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
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.
If the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended.
The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.
Nobody does good to men with impunity.
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
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
Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages.
Where did I learn to understand sculpture? In the woods by looking at the trees, along roads by observing the formation of clouds, in the studio by studying the model, everywhere except in the schools.
The sculptor represents the transition from one pose to another he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. In his work we still see a part of what was and we discover a part of what is to be.
What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty.