.jpg?w=1)
拍品专文
This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'oeuvre sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Rodin at Galerie Brame et Lorenceau under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay under the archive number 2011-3611B.
Rodin initially conceived Eve to flank the figure of Adam on his La Porte de l'Enfer. The work marks one of the great turning points in modern sculpture, its rough and freely worked surface more like wax or plaster than the traditionally finished bronzes for the official Salon. This new manner of working was a major departure for Rodin. With it he announced his divergence from conventional academic practice, and it opened the way to the more expressive conception of surface texture and material finish that is characteristic of his later sculpture. Many early 20th Century sculptors followed his example, and this approach became a defining quality in modernist sculpture.
The figure of Eve bears witness to Rodin's mastery as a narrative artist. Slackening her upright posture, Eve appears to turn in upon herself as if to protect a newly vulnerable body, revealing her sin and fall from grace. She expresses intensely wrought emotion in her every muscle and sinew, in the tight folding of her arms as they shield her naked flesh, in the tension of her neck, and in the locking of her thighs. Eve is on one hand an image of voluptuousness and shame, yet she appears frozen in an attitude of penitential renunciation and profound remorse. The great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke served as Rodin's secretary in 1905-1906 and visited Pellerin's home in Neuilly to study his collection. He wrote:
"Eve...stands with head sunk deeply into the shadow of the arms that draw together over the breast like those of a freezing woman. The back is rounded, the nape of the neck almost horizontal. She bends forward as though listening over her own being in which a new future begins to stir. And it is as though the gravity of this future weighed upon the senses of the woman and drew her down from the freedom of life into the deep humble service of motherhood" (J. Lemont and H. Transil, trans., Rodin, London, 1946).
Rodin evolved an organic conception of form in which surface articulation grew out of an inner expressive force. This is plainly manifest in Eve. "Instead of imagining the different parts of a body as surfaces more or less flat," Rodin explained of his sculpture, "I represented them as projectures [projections] of interior volumes. I forced myself to express in each swelling of the torso or of the limbs the efflorescence of a muscle or of a bone which lay deep beneath the skin. And so the truth of my figures, instead of being merely superficial, seems to blossom forth from within to the outside, like life itself..." (quoted in L. Nochlin, ed., Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, 1874-1904, Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs, 1966, pp. 72-73). So acutely developed was Rodin's attention to the surface of his sculptures that he began to model sculptural form in relation to the play of light and shadow, and in this process he willfully abandoned the bel idéal of academic tradition in favor of new freedom of expressive distortion. Rilke astutely observed:
"When Rodin concentrates the surfaces of his works into culminating points, when he uplifts to greater height the exalted or more depth to a cavity, he creates an effect like that which atmosphere produces on monuments that have been exposed to it for centuries. The atmosphere has traced deeper lines upon these monuments, has shadowed them with veils of dust, has seasoned them with rain and frost, with sun and storm, and has thus endowed them with endurance so that they may remain imperishable through many slowly passing dusks and dawns" (op. cit.).
Rodin's interpretation of Eve was, in fact, intimately connected with his work on La Porte de l'Enfer. In 1880 Rodin received the prestigious commission to execute the entrance portal for a new Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Shortly thereafter, Rodin submitted an independent figure of Adam, which he began that same year but had conceived prior to receiving the commission for La Porte de l'Enfer. He exhibited this expressive Michelangelesque sculpture under the title The Creation at the 1881 Salon. Inspired by Michelangelo's Adam from The Creation of Man fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Rodin also conceived a pendant figure, Eve, which he produced as a plaster. At an early stage in his work on the La Porte de l'Enfer, Rodin considered installing the figures of Adam and Eve on either side, like door jambs flanking the portal of a Gothic cathedral. Although Rodin was unsuccessful in securing this additional commission, he repeated the figure of Adam three times in the figures of the Les trois ombres who preside over La Porte de l'Enfer. As for Eve, he executed the figure in various marble versions, but did not publicly exhibit a bronze until the Salon of 1899, at which time he took the extraordinary measure--for naturalistic effect--of having its base buried in sand.
Rodin initially conceived Eve to flank the figure of Adam on his La Porte de l'Enfer. The work marks one of the great turning points in modern sculpture, its rough and freely worked surface more like wax or plaster than the traditionally finished bronzes for the official Salon. This new manner of working was a major departure for Rodin. With it he announced his divergence from conventional academic practice, and it opened the way to the more expressive conception of surface texture and material finish that is characteristic of his later sculpture. Many early 20th Century sculptors followed his example, and this approach became a defining quality in modernist sculpture.
The figure of Eve bears witness to Rodin's mastery as a narrative artist. Slackening her upright posture, Eve appears to turn in upon herself as if to protect a newly vulnerable body, revealing her sin and fall from grace. She expresses intensely wrought emotion in her every muscle and sinew, in the tight folding of her arms as they shield her naked flesh, in the tension of her neck, and in the locking of her thighs. Eve is on one hand an image of voluptuousness and shame, yet she appears frozen in an attitude of penitential renunciation and profound remorse. The great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke served as Rodin's secretary in 1905-1906 and visited Pellerin's home in Neuilly to study his collection. He wrote:
"Eve...stands with head sunk deeply into the shadow of the arms that draw together over the breast like those of a freezing woman. The back is rounded, the nape of the neck almost horizontal. She bends forward as though listening over her own being in which a new future begins to stir. And it is as though the gravity of this future weighed upon the senses of the woman and drew her down from the freedom of life into the deep humble service of motherhood" (J. Lemont and H. Transil, trans., Rodin, London, 1946).
Rodin evolved an organic conception of form in which surface articulation grew out of an inner expressive force. This is plainly manifest in Eve. "Instead of imagining the different parts of a body as surfaces more or less flat," Rodin explained of his sculpture, "I represented them as projectures [projections] of interior volumes. I forced myself to express in each swelling of the torso or of the limbs the efflorescence of a muscle or of a bone which lay deep beneath the skin. And so the truth of my figures, instead of being merely superficial, seems to blossom forth from within to the outside, like life itself..." (quoted in L. Nochlin, ed., Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, 1874-1904, Sources and Documents, Englewood Cliffs, 1966, pp. 72-73). So acutely developed was Rodin's attention to the surface of his sculptures that he began to model sculptural form in relation to the play of light and shadow, and in this process he willfully abandoned the bel idéal of academic tradition in favor of new freedom of expressive distortion. Rilke astutely observed:
"When Rodin concentrates the surfaces of his works into culminating points, when he uplifts to greater height the exalted or more depth to a cavity, he creates an effect like that which atmosphere produces on monuments that have been exposed to it for centuries. The atmosphere has traced deeper lines upon these monuments, has shadowed them with veils of dust, has seasoned them with rain and frost, with sun and storm, and has thus endowed them with endurance so that they may remain imperishable through many slowly passing dusks and dawns" (op. cit.).
Rodin's interpretation of Eve was, in fact, intimately connected with his work on La Porte de l'Enfer. In 1880 Rodin received the prestigious commission to execute the entrance portal for a new Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Shortly thereafter, Rodin submitted an independent figure of Adam, which he began that same year but had conceived prior to receiving the commission for La Porte de l'Enfer. He exhibited this expressive Michelangelesque sculpture under the title The Creation at the 1881 Salon. Inspired by Michelangelo's Adam from The Creation of Man fresco in the Sistine Chapel, Rodin also conceived a pendant figure, Eve, which he produced as a plaster. At an early stage in his work on the La Porte de l'Enfer, Rodin considered installing the figures of Adam and Eve on either side, like door jambs flanking the portal of a Gothic cathedral. Although Rodin was unsuccessful in securing this additional commission, he repeated the figure of Adam three times in the figures of the Les trois ombres who preside over La Porte de l'Enfer. As for Eve, he executed the figure in various marble versions, but did not publicly exhibit a bronze until the Salon of 1899, at which time he took the extraordinary measure--for naturalistic effect--of having its base buried in sand.