Showing posts with label sculpture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sculpture. Show all posts

Thursday, September 22, 2016

The Friendship of Auguste Rodin and Rainer Maria Rilke

I was excited to receive an ARC of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin by Rachel Corbett in the mail. I was clamouring to read it, entering give-a-ways and requesting it on Edelweiss, then it arrived unanounced in the mail. Thank you, W. W. Norton!

I was in my twenties and living in Philadelphia when browsing in a Center City bookstore I happened upon Letters to a Young Poet. Later I bought the Duino Elegies-which I read on vacation camping at Acadia National Park-and collected poems in several translations.

The Burghers of Calais by Rodin
I first encountered Rodin in a high school art history class, learning about The Burghers of Calais. Later we visited the marvelous Rodin Museum in Philadelphia.

Corbett's book follows the lives of both poet and artist, concentrating on their friendship and how Rodin influenced Rilke's view of the artistic life and appreciation of art, in context of their contemporary society and artist communities.

As a young man Rilke traveled to visit his idols but it was Rodin who took him into his home and confidence.

The poet served as Rodin's personal secretary, living with him at Meudon. In a writing slump, Rodin directed Rilke to the zoo to observe the animals, altering the trajectory of his work culminating in his famous poem The Panther.

Rilke took to heart Rodin's admonition that the artist must dedicate their life to their art; seeking solitude Rilke abandoned his wife and child to fend for themselves.

Rilke wrote a monograph on Rodin in which he wrote, "and he labors incessantly. His life is like a single workday" in which "therein lay a kind of renunciation of life." Rilke stressed Rodin as "solitary": "Rodin was solitary before his fame"; he lived "in the country solitude of his dwelling"; he learned his craft "alone within itself" until "Finally, after years of solitary labor, he attempted to come out with one of his works."  That work was rejected and he "locked himself away again for thirteen years."

Rilke's perception of the artist influenced his own artistic philosophy, evident in the letters he wrote to a young student, Franz Xaver Kappus, who published them in 1929 as Letters To A Young Poet. In the letters Rilke advises the aspiring poet that no outsider can affirm one's own artistic worth, that it must come from within. He tells Kappus to "look to Nature," the "little things that hardly anyone sees." Rilke praises solitude, "it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it."

Neither man was a paragon. Rodin lived with a commonlaw wife who had to tolerate his series of mistresses, including his art student Camille Claudel. He was sensitive and irascible and after nine months he threw Rilke out over a perceived breech of trust: in Rodin's absence Rilke had written a letter to a friend he'd introduced to Rodin, and Rodin had not approved his writing the letter.

The world in the early 20th c. was rapidly changing. Rodin's art became repetitive and was considered too representational. Rilke's work was in keeping with the new movements of Existentialism, Abstract Art, and Depth Psychology. Rilke's poetry continued to show growth during his brief 51 years, but Rodin, over twenty years older, in old age realized how serialized his work had become and felt the irony that only as he neared the end of his life did he realize the pupose of his work.

Toward the end of Rodin's life Rilke realized Rodin had failed to live up to his own advice, which Rilke had taken to heart: work, only work.

"You must change your life" is the last line in Rilke's poem Archaic Torso of Apollo which I first read translated by Stephen Mitchell. Rilke responds to a sculpture of the god Apollo, sans head, arms, and legs, but which still holds a transformative power so that "you must change your life" upon encountering it.

Read about a newly published translation of Rilke by Ruth Spiers here
Read about Rilke's influence on me here

I received an ARC from W. W. Norton in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

You Must Change Your Life
Rachel Corbett
W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Sept. 2016
$26.95 hard cover
ISBN: 978-0-393-24505-9

Monday, November 9, 2015

A Visit To the Flint Institute of Arts

My friend suggested we take a trip to the Flint Institute of Arts to see an exhibit of French photography. I had not been to the museum in over ten years, and it has been through a major remodeling since then.
Guernica by Sophie Matisse (granddaughter of Henri Matisse) was her response to witnessing the events of 9-11. She painted Picasso's Guernica, his response to the bombing of a village during the Spanish Civil War, using her grandfather's color pallet.

We arrived too early! But the Director of Development, Kathryn Sharbaugh, came out and took us on a personal tour of several galleries, educating us on specific pieces along the way.

  Dale Chihuly work was commissioned for the new lobby 
My husband's father grew up in Flint, MI. This Edmund Lewandowski mural was inspired by a map of Flint. We spent a long time looking at it. Read about how it was covered up and later restored here.

Horror Vacui by Judy Pfaff
Sculpture in the courtyard
African Mask
18th c Chinese celadon porcelain
19th c painting of the 1,000 Islands
Sleepy Hollow Church by Thomas Chambers, 1850
Birds attributed to Thomas Coke Ruckle
Ms. Sharbaugh spent a long time with the painting below, explaining the Victorian symbolism. It was painted by an itinerant Philadelphia artist for The Fowler family who had lost a child.
The Fowler children, 1854
My husband noted right off that the two children on the left were in mourning clothes while the girl on the right is in white, and surrounded by flowers. He deducted the girl in white was the deceased. Our guide explained another hint was her coral necklace; coral is the remains of a creature that was once alive. Also the painting is divided in it's background; the living children have ivy behind them, a symbol of growth, while the deceased girl has an idealized landscape behind her.
1840s portrait of a woman
I hope we return soon to see the galleries that were being dismantled for the annual craft fair. I picked up their book of American Art at the gift shop. Some of my favorite artists are represented!

Flint Institute of Arts
1120 East Kearsley St
Flint MI
Open 12-5 M-F, 10-5 Sat, 1-5 Sun

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