Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François Auguste René Rodin, known as Auguste Rodin, was a French sculptor. Although 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...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth12 November 1840
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
True artists are almost the only men who do their work for pleasure.
Love your calling with passion, it is the meaning of your life.
How painful it is to find that my figure can be of no help to my future... how painful to see it rejected on account of a slanderous suspicion!
Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive.
The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.
There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.
The realities of nature surpass our most ambitious dreams.
The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others.
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature
What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.
Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.
As paradoxical as it may seem a great sculptor is as much a colourist as the best painter, or rather the best engraver. He plays so skillfully with all the resources of relief, he blends so well the boldness of light with the modesty of shadow, that his sculptures please one, as much as the most charming etchings.
An artist worthy of the name should express all the truth of nature, not only the exterior truth, but also, and above all, the inner truth.
If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul.