BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON Seeing the Parthenon marbles in London was a turning point for Rodin – illustrated to stunning effect at the British Museum Auguste Rodin never saw the Parthenon and believed it should one day return, like the human beings who made it, to dust. When the greatest of all classical monuments was damaged by an earthquake in 1894, he campaigned against its restoration. Given the profound influence of classical art on his own work, first to last, it is hard to regard this as anything other than startling hypocrisy. But the sculptor had strange ideas about ruins and time. The passage of millennia seems to have meant almost nothing to Rodin (1840-1917). His garden was strewn with classical sculptures casually got through dealers who bought them off tourists; he kept statues of Greek nymphs and gymnasts all over the house, specially lit by night for seductive effect. Headless, often limbless, these marble torsos twist, reach, strive and recline like the figures in Rodin’s own sculpture. Out of classicism, he forges modern art. Continue reading...
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