Conceptual Framework Auguste Rodin “The Modern Michelangelo” An extraordinary creative master of his time, Auguste Rodin is commonly accepted by many art critics and historians as the most prominent portraitist sculptor of the modern era. Born in 1840’s Paris, France, Rodin broke new ground in sculpture with his ability to capture and represent the true nature of human emotion and physical form.
His compositions were not concerned with that of distinguished expression but instead with that of the human sentiment and feeling. The intent of his work was to evince an indication of man’s despondency and inner emotions through muscular gesture, as well as the idea of authenticity being obtained through the use of emphasis and distortion . Rodin’s works were by minute sketches in clay that were later developed into compositions, then cast in plaster to be carved into marble or be forged with bronze. Rodin again challenged the ideas in sculpture of the time by often leaving his works in varying stages of completion, leaving many of them rough and unpolished in their finished state which the artist believed improved expressive movement. He also often reused and recycled his compositions in different ways. He would in addition often represent the same figure multiple times in the same sculpture to create an usunal and striking effect.
However, though today Rodin’s works are widely celebrated, they were loudly criticized by the audiences of his time. His great respect for but artistic rebellion against traditional art ideas and form and us of innovative and new artist methods and practices were often considered as too informal, lacking in heroic attributes or too true to live form, therefore different from qualities exception of sculpture at the time. At the time of Rodin’s career , The Salon was the dominant and ruling committee of art. When Rodin’s work The age of Bronze was exhibited at the Cercle Artistique, Brussels, in 1877, at the Salon in Paris, it caused a scandal and Rodin was accused of surmoulage an artistically unfavorable practice of taking a casting straight from a subject rather than creating an original composition from scratch. Rodin was extremely dishearten and offended by these accusations , so submitted photographs that were taken of the model to the press to prove the ways in which sculpture was disimular.
