The idea was too tempting to resist: see as many of the displays commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of Auguste Rodin’s death (born in 1840, he died in 1917) as possible, in an effort to take, once and for all, the measure of this artist and to come to terms with the paradox of his legacy. Though widely recognized as “the father of modern sculpture,” Rodin was repudiated by those who came after, most famously by Constantin Brancusi.
No single exhibition has ever seemed equal to the task of capturing the essence of this artist. Perhaps, I thought, an approach as various and discontinuous as Rodin’s art itself, one that took in multiple exhibitions, would do the trick. The checklists would overlap, but the individual emphases would vary, producing a kaleidoscopic image of the artist through whose multiple facets and fragments might emerge a clearer picture than that provided by a unitary, more tightly circumscribed effort.
No single exhibition has ever seemed equal to the task of capturing the essence of Rodin.
But which exhibitions? There are eight in the United States, one in France, and one in Mexico, as well as six permanent collection installations in America. I eliminated any that didn’t focus exclusively on Rodin, and those featuring large numbers of the posthumous bronze casts that have so distorted our perception of the artist. That left four shows: Paris, New York, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. The reaction against Rodin has left the impression that his impact
