Paris museums 14 -- Rodin spinoffs

Although Rodin never installed his massive Gates of Hell doors at the museum that commissioned them, the project was a fertile ground for many other sculptures (the Gates themselves showed up in several places, just not where they were originally intended).  Most famous is The Thinker, but other bits also stepped out and became free-standing pieces.

Rodin, Le Baiser, 1881-2



















This one, representing Paolo and Francesca, doomed lovers from Dante's Inferno, appeared in early maquettes of the Gates.  Rodin decided they were too happy for their surroundings, and took them out of the final version.  But never one to waste a good concept, he rendered them in terra cotta here and eventually in a larger marble version.

Rodin, Les Trois Ombres, 1902-4

My favorite spinoff is The Three Shades, who stand at the very top of the Gates, pointing to the ominous words "abandon hope, all ye who enter here."  They're actually identical triplets, each one cast from the same mold, but turned so that they each seem different.  The telltale of identical casting is to look for some distinctive mark or blob (perhaps deliberate, perhaps a trace of the casting process) and see if it's replicated.  Here I noticed a big welt on the back of the left calf, the same on all three guys.

Since learning more about Rodin's many multiples, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of bronze-cast sculpture, where the artist isn't closely involved in the actual making of the work.  He may hover about the foundry (or in Rodin's case, send helpers to check on the casting) but it's not his hand any more at the end of the process.  Did it make the sculptor nervous to turn over his baby to somebody else to finish?  Was it exhilarating to order up dozens of Thinkers to populate the world?  (Just like The Boys from Brazil.)  Why do I lose respect for some artists who outsource the making of their work to others, but not for Rodin?

Paris museums 13 -- The Thinker at Musée Rodin

My art history teacher last spring, Chris Fulton, is an authority on Rodin's great statue "The Thinker," which came about by accident.  When Chris arrived at the University of Louisville a dozen years ago he noticed that the bronze Thinker who sits on the quad at U of L was much the worse for weather, its patina severely damaged and deteriorating before our eyes.  He started to pester the administration to do something about it -- our Thinker, the first bronze casting ever made in that size, is priceless.  (There are about 28 full-size Thinkers around the world.)

Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, at University of Louisville, surrounded by Chris Fulton and his art history students

After years of pestering he got them to commit to restoration of the Thinker, but as reward for his good intentions, he got put on the committee.  The job was finally completed a year ago, and in the course of his work with the restoration, Chris became quite the expert.  He also has begun working with some of the people he met on a larger project to document and study all the Thinkers ever cast.

Hearing him tell about his adventures in Rodin made me especially eager to hit the Musée Rodin when we got to Paris.  The building used to be Rodin's studio/workshop, and he donated all his sculptures to the government upon his death on condition that they turn the place into a museum.

Rodin first did The Thinker in 1880 as part of a commission to sculpt two massive front doors for a museum in Paris.  The doors depicted the Gates of Hell, a scene from Dante's Inferno, and Dante himself sat above the lintel contemplating the folly of mankind.

Rodin, La Porte de l'Enfer, third maquette (plaster), 1881-82















The museum was never built, and Rodin kept working on the doors until his death, but it was hardly a failed project!

Rodin, La Porte de l'Enfer, bronze


















The huge production spawned many figures and poses that were given their own spinoff series, so to speak.  The Thinker was first made as a free-standing statue in 1888, the same size as in the doors (about 28 inches tall).

Rodin, Le Penseur, bronze, 1881-1882 (cast in 1917)
















It was so popular that Rodin scaled it up to monumental size, about three times as big.  Multiple casts were made in both versions, and one of the big guys is in the garden of the Musée Rodin, thinking under the golden dome of the Invalides.

Rodin, Le Penseur, bronze, 1804

Paris museums 12 -- Musée Marmottan Monet

A decade or two ago, I thought art history peaked with the impressionists, and Monet was my absolute favorite.  My tastes have changed and now I'd rather look at 20th century art, but how can I abandon Claude, the hero of my youth?   So when we were in Paris, we had to visit Musée Marmottan Monet, which has the largest collection of his works in the world.

Housed in the old hunting lodge of a rich family, it used to be in the countryside but now has been engulfed with the modern metropolis.  While the old house stands, as it did in the day, with its period furniture and decor, they have built a modern new museum underneath to house the 300+ Monets.

When we walked in the door, the first room we entered had 35 Monets.  I was in heaven.  I lingered over them and realized that I'd never before been in a room with 35 Monets.  We then walked down the hall and saw another one before going downstairs for the real treat.

But bummer.  Instead of 300+ Monets in the rooms specially built to house them, there was an exhibit of paintings by Marie Laurencin, a decidedly fourth-tier artist in my opinion, one of those people who apparently was famous because she slept with half the boldface names of both genders in pre-WW1 Paris.  All her paintings looked pretty much the same to us, call it the 1910 version of the schlocky big-eyed Keane waifs of the 1960s.

Marie Laurencin 

Margaret Keane



















Mainly all her paintings looked like her.  And there were as many of these dumb things as there should have been Monets.  We were unhappy campers.

So unhappy, in fact, that I violated policy and took a few photos of the Monets that had been exiled upstairs for the duration.  After all, a room with 35 Monets is nothing to sneer at, even if we had wished for many, many more.  Although the later magnificent blurry water lilies and Giverny ponds and bridges, painted when the master had begun to lose his vision, are wonderful, I am fond of Monet's early paintings, much more realistic and in-focus.

Claude Monet, Effet de Neige, Soleil Couchant, 1875

Claude Monet, Le Train dans la Neige, La Locomotive, 1875

Claude Monet, Le Pont de l'Europe, Gare Saint-Lazare, 1877

Paris museums 11 -- Orangerie

What a difference a few decades make!  From the still lifes of Cézanne (1870s - 90s) to the still lifes of Chaim Soutine (post WW1), and art history, like world history, has gone a long way.  After the war nobody much wanted to paint beauty any more; bleeding meat was a perfect metaphor for postwar disillusionment and angst.

Chaim Soutine, Boeuf et tête de veau  (Beef and calf head), 1923 

Chaim Soutine, Le Dindon (The turkey), 1925

Chaim Soutine, Dindon et tomates (Turkey and tomatoes), 1923-24

Chaim Soutine, La Table, 1919

Chaim Soutine, Le Lapin (The rabbit) , 1923-24

Chaim Soutine, Nature morte au faisan (Still life with pheasant), 1924

Chaim Soutine, Le Poulet plumé (the plucked chicken), 1925

Paris museums 10 -- Orangerie

After World War 1, the prime minister of France invited Claude Monet to display and continue working on his huge waterlily paintings at the Orangerie, built as a greenhouse on the north bank of the Seine but later converted to a museum.  In addition to the eight waterlily panels on display on the main floor, there is a surprisingly beautiful museum of other impressionist work in a below-ground gallery.

Taking pictures of the lilies is prohibited, but here's a shot from the NYTimes when the gallery was reopened a few years ago after major renovations.

But downstairs we could shoot to our heart's content, and I did.

As a lover of still lifes, I was enthralled by this room full, each of them good enough to eat.  The Renoirs were nice but I zipped past them and headed straight for the Cézannes.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pêches, 1881-82

Paul Cézanne, Vase paillé, sucrier et pommes, 1890-93

Renoir's fruits are impressionistic, of course, with their indistinct swirly background and white tablecloth, but somehow Cézanne's seem far more modern.  The table is precipitously tilted, the apples and dishes are flat, the colors arbitrarily applied.  From the Renoir I get a beautiful ambiance of peachiness; from the Cézanne I get a jolt of adrenaline.

Here are more Cézannes.

Paul Cézanne, Pommes et biscuits, 1879-80

Paul Cézanne, Nature morte, poire et pommes vertes, ~1873

Paul Cézanne, Pommes et poires, 1890-95  

Although this is the latest picture in the bunch, it seems the most traditional, or perhaps I'm just fooled by its similarity to the Renoir above: purply-pinky-gray background, bright white tablecloth with its highlights reminding me of so many impressionist snow scenes.

Paul Cézanne, Fruits, serviette et boîte à lait, 1880-81

 

Fiber at the Pompidou 7 -- the last laugh

And as we leave the Pompidou....

My nomination for the silliest use of fiber:

Sylvie Fleury, Tableau no. 1, 1992



















I laughed out loud but if I saw it again and again I bet the joke would get old fast.

Or maybe she's doing a series -- next comes Mona Lisa with faux fur hair, or Manet's picnic on the grass with faux fur grass....

Fiber at the Pompidou 6

Winding up our fiber scavenger hunt at Centre Pompidou, here's a piece that I loved.  Or at least I think I loved it.

Sergej Jensen is a Danish artist now working in Berlin, who often works with distressed and found fabrics, even though he calls the finished works "paintings."

Sergej Jensen, Sans titre, 2011, details below

















How do I love this?  Let me count the ways.  I love old, stained, bleached fabrics that look like they've lived a full and exciting life.  I love mending, as the horizontal slash painstakingly hand-stitched back together.  I love frayed edges and dangling threads.  I love happy faces.

The only worm in the apple is that I'm not sure Sergej sewed this himself, and faithful readers will know my ambivalence about fabric/ation.  I did some google research and found that he does outsource some of the production (boo, hiss) to his mother (all right!!!).

To justify my affection for this work, I'm going to imagine that Mom showed him how to use the sewing machine and this piece was his practice.  If not, then Sergej, you better learn how.  Mom won't be around forever to do the heavy lifting for you.

Fiber at the Pompidou 5

OK, I gave you a week of frivolity, including the vast spectrum of Mom's junk, from pathetic to sublime.  Now back to art.  Not done with my search for fiber at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

You may remember the famous Manet painting "Olympia" from art history class.

Here it is revisited by Larry Rivers, in "I Like Olympia in Black Face."  With lots of fabric, as you might imagine in revisiting a painting in which the sumptuous drapery is almost as important as the two women.

The excellent wall notes at the Pompidou explain:

Also it has faux flowers, if you like that sort of thing.

Sign of the week

Since we're touring the Centre Pompidou this week, here's a sign from there.

Sorry, but I don't understand.

Fiber at the Pompidou 4

Here are two installations in which fiber isn't the star of the show, but plays an important role.  Both are by artists associated with the Fluxus group of artists who in the 60s combined visual art with music, literature and performance.

Robert Filliou, Principe d'équivalence, 1968 (details below)

The installation consists of lots of wood cabinets and panels; the recurring theme is a red sock in many different sizes, stages and formats.  I thought it was funny.

Here's a work by a Swiss artist, Daniel Spoerri, whose shtick is to find a bunch of objects that somebody else arranged or left behind on some horizontal surface, then affix them to a support and display them vertically.  He calls them "snare-pictures" and one of his most famous was the remnants of a meal eaten by Marcel Duchamp.  This one features stuff on a beat-up tablecloth or length of fabric.  The photo is hard to read but imagine you're craning your neck and looking up at the ceiling with the tablecloth spread vertically on the wall above your head.

Daniel Spoerri, Marché aux puces (hommage à Giacometti), (Flea Market), 1961 (detail below)

Fiber at the Pompidou 3

I found prominent fabric in the works of two American pop artists at Centre Pompidou.

First, Claes Oldenburg, enjoying quite the revival this year with two shows at MoMA in New York.  This piece is typical of his construction of everyday objects in droopy fabric but unlike many others you may recall, is done in monochrome canvas.

Claes Oldenburg, Ghost Drum Set, 1972 (details below)

Less known but equally important as a pop art pioneer is Jim Dine, whose most important contribution to popular culture may be that the musical "Hair" took its name from one of his works.  Here's a mixed-media piece with an old pair of pants prominently hanging at one side, the sleeve of an old sweater at the other.

Jim Dine, Putney Winter Heart Number 3 (Garbage Can), 1971-2