Rodin: Transforming Sculpture

Whether working in plaster, marble or bronze on an intimate or monumental scale, Auguste Rodin captured the emotional and psychological complexities of human beings in ways that few sculptors before or after him have achieved. He also profoundly changed the language of sculpture by playing with accident and emphasizing the act of creating rather than completing a work of art. Rodin favored fragmentation and recombination as the principal expression of the significance he attached to change and transformation as the keys to creativity. Featuring sculptures and drawings, this thematic exhibition highlights the drama and experimentation that have established Rodin as one of the greatest sculptors of all time.

Originally titled Metamorphoses: In Rodin's Studio, the exhibition is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, Paris.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Whether you go or not, the exhibition catalog,  Metamorphosis: Rodin's Studio, considers the ways in which August Rodin (1840–1917) completely revitalized the very language of sculpture with his passion for the creative act. The ongoing interplay of accident and chance in his fragile plasters, bronzes, marble figures, drawings, watercolors, and photographs speak to an endless flow of creation. Rodin’s “studio,” however, must be understood as the small artistic community that worked for and around the master. It consisted of practitioners of specific trades to whom we owe the transformation of one material to another, one dimension to another, under Rodin’s attentive guidance.