Day Weekly

#445 - from 20 October 2016 to 26 October 2016


Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, plaster, S.03469, © Agence photographique du musée Rodin, photo P. Hisbacq.

Rodin's visions of Hell

PARIS - He worked at it for thirty years but never saw it cast in bronze. The Porte de l’Enfer (Gate of Hell) is one of Rodin's mythical works. One can count in this monumental work that was constantly worked at no less than 200 persons - condemned from different circles, among them Ugolin who swallows his own children. As strange as this may seem, no exhibition had ever been organized on the complete work. The organizer, François Blanchetière, emptied the reserve collection to take out plaster casts, molds, drawings (very rarely shown) to show how Rodin never ceased to rearrange, to place and remove, giving certain groups like the one of the Kiss, initially in the Gate, an autonomous existence. In doing so, some very interesting interpretations are offered to us like the one that turns the famous Thinker into Minos, the judge of Hell, who weighs the souls. Rodin was initially inspired by Dante, but he then diversified his sources of influence, among which the one of Baudelaire in particular, stands out. One of the main objects is Paul Gallimard's copy of Fleurs du mal, full of drawings by the master. As for the bronze of Homme au serpent (The man with a serpent), recently identified in Switzerland, it had never been exhibited since it was sold at an auction in 1914. At the end of the visit, one must of course remember to go see in the garden the museum's copy of Porte de l’Enfer. The twelve mandatory copies have not all been made: the most recent one, the eighth, was unveiled last June at the Soumaya museum in Mexico, founded in 2011 by billionaire Carlos Slim.
L’Enfer selon Rodin at the musée Rodin, from 18 October 2016 to 27 January 2017.

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