The kiss (Rodin)

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Third copy of the sculpture The Kiss (1886) by Auguste Rodin in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

The Kiss , French original title Le Baiser , originally also Francesca da Rimini , is a world-famous marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin , which was created in 1880 as an 85 cm high bronze sculpture based on a clay model and then copied several times, also in enlarged form, in different materials has been. The group of figures represents a scene from Dante Alighieri's work Divine Comedy , in which the characters Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, her husband's brother, kiss. Due to its popularity, the sculpture is now available in countless designs and sizes. The original is in the Musée Rodin , Paris. Copies are exhibited in many well-known art museums. The sculpture is now considered an iconographic work for the artistic representation of the theme of love .

history

Model of the original terracotta sculpture, circa 1881, Musée Rodin , Paris

In 1880 Rodin was commissioned to create sculptures for the entrance to the planned new Paris Museum of Applied Arts. Rodin chose the Hell Gate from Dante's Divine Comedy as the theme . The resulting figures Paolo and Francesca were supposed to adorn one side of this gate of hell, but in 1886 Rodin, who wanted a tragic character for the gate of hell, decided that the kiss of a forbidden love should become an independent work. The museum was never built, but the Gare d'Orsay instead .

At that time, erotic art was popular in many representations. Rodin also produced several works on the same subject, including Amor and Psyche , Sin and Fleeing Love . He also created many preliminary studies, models and drawings for his kiss . He also used photographs to achieve the desired shape of the final sculpture. While the group of figures was still considered offensive by the viewers in 1887, Rodin later had a great success with the work. It has been shown at several international exhibitions. With increasing fame and income, numerous interns and helpers worked in his workshop who only made copies and replicas. In 1893, the sculpture was not open to the public for France at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago because the subject depicted, the erotic kiss, was considered unsuitable for the public. An application for inspection had to be made. The French state ordered the first life-size version for the World's Fair in Paris in 1889 . Rodin took almost ten years to make. The work was first shown to the public in the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and came to the Musée du Luxembourg in 1900 . In 1918 it finally moved to its current location, the Musée Rodin . A life-size replica was also ordered for the world exhibition in 1900. The museums in London and Copenhagen have copies of this enlarged version. In 1900 the American art collector Edward Perry Warren, best known for the Warren Cup , ordered a copy from Auguste Rodin, which was delivered to Warren's residence in England in 1904. After Warren's death, she went to London's Tate Gallery of Modern Art . The Danish industrialist and art collector Carl Jacobsen bought another replica in 1900 for his planned museum in Copenhagen. It was completed in 1903 and has been on display in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek collection since 1906 .

Execution, description and reception

The sculpture is made of Pentelic marble . The copy in the Musée Rodin , Paris (inventory number p. 1002 / Lux. 132), measures 181.5 cm in height and 112.5 × 117 cm in base. The figures are carved out of a block, some of which still have rough edges. The bodies are fine and polished, the shapes of the block are roughly worked with a pointed iron . The sculpture is attributed to impressionism , a French art movement of the 19th century, which rather characterizes painting. The work is also assigned to symbolism .

There are two naked, seated figures in a deep embrace. The man's right hand rests on the woman's hip. The woman wraps her left arm around the man's neck and pulls him down to her face. The woman's right leg rests on the man's left thigh. The man is holding a book in his left hand. The sculpture is worked on all sides, but the main view is the front of the figures with their arms and legs, the arm posture forms a parallel shape. The woman's body is turned to the right and that of the man to the left, so that the fronts of the bodies lean towards each other and the faces are almost completely covered.

On closer inspection, it turns out that the lips of the two figures do not touch, it is a very intimate embrace, on which either the kiss is still taking place or has already taken place, which increases the tension in the viewer.

It is an idealized beauty. The bodies are inextricably linked by the marble block, which also applies to the characters Paolo and Francesca from Dante's Divine Comedy . Paolo and Francesca da Rimini are adulterous lovers whom Dante meets in hell in the fifth song. Rodin's sculpture depicts the moment when the lovers, after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere , the lovers from the Arthurian legend , want to kiss and are then killed by Francesca's husband. In his left hand, behind Francesca's back, Paolo holds a suggested book. Although Rodin drew his inspiration mainly from the Dante poem, the composition certainly shows influences from his girlfriend, muse and model at the time, Camille Claudel . Rodin himself did not find his work particularly profound, unlike the critics of his time.

The French art historian Anne-Marie Bonnet sees Rodin's Kiss as a timeless work that stands out from the art that was customary up to that time, depicting the relationship between man and woman in a purely physical way. There are no allegorical or mythical ingredients or attributes. The naturalistic nudity alone gives the couple an uninhibited sensual directness. In doing so, Rodin broke all conventions and perspectives of his era. According to Bonnet, the man is in a tense posture that suggests resistance, while the woman tries to snuggle up, her right leg is pressed between his knees, she is wrapping around the man's neck. In contrast to other interpretations, the two really kiss. However, their bodies do not touch, between them a 10 to 20 cm wide unworked area of ​​the marble block remains. It seems like an attempt on the part of women to conquer a reluctant one.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1887 Exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery , Paris, where the sculpture caused a scandal.
  • 1889 together with Claude Monet exhibition in the gallery Georges Petit
  • "Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts " in Paris 1898.
  • World Exhibition in Paris 1900 (Exposition Universelle).
  • Auguste Rodin from June 23, 1918 to July 28, 1918 at the Kunsthaus Zürich and Basel.
  • Manet, Gauguin, Rodin Musée d'Orsay , Paris, October 9, 1995 to January 21, 1996.
  • Rings. Five passions in world art at the High Museum of Art , Atlanta 1996.
  • Auguste Rodin. The Kiss, the Couples from September 22, 2006 to January 7, 2007 in the art gallery of the Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich and from January 26 to April 9, 2007 in the Folkwang Museum , Essen.
  • Rodin, La Chair, Le Marbre. from June 8, 2012 to September 1, 2013 at the Musée Rodin Paris.

literature

  • Frederick Lawton: The life and work of Auguste Rodin . T. Fisher Unwin, London 1906, in Chapter XII. The Balzac statue , S. 184 ff . ( archive.org ).
  • “Le Baiser” by Rodin and his fate. In: Weltkunst. 22, 1952, p. 10. ISSN  0043-261X , OCLC 888072134 .
  • Antoinette Le Normand-Romain: Le Baiser de Rodin . Ed .: Musée d'Orsay. Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Musée Rodin, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-7118-3356-9 .
  • J. Carter Brown, Jennifer Montagu, Michael Edward Shapiro: Rings. Five passions in world art . Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York 1996, ISBN 0-8109-4429-4 .
  • Anne-Marie Bonnet, Hartwig Fischer, Christiane Lange: Auguste Rodin. The kiss - the couples . Ed .: Hypo-Kulturstiftung. Hirmer, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7774-3225-3 .

Web links

Commons : The Kiss  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Kiss. on artble.com (English description of the work).
  2. ↑ Christian Schoen : The signs of things. On the meaning of photography in rodin's work . In: Anne-Marie Bonnet, Hartwig Fischer, Christiane Lange: Auguste Rodin. The kiss - the couples . Munich 2006, p. 58
  3. ↑ website Art Fund_
  4. ↑ Online magazine for art ARTinWORDS : The Kiss and The Thinker.
  5. ^ Tate Gallery website: History of Warren's version of the sculpture
  6. ^ Website of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek ( Memento of the original from January 14, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.glyptoteket.com
  7. ^ Anne-Marie Bonnet: Article on the work in the exhibition catalog Auguste Rodin. The kiss - the couples. 2007.
  8. ↑ a b Christiane Hoffmans: The theme of his life was love. In: The world . Welt Online, January 21, 2007, accessed January 15, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Dante Alighieri, Carl Streckfuß (transl.), Rudolf Pfleiderer (ed.): Divine Comedy. Reclam, Leipzig 1876, pp. 34–35. (Commons: Dante - Comedy - Streckfuß )
  10. ↑ The Kiss. Description, analysis and reception of the sculpture (English).
  11. ^ Anne-Marie Bonnet in: Auguste Rodin. The kiss - the couples . Munich 2006, p. 22 f.
  12. ^ Anne-Marie Bonnet, Hartwig Fischer, Christiane Lange: Auguste Rodin. The kiss - the couples . Hirmer, Munich 2006, p. 22
  13. ^ Exhibition Aug. Rodin June 23 to July 28, 1918 . Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich 1918, OCLC 906902043 .
  14. ↑ Auguste Rodin. Kunsthalle München, accessed January 15, 2017 .