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Kiss
Auguste Rodin • Sculpture, 1882, 181.5×112.5 cm
Description of the artwork «Kiss»
"The kiss" one of the most recognizable sculptures of Auguste Rodin. To compete in popularity with it may perhaps "The thinker". Hundreds of years, millions of audience attitudes and replicated the images of "the Kiss" wiped the excess, sanded the sculpture to ethnic character timid, inflaming passions. Few people remember that the heroes depicted by Rodin story ended up in hell.
In 1880 in Paris, built the Museum of decorative arts and the Rodin receives the first state order: to create a sculptural design of the entrance doors to him. The Grand door dimensions – 6 feet in height. The sculptor takes on the idea that in a few decades will be his personal voluptuous, agonizing hell, an idea which is buried under a ton of sketches, sculptures melted, rejected compositions. Rodin chose the source of stories "the divine Comedy" by Dante.
"The kiss" - one of the fired sculptures, originally created for the right-hand column The "gates of hell".
"The kiss" it was named by later critics, for the author it was Dante's story of "Francesca da Rimini". Francesca is Italian, wife of the Governor, inflamed with passion for her husband's brother. Reading voluptuous story of the knight Lancelot, Francesca and Paolo, the young could not resist the kiss and was immediately caught and killed by the angry husband.
The story of Paolo and Francesca, the eternal story, a cultural sign, causing strong Association: an innocent passion, a failed novel, disproportionate, unjust, cruel, but a legitimate eternal punishment. Rodin as always unerringly finds in this story the point from which static is in fact the thing, the sculpture becomes dynamic. This is the time for a hundredth of a second before the fatal kiss – lip lovers in this sculpture are not closed. Here and sweet anticipation, the most exciting moment in any earthly love story, and eternal punishment. The whole story fully.
Sculpture in the XIX century – the most conservative of all arts. Liberty, are possible and even common in literature and painting, to sculpture, do not penetrate because of its accessibility, publicity. Roden scandalously explicit for its time. Before Rodin in sculpture not portrayed couples in love. When a man and a woman were within the same sculpted plot, it was the scene of violent mastery or abduction, where the woman is the victim. Roden frees the female body, allow for him to have a special ability to enjoy the passion.
At different times, even in the twentieth century, "the Kiss" draped and arranged against him public protests, placed in a separate Museum room and let the audience only by special permission. He began to live separately from the "gates of hell".
But the ambitious project "the Gates" will remain unfinished, according to the American art historian Kirk Varnado, paving the way for the Renaissance of Dante's hell – into hell modern. Depriving a body of this tremendous track any communications and any reciprocity, Rodin does not allow them to get closer. This febrile movement, which does not lead to any changes. And from this new hell of Rodin's "Kiss" managed to escape.
Author: Anna Sidelnikova
In 1880 in Paris, built the Museum of decorative arts and the Rodin receives the first state order: to create a sculptural design of the entrance doors to him. The Grand door dimensions – 6 feet in height. The sculptor takes on the idea that in a few decades will be his personal voluptuous, agonizing hell, an idea which is buried under a ton of sketches, sculptures melted, rejected compositions. Rodin chose the source of stories "the divine Comedy" by Dante.
"The kiss" - one of the fired sculptures, originally created for the right-hand column The "gates of hell".
"The kiss" it was named by later critics, for the author it was Dante's story of "Francesca da Rimini". Francesca is Italian, wife of the Governor, inflamed with passion for her husband's brother. Reading voluptuous story of the knight Lancelot, Francesca and Paolo, the young could not resist the kiss and was immediately caught and killed by the angry husband.
The story of Paolo and Francesca, the eternal story, a cultural sign, causing strong Association: an innocent passion, a failed novel, disproportionate, unjust, cruel, but a legitimate eternal punishment. Rodin as always unerringly finds in this story the point from which static is in fact the thing, the sculpture becomes dynamic. This is the time for a hundredth of a second before the fatal kiss – lip lovers in this sculpture are not closed. Here and sweet anticipation, the most exciting moment in any earthly love story, and eternal punishment. The whole story fully.
Sculpture in the XIX century – the most conservative of all arts. Liberty, are possible and even common in literature and painting, to sculpture, do not penetrate because of its accessibility, publicity. Roden scandalously explicit for its time. Before Rodin in sculpture not portrayed couples in love. When a man and a woman were within the same sculpted plot, it was the scene of violent mastery or abduction, where the woman is the victim. Roden frees the female body, allow for him to have a special ability to enjoy the passion.
At different times, even in the twentieth century, "the Kiss" draped and arranged against him public protests, placed in a separate Museum room and let the audience only by special permission. He began to live separately from the "gates of hell".
But the ambitious project "the Gates" will remain unfinished, according to the American art historian Kirk Varnado, paving the way for the Renaissance of Dante's hell – into hell modern. Depriving a body of this tremendous track any communications and any reciprocity, Rodin does not allow them to get closer. This febrile movement, which does not lead to any changes. And from this new hell of Rodin's "Kiss" managed to escape.
Author: Anna Sidelnikova
