Essay - Rodin and Brancusi Within the Works and Minds of Auguste...

Rodin and Brancusi

Within the works ***** minds of Auguste Rodin (1940-1917) and of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957) there is more similarity than their ***** might appear at first to offer. Rodin, born to an ordinary family, was educated in Paris at the Ecole Imperiale, deciding at age 20 to become a sculptor (Kronenberger, 1965, p. p. 648).

Const*****tin ***** also had a humble beginning, his ***** described as pe*****ants in Pestisani, Gorj, Romania. He studied art ***** Romania, at Craiova and Bucharest before moving to Paris in 1904 (RAF Web site). While some sources say he studied with Rodin, others say it was little more ***** a meeting, with Brancusi (showing as much hubris as Rodin is reported to have displayed in his early days) said, "nothing grows in the shade of a tall tree" (RAF ***** site), and began his own atelier, despite *****'s invitation for ***** to apprentice with him.

Obviously, Rodin saw something of *****self in ***** younger artist, not surprisingly as both came from modest roots and chose a profession certainly not common to those of their background, as well as seeking their education at the best schools available ***** them; in addition, ***** course, they ***** approached their art quite cerebrally. ***** had marked the transition from classical sculpture to modern; Brancusi would be firmly in the pan*****on of modern **********, and arguably open the door to post-modernism.

Rodin's work is best known for bridging the gap between traditional and modernist philosophies ***** public art. Before Rodin, public ***** was intended to elevate, delight, and educate viewers. His ********** was that public sculpture should express the ********** personal values ***** celebrate life as ***** as *****" (Sunset, 1986, unpaged). In ********** somewhat difficult sculpture, the bronzes especially, it is difficult to find ***** concept of delight at times. Indeed, such works as The Martyr, with its painfully twisted gesture and the traces of modeling Rodin loved to leave behind, conveys anything but delight. To be sure, that sculpture and the rest do celebrate life, all of life, including the tragedies. In that respect, however, it also had one toe in ***** classical period, when depiction—story—was important to the creation of art.

Rodin's work had a theatrical*****y that Brancusi rejected. The Man with a Broken Nose (1865) embodies the*****tricality in its very title, ***** carries on through Rod*****'s deft handling of the stone, leaving no doubt about ***** configuration of his model, but also no ***** as to Rodin's attitude conveyed in gesture and line. Later, in the bronze busts and full-size statues such as Balzac, Rodin infuses even more ***** himself in the tracings of his sculpting and in ***** extravagant gesture, whether of a cloak (*****) or simply the curl of a lip or droop of a moustache.

Still, Rodin's real break with the past found its locus in ***** fact ***** his sculptures were not celebra*****ry in the classical sense; they were not of famous *****ators or warri*****s or religious figures, nor even