La Valse (Claudel)

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Camille Claudel: La Valse , 1905

La Valse or Les Valseurs (German: "The waltz" or the "waltz dancers ") is a bronze sculpture by the French sculptor Camille Claudel . She designed the group of figures after 1889, a time when she had a love affair with her sculptor colleague Auguste Rodin and both complemented each other in their artistic work. The approximately 46 cm high sculpture shows two human bodies, a naked man and a woman in a long dress but with a bare upper body, performing an intimate waltz dance step. The sculpture is seen as the main work of the artist in the last decade of the 19th century.

description

The bronze sculpture is available in three versions made by the artist, which exist in numerous casts. The dimensions of a copy of the 1905 version, now in the Musée Rodin , Paris, are 46 × 33 × 19 cm.

Originally, a total of 50 casts of the last version (naked bodies) from 1905 were to be made in the Eugène Blot foundry, but only 25 were made.

The sculpture depicts two dancers in the strongly inclined position that is characteristic of Camille Claudel. The man's figure is completely naked, while the female figure is bare-chested and wears a long dress with flowing folds that merge into the base of the group of figures and thus defies her gives the extreme incline a stable position due to the weight. The faces of the two figures are very close, but do not touch. The man's face approaches the woman's left shoulder, as if for a kiss. The woman hugs the man's arm around her waist, but the muscular and supple bodies are not touched too closely. The man is about to take a dance step around his right leg, his left leg is already raised to initiate the next waltz-typical turning movement.

Background and history of the sculpture

At that time, Camille Claudel was a student of Auguste Rodin. She learned the art perfectly, but slowly withdrew from his influence in her subjects, but this work corresponds with Rodin's art. Her work was no longer mythological in nature, but connected with the everyday physical and sensual. The waltz comes in three bronze versions. The composer Claude Debussy , with whom Claudel had a brief affair, and who kept it in his study until his death in 1918 , owned a cast . This copy is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris . It is obvious that the sculpture La Valse could have inspired the composer for his piano piece Pour les octaves from the first volume of his piano études from 1915. It is a piece that is set in 3/8 time and, in contrast to Debussy's earlier slow waltz from 1910 La plus que lente, has a much more rhythmic swing and thus corresponds to Claudel's sculpture.

Claudel probably began conceiving this sculpture in 1889, initially as a clay model that initially depicted two naked, unveiled dancers. For La valse , she was inspired by the American dancer Loïe Fuller , who had developed a new choreography with her modern dance . At the beginning of 1892 she submitted an official request to the French Ministry of Art, which was necessary for sculptors at that time, because she wanted to do this work in marble and therefore for the public. The ministry inspector in charge, Armand Dayot, a well-known art critic and left-wing politician at the time, was shocked by the portrayal of nudity. He therefore recommended that the artist cover the naked body parts, because only covered bodies were eligible for purchase by the state. He also consulted Rodin before drafting his final report. However, he stood behind Claudel's design and demanded that their choice of representation should be respected. In the end, however, the work was carried out as a bronze sculpture.

To be on the safe side, Claudel produced a “veiled” version called “avec voile” ( with a cloth ), which was presented in 1893 in the salon of the Société nationale des beaux-arts . Armand Dayot had written a more positive report for the censors at the time for this work.

reception

The sculpture of Camille Claudel met with different reactions. Critics who liked her work spoke of her "masculine" and "strong" sculpture and referred to Claudel's technical ability. Those who saw their art only as "anecdotal" described their art as a "sculpture of feeling". The music writer Robert Godet, a friend of Claude Debussy, wrote about La valse : "This longing and this verve, merged in a single rhythm that only becomes weaker, all the more tirelessly to fly there [...]" In 1905, the art critic Louis said Vauxcelles effusively: “In La valse , Camille Claudel depicts the swaying rhythm of an intoxicating waltz, but also the passion and harmony of two bodies. Both are naked, both are troubled strength and nervous elegance . Man and woman trembling with passion, which they unite in tumbling sensuality. La valse is the poem of an insane intoxication: the two bodies form a single one, the fantastic tumult confuses them, the robes turn, the dancer fades with pleasure. "

Exhibitions (selection)

  • Camille Claudel in Ticino 2002, in the Museum Villa dei Cedri in Bellinzona .
  • Camille Claudel April 15 to July 20, 2008 at the Musée Rodin in Paris.
  • Camille Claudel. Au miroir d'un art nouveau November 8, 2014 to February 8, 2015 at the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie in Roubaix .

literature

  • Camille Claudel . In: LM magazine . December 1, 2014 ( lm-magazine.com ).
  • Anne Rivière: Camille Claudel - The Exiled. From the French by Ulrike Schubert, New Criticism Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1986, ISBN 3-8015-0208-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Statuette - La Valse. on the website alienor.org Conseil des musées (information on the sculpture).
  2. ↑ Josef Adolf Schmoll called Eisenwerth : Rodin and Camille Claudel. Prestel, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-7913-1392-4 , p. 64.
  3. ^ Anne Rivière: Camille Claudel - The Exiled. From the French by Ulrike Schubert, New Critique Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1986, p. 26 f.
  4. ↑ Paul Roberts: Images- The Piano Music of Claude Debussy. Amadeus Press, Portland (Oregon) 1996, ISBN 1-57467-068-9 , pp. 307 ff.
  5. ↑ Statuette - La Valse. Alienor.org, accessed February 22, 2017 (French).
  6. ^ André Michel: Promenades aux salons. In: Feuilletons du Journal des Débats. May 12, 1903 ( gallica.bnf.fr ).
  7. ^ Robert Godet: Claude Debussy. Catalog of the 1962 exhibition in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris , p. 34 ( gallica.bnf.fr ).
  8. ^ Louis Vauxcelles: Camille Claudel. Catalog of the exhibition in the gallery of Eugène Blot, Paris 1905.
  9. ^ Camille Claudel in Ticino. In: SWI. February 21, 2002 ( swissinfo.ch ).
  10. ↑ Camille Claudel. In: musee-rodin.fr. Musée Rodin, 2008, accessed February 22, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Bruno Gaudichon: La Valse - Les gracieux enlacements des formes superbes balancées dans un rythme harmonieux . In: Camille Claudel. Au miroir d'un art nouveau . Gallimard, Paris 2014, ISBN 978-2-07-014738-0 , pp. 67 (French).