Customer Reviews (2)

Fascinating Read!
I purchased this book to write a paper for a sculpture class. I had bought one other but tossed it aside and spent the majority of my time soaked up in this book. It is full of images of Camille's works as well as some images of Camille herself. Aside from the information about her life before, during, and after Rodin, there are also many personal letters to and from Camille that have been translated into English. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and still spend time looking through it even though that sculpture class is history.

Claudel: Rodin's greatest student --
-- and greatest teacher.

Mme. Paris has written a brief but affectionate, even zealous book on the life and career of Camille Claudel. It summarizes her upbringing in a bougeois but emotionally austere houshold. Perhaps she was never encouraged in her art. At least she was never actively discouraged, and did find some creative kinship in her brother Paul.

Her rise was meteoric. By her twenties, she was producing major work of remarkable expressiveness. Art was a man's world then. With its physical demands of stone and foundry work, sculpture was considered the most masculine among arts. Still, Boucher and then Rodin took her on as student and muse. According to Mme. Paris, Rodin's style owes much to Claudel - perhaps acknowledged in his "Eternal Idol," where the male figure kneels in obeisance and passion before the female.

The passion was real. Claudel lived with Rodin for more than a decade, and it has been claimed that his art stultified when she left him. Rodin remained fond of her until he died, but her leaving may have marked the start of Claudel's tragedy. Her mind gradually turned against itself. Irrational fears took command of her life, and her ability to tend her own needs slowly failed. About age forty, she was committed to an asylum for the insane. She never recovered, and died after more than thirty years of custody. Part of this book reproduces the letters from her years of confinement, and correspondence relating to her care.

The small body of work she left documents that tragedy. There's no sign in it of her illness, but her ouvre shows what she was and hints at what she could have become. Her illness stole her talent, not only from herself, but from the world as well.

//wiredweird ... Read more

Product Description
This work presents information on the contents of the Iris and B.Gerald Cantor collection of Rodin's sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs and memorabilia. At the same time, works by Bourdelle, Claudel, Beckmann, Signac, Sisley, Kokoshka, Nolde, Vlaminck and Boldini are shown. ... Read more

Product Description
A mesmerizing collection of photographs of Rodin's sculpture, taken at the Musée Rodin and at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris.

It was a chance visit to the Musée Rodin nearly ten years ago that sparked Jennifer Gough-Cooper's renewed interest in photography, and the exceptional results will be exhibited at the museum this autumn. Her photographs of such works as The Kiss and Adam and Eve reveal the beauty of the stone, the light from the grand eighteenth-century windows, and the movement of the visitors in the room, to create soft Impressionist forms with a wonderful painterly quality.

A thought-provoking text by Geoff Dyer makes us realize how photographs of sculpture can reveal qualities in these works of art that are often not immediately apparent. As he writes, the photographs enable us to gaze on Rodin's sculpture "with the same intensity and absorption that he regarded—in very different ways—the men and women who modeled for him. What Gough-Cooper has photographed is nothing less than the awakening of stone, stone awakening to the camera's touch." 73 color illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Artist's Perspective
I take issue with the other review of this book.The reviewer seems to expect this book to be something it clearly is not, nor ever intended to be.Jennifer Gough-Cooper is a fine art photographer who created an absolutely beautiful series of photographs about the experience of seeing Rodin's work in the context of the Rodin Museum, with all its wood floors, French windows, glass vitrines,antique mirrors and mouldings.The photos are not about having "special access" and taking the works out of their context to give a sterile "objective" perspective.In terms of the "soft focus," this is an intentional product of the artist's choice of a shallow depth of field.The images in this book are not documentation, but fine art.In fact, the Rodin Museum chose to exhibit these photographs in their museum and acquire a set for their permanent collection.This book is pure poetry and I highly recommend it.

A Major Disappointment
I have a serious collection of Rodin books and look forward to every new one that is published, so I was anxious to get this book. Unfortunately the book is a major disappointment. While a few of the photographs are interesting, the majority are an embarrassment - no better, and often worse, than any museum goer could take with a simple point & shoot digital camera.

It seems apparent that the photographer, Jennifer Gough-Cooper, was not given serious access for photographing the sculptures. She had to shoot through the glass display cases just like any museum goer and, for whatever reason, she does not use a polarizing filter. In many photographs the results are reflections which obliterate the sculpture itself, because of the reflections from the glass cases.

And the "soft focus" of some of the photographs seems more attributable to using an auto focus camera and the problems of shooting through glass than any artistic decision. Of the many other Rodin books that I own, none has such poor photography though admittedly not all are of the high quality of David Finn's photographs. ... Read more

Product Description
The death of the great poet-patriot Victor Hugo (1802-1885) stimulated the French government to transform the Pantheon in Paris into a republican hall of fame. It was to include a monument to Victor Hugo, who had carried the spirit of the French Revolution into the nineteenth century. The artist chosen was the master sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), who valued the commision above all others that he received. The story of the monument's development, which is compellingly told in this thoroughly researched catalogue, is a long and turbulent one, marked by political disagreement, the complex history of the Pantheon, and the drama of Rodin's relationships with his fellow artists and others. It was not until 1964 that the first bronze cast of Rodin's Monument to Victor Hugo was made, a majestic work based on the plaster that originated in 1897 and intended for a permanent setting at a busy street intersection in Paris. The same plaster group also served as the basis for the second bronze cast, commissioned in 1995 by the late B. Gerald Cantor, the pre-eminent collector and proponent of Rodin in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. This major traveling exhibition and accompanying catalogue, both prepared by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation as part of their ongoing mission to bring the work of Rodin to a broader public, present over twenty sculptures by the artist, as well as works on paper. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The best book I ever read
This volume of spectacular sculpture rocks.I have never laid my hands on enything quite like it.The pieces are well-written and the photography is excellent.Kudos. ... Read more

Product Description
Rodin was considered the most famous sculptor of his time, not only in France but throughout Europe, America, and Australia. The expressive liberty and emotional intensity of Rodinís figures had an enormous impact on the culture and the art of the entire twentieth century. This compact book illustrates a significant group of works which represent Rodinís entire artistic career: sculptures, drawings, and watercolors, as well as contemporary photographs.

The selection of sculpture is supplemented by outstanding drawings made by Rodin around 1900, at the height of his career. The presentation of these exciting works on paper along with the sculptures gives insight into Rodinís working process. They also reveal a more intense and less dramatic side of his genius.

The book includes contributions by J–rg Zutter, Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, Claudie Judrin, Jaynie Anderson, and Paul Paffen. ... Read more