Sakuntala (Claudel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sakuntala ()
Sakuntala
Camille Claudel , 1888
White marble sculpture on red marble plinth ,
91 cm × 80.6 cm × 41.8 cm
Rodin Museum ; Paris

Sakuntala , also called Vertumnus et Pomona , also L'Abandon ("the abandonment"), is a marble sculpture by the French sculptor Camille Claudel from 1888. With this work she achieved her artistic recognition. It shows a young couple in love with a kneeling man caressing a woman who is leaning towards him. The background of the group of figures that gives the title is the play Shakuntala by the Indian poet Kalidasa , which describes the story of a love.

Description and history

The sculpture represents characters from the drama Shakuntala by the poet Kalidasa , which is based on an Indian legend of the 5th century.

In 1886, Camille Claudel wrote a letter to her English friend Florence Jeans that she would start working on a group of figures. In the same year, two designs made of terracotta were created with the dimensions height 22 × width 19 × depth 12 cm and 17 × 14 × 12 cm. A third draft, which has now disappeared and has unknown dimensions, probably made of clay or plaster, was made around 1887/88. In 1888 the final exhibition sculpture made of patinated plaster was completed. This version measures 190 × 110 × 60 cm and led to Claudel's artistic recognition, which was also riddled with ridicule and disdain. It was exhibited in 1888 in the Salon des artistes français . A slightly smaller version of the statue group in marble, which was produced in 1905 by order of the Countess Maigret, was named "Vertumne et Pomone" consisting of the Metamorphoses of Ovid were known. The Comtesse de Maigret was the wife of Christian de Maigret, whom Claudel had portrayed in the form of a bust in 1899. Several versions of the sculpture in bronze, called "L'Abandon", followed later, which the decorative painter, landscape architect and musician Eugène Blot had cast in bronze in two formats, presumably 75 times, 25 large copies and 50 small ones by 1908. Also in 1984 and 87 three versions of the group of figures were made in bronze. The title of the work changed from the initially Indian-Hindu to Greek mythology and finally to modern psychology, which at that time, especially in France, advanced to a university research area. The artist's personal story and the symptoms of an incipient mental illness that became apparent in her from 1905 onwards could have contributed to this strange change in the meaning of her work. In any case, working on this white marble sculpture gave her a hard time. On April 4, 1905, before an exhibition of the work, the artist wrote to the art critic Gustave Geffroy that it was nearing completion, but that she had been coughing and sneezing while polishing the stone for two days, which made her angry and she was about to finish it. roaring to destroy work in order to have peace. From December 4 to 16, 1908, Camille Claudel had her last major exhibition at Eugène Blot, in which she showed 11 sculptures, including “L'Abandon”. In the period that followed, Camille Claudel actually destroyed the works and designs that were still in her studio.

Paul Claudel , Camille Claudel's brother, wrote about "L'abandon":

“The first is emotion, in a passionate embrace with imagination… If one compares Rodin's The Kiss with the first work by my sister, which we may call abandonment. In the former, the man has sat down at the woman's table, so to speak. He has sat down to take best advantage of her. He has gone after her with both hands, and she does her best, as the Americans say, to deliver the goods. In my sister's group, spirit is all, with the man kneeling, all desire, his face lifted; he yearns, embraced before he even dares seize that wondrous being, that sacred flesh that has fallen to him from a higher level. She gives in, blind, mute, heavy; she gives in to this weight that is love; one arm hangs, detached like a tree branch exhausted by its fruit; the other covers her breasts and protects that heart, the supreme sanctuary of virginity. It is impossible to see anything at once more passionate and more chaste. And how it all trembles, right down to the most secret frissons of the soul and the skin, with ineffable life! The second before contact. "

- Paul Claudel, July 1951 : Oeuvres en prose Paris, 1965

Exhibitions (selection)

  • Salon des artistes français 1888, Claudel's group of plaster figures with the original title
  • Salon d'Automne (Autumn Salon) 1905, a bronze cast made by Eugène Blot, entitled L'Abandon
  • Camille Claudel. November to December 1951 Musée Rodin , Paris.
  • Camille Claudel. Sculptures and drawings. January 20, 2007 to April 1, 2007 Kunsthalle Rostock

literature

  • Odile Ayral-Clause: Sakuntala . In: Camille Claudel. A life . Harry N. Abrams, Publishers, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8109-4077-9 , pp. 89/90 .
  • Angelo Caranfa: Camille ClaudelAa sculpture of interior solitude . Association University Press / Buckness University Press, London / Lewisburg, NJ 1999, ISBN 0-8387-5391-4 .

The character group Sakuntala was in the novel-biography The Kiss. The Art and Life of Camille Claudel has a separate chapter dedicated to the French theater director Anne Delbée .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Camille Claudel (1864–1943) - Vertumnus and Pomona 1905. on musee-rodin.fr (English).
  2. ^ Internet site about the works of Camille Claudel
  3. ^ Anne Delbée: The Kiss. Art and Life of Camille Claudel . German by Helmut Kossodo. Knaus, Munich and Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-8135-0583-9 , p. 410
  4. ↑ Camille Claudel - L'Abandon (Sakountala) on sothebys.com, May 7, 2014.
  5. ↑ Camille Claudel, December 1864 - October 1943: Paris, November – December 1951 . Musée Rodin, Paris 1951, OCLC 47715147 .
  6. ^ Sculptures by Camille Claudel . In: Focus Online . January 17, 2007 ( focus.de ).
  7. ^ Anne Delbée: The Kiss. Art and Life of Camille Claudel . German by Helmut Kossodo. Knaus, Munich and Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-8135-0583-9 , p. 192 ff.