August Rodin
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The purpose of this research is to examine the life and work of French sculptor August Rodin (1840-1917). The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the historical and cultural context in which Rodin's work emerged in the Western world, and then to discuss, with reference to his family background and education, the cultural milieu in which he operated, and his major works where he may be most appropriately positioned in the history of art and the degree and kind of significance that his life and work appear to have achieved. In order to discuss the life and work of Rodin from a proper perspective, it is useful and necessary to realize that his life spanned a watershed period of transformation in the history of Western civilization in general and art in particular. Philosophically, politically, materially, and artistically, Western Europe in 1840 was vastly different from Western Europe in 1917. When it is realized that Rodin's professional career not only was an aspect of the transformation of Europe during that period but also helped to shape the cultural aspect of that transformation, then the significance of Rodin can also be more justly measured. Consider for example the fact that the Europe of the 1840s was most markedly the post-Napoleonic world, especially in the case of France. The rigidity of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 sought to freeze European society for all time, though the rise of the bourgeoisie from the ranks of the middle class,
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tes of Hell "stands 21 feet high, 13 feet wide and about 3 feet deep. It is peopled with some 180 agonized figures in every conceivable posture" (Hale, 1969, p. 85). Rodin appears to have begun with hundreds of drawings, taking themes for the work from Dante and the Bible. Hale also points out that figures initially conceived as part of The Gates of Hell were to be transformed into major works in their own right, including The Kiss and The Thinker (p. 87).
What dominates The Gates of Hell is Rodin's conception of chaos and human suffering, which can be seen as an abstraction from Dante's notion of the Inferno as a representation of damnation. The principal themes of the work are implied by the titles given to the dominant figures, including Heads of the Damned, Flying Figure, Crouching Women, Falling Men, Fleeing Lovers, The Old Courtesan. Crouching above all, head on chin, in the so-called tympanum or recessed area below the door's pediment, is the figure The Thinker. According to Hale, this figure is meant to contemplate the vision of fearful humanity in what amounts to an epic conception of chaos. Frisch and Shipley cite the bowed heads and the "weight of despair, which bends them to the abyss" (Frisch and Shipley, 193
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Approximate Word count = 4603
Approximate Pages = 18 (250 words per page)
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