The Thinker and The Kiss among new Rodin sculpture exhibition скачать в хорошем качестве

The Thinker and The Kiss among new Rodin sculpture exhibition

(24 Apr 2018) LEADIN: A new exhibition of Auguste Rodin's sculptures is opening in London. 'Rodin and the art of ancient Greece' places the French artist's work alongside the Athenian marbles which inspired them. STORYLINE: The Thinker, perched on a rock and lost in thought for all eternity. The masterpiece by Auguste Rodin is on display at the British Museum in London alongside other works by the French sculptor which are on loan from the Musee Rodin in Paris. Born in 1840, Rodin died aged 77 as arguably the most well known sculptor of the modern era.  His first major commission - "The Gates of Hell" produced "The Thinker" -  the work for which he remains globally renowned.   Rodin's pieces are not being shown in isolation - they stand right next to some of the Parthenon marbles, taken from the Acropolis in Athens and brought to London by Lord Elgin in the 19th century. The sculptor  drew huge inspiration from this treasure trove of ancient Greek antiquities. He visited the British Museum numerous times to see its huge collections and sketch the relics. "He, being interested in sculpture, was spoilt for choice," says the exhibition's co-curator Ian Jenkins. "But of course it was always the Parthenon sculptures that thrilled him most. And he became a wonderful interpreter of them and our exhibition enables us to see the Parthenon sculptures through Rodin's eyes, and to a certain extent Rodin's through the Parthenon sculptures." Thousands of years old, figures from the Parthenon are unsurprisingly no longer intact. Limbs are missing, long ago broken from the sculptures. This incompleteness meant that when they first arrived in London, the marbles were not a popular collection for the era's artists. The Royal Academy entrance exams of the time required the drawing of a complete figure, so plaster cast restorations were more appealing to applicants than headless torsos. But for Rodin, the ancient but damaged sculptures of the Parthenon were irresistible and he recreated the look in his own work. "He was greatly inspired by 'the fragment' and he didn't lament the ruin of these pieces and the loss of heads and limbs, but rather he celebrated this and he read all the power that could be expressed in just a torso, for example," says Celeste Farge, co-curator of the exhibition. "This was translated into his own work and he really became the first artist to turn the headless, limbless torso into a genre of art in its own right." The Kiss sits next to its 5th century BC inspiration. Rodin studied the two goddesses reclining together and used ideas from that to create his famous intertwined lovers. But while the Frenchman's sculpture is viewed as romantic, its original purpose has far darker roots. "It was a great surprise to me to learn that actually these figures originated, like so many of Rodin's works, from 'The Gates of Hell'," says Farge. "This was a project that Rodin worked on throughout his life, pretty much. It was the gates for a decorative arts museum in Paris but the museum was never built." "But Rodin never completely abandoned his project and he would take figures from The Gates of Hell and turn them into independent works of art in their own right. And this is rather like the sculptures of the Parthenon: they started of life as it were as architectural ornaments and then when they were taken off the building and transported to the ground, they became art objects in their own right." Rodin had a deep affection for the British Museum and its controversial Greek marbles. So what is it about his hero's marbles that inspired him so much? Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...