ANDREA LOPARDO, SPEECH, RODIN, 14/15, SCULPTURE, MURCIA SCHOOL, OF, ARTS

Editor's Notes

1. Hello ladies and gentlemen. I'm happy to be here.
2. Today I'm going to talk to you about a French sculptor called, Auguste Rodin, I'd like to start by introducing myself. My name is Andrea Lopardo. I graduated in Fine Arts in Buenos Aires. Nowadays I am a student at the Murcia School of Arts where I am studying Sculpture.
3. I've divided my topic into three parts. In the first part I give some details about Rodin’s life. In the second part two the original think about his works, and three example of a great work. I will not speak about every work he did. I will speak for about 10 minutes, You may interrupt me at any moment to ask questions or make comments I am so grateful to my great teacher Pedro de Alba...;)
4. You've probably seen countless times his sculptores even without thinking about the fact  Instead of representing gods or muses, he sculpted life like figures in distinctly modern attitudes of love, thought, and proud physicality....
5. Auguste Rodin's story recalls the archetypal struggle of the modern artist. His childhood was not that happy and despite been an early promise he was rejected by the official Arts Schools. He spent years working as a decorative sculptor before succeeding and fake scandal set him on the road to international fame. By the time of his death, he was considered to be in the same artistic level of Michelangelo. His reputation as a father of modern sculpture remains unchanged, and in recent years the large exhibition of his many drawings has also elevated his reputation as a draughtsman. However, his many intimate - some have suggested exploitative - drawings of his models have altered the nature of the traditional respect paid to this eminent artist.
6. Rodin stripped away many of the narative references to classical myth that were still attached to academic sculpture in the late nineteenth century and placed a new stress on the dignity of simple human moments. The fame of works such as The Kiss (1884), The Thinker (1880), and The Age of Bronze (1876) has transformed such depictions into paragons of high art, yet until Rodin's age, such sculpture's importance and novelty was not appreciated. Instead of representing gods or muses, he sculpted lifelike figures in distinctly modern attitudes of love, thought, and proud physicality. Rodin's achievement as a sculptor was to find a way to make the brute materiality of sculpture express the fleeting mobility of the modern individual. To achieve this, he abandoned the polished and idealized figures of academic sculpture and produced rougher, more unfinished surfaces, which better expressed restlessness, corporeality, and movement. While this often suggests psychological agitation, it also evokes the constant motion characteristic of life in modern times. Rodin's work process often encouraged him to reuse compositions in different ways. Most famously, figures that appear in his The Gates of Hell were often rendered at later dates, created separately and at different scales. But Rodin would also represent the same figure multiple times in the same sculpture or fragment figures into individual body parts like hands or arms. All of these processes were encouraged by his very unclassical approach to composition, and they produced strange and jarring effects.
7. Part 3 A great example of his work.... MOST IMPORTANT ART The Age of Bronze (1876 (cast in bronze c.1906)) A young officer was the model for this sculpture, which provided the first great "success of a scandal," of Rodin's career. The composition and rough surface of the figure were unconventional by academic standards. The subject also remained obscure - the title only vaguely suggesting classical art - and prompted confusion among critics; rather than clothe his image of man in respected symbolism, Rodin had presented a common man, naked. But controversy ultimately centered on allegations that the piece was a direct cast from the body rather than a modeled sculpture. The allegations were a testament to Rodin's technical skills, though the suggestion that he had somehow cheated heartily offended the sculptor, who was able to disprove the claim with photographs of his model. In other words...” "In front of the model, I work with the same desire to copy the truth as if I were making a portrait; I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into her; she leads me. I can work only from a model. The sight of the human form fortifies and nourishes me."
8. In conclusion I would like to say that . Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art..... My first proposal is that you know  Rodin one of the few artists  most important of any time. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.