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Monument to Honore de Balzac

Auguste Rodin • Sculpture, 1898, 270×120.5 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Sculpture
Subject and objects: Portrait
Style of art: Impressionism
Technique: Patina, Casting
Materials: Bronze
Date of creation: 1898
Size: 270×120.5 cm
Artwork in selections: 8 selections

Description of the artwork «Monument to Honore de Balzac»

Nor scandalous, shameless OlympiaEdouard Manet, nor ugly, distorting the perspective and shape of objects, still life Cezannedid not cause such public outrage as the monument to Balzac. In the debate, and ridicule, it seemed, was involved in all of Paris. In the midst of the most heated arguments and accusations Rodin had to go to Switzerland, not to go crazy. A biographer of Rodin Judith Cladel recalled: "In the comic magazines were placed numerous cartoons, and street hawkers sold plaster figures in the form of penguins and seals, balancing on the tail, urging buyers: "Buy Balzac Rodin!"

Today the monument to Balzac is set in Paris at the intersection of boulevards RASPAIL and Montparnasse, is still avant-garde and innovation. Enough to compare it to sitting in chairs elderly good-natured-baltikumi other sculptors. It is enough to compare it with spiritualized and looking into the distance bronze writers-poets, arranged by streets of European cities. Balzac Rodin, is a monument to all the thoughts, characters, romances, passions and troubles of Balzac. Rodin was first commissioned to make the sculpture for which it was impossible to find a sitter Balzac had been dead for 40 years. And then he does the impossible: collects all the information about the writer, you can collect.

Rodin travels to the Touraine, in the local Museum he finds the bust of Balzac, and disillusioned. Then looking for on the streets Round people like Balzac, sculpts busts and trying to figure out the type. The image consists of strange details, which, however, seem Rodin reliable and loyal: a caricature of the writer of the magazine "Charivari" and digerati from the collection of the photographer Nadar – Balzac in the last years of his life, worn out with disease, emaciated and tired.

Alphonse Daudet and Gustave geffroy – writers, Rodin with them for hours talking about the novels of Balzac, his life, trying to better understand the power of his temperament and literary phenomenon. Finally, Roden finds the tailor, who sewed for Balzac and ordered him a suit at last fills this costume rags, recreating the image of his nonexistent model. The suit only need to do this because the figure for a monument to Rodin sculpts still naked– he is convinced that the only way the body will be able to transfer the live energy that the muscles, later hidden under the robe-the robe will broadcast the passion, movement and mood.

Collecting all this information, working on sketches, preliminary reduced models, options, clothing the naked Balzac in real cloth, impregnating the cloth with plaster for laying draperies, Rodin completely forget about the time. Two years allotted by the Society of French writers for the order has already been passed – a monument still wasn't ready. Members of Society are threatened by the court are reminiscent of the advance, hotly argue and vote – and then Roden calls them into the Studio to show a preliminary version. "Monstrosity, shapeless mass, monster" – crowned with honor and glory writers can't accept this version of the monument to his revered colleague. Official denial Roden gets after long months of debate, attempts to win time, after dozens of letters with careful wording, written by both parties, after the exhibition, on which the sculptor decides to show "Balzac" to the public. The refusal stated: "The Committee of the society of writers forced reluctantly to decline the study, presented Mr. Rodin in the salon, as the Committee refuses to recognize him as a statue of Balzac".

Roden already well-known and famous not only in France. The unfolding scandal attracts to him and his work even more attention, Newspapers record all the details of Rodin's communication with the customer, and publishes official statements and letters of both parties, the writers, the defenders of Rodin announce his withdrawal from the Society in protest. The story becomes known and the statue of Balzac offer to buy private collectors and a group of fans from France and Belgium. Exhausted and doubting the correctness Rodin refuses all returns in advance and decides to leave "Balzac" itself.

Will be 40 years – and only then, on the eve of the Second world war, in Paris, will establish a monument to Balzac sculptor Auguste Rodin. Disputes about this still will not cease, but will be delighted much more. The son of Alphonse Daudet, Leon wrote: "It's "Balzac" solitude, suffering, and "the Human Comedy" at the same time. He has blood filled arteries, proudly raise his head, eyes seeking the light and already sinking into the darkness. He is freed from his captivity literature, its sentimental and family disappointments to completely immerse themselves in their dreams. This man, in hallucinations, almost dying, staring immortality in the eye".

Author: Anna Sidelnikova
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