Modern Art, Day 1627 February 2013

Cezanne; Sculpture; Carpeaux (Opera), Rodin

Cezanne interested in distilling the inner order in natureo creates forms with often complementary colors that are juxtaposedo admires Poussin for the structure he gave to nature

Cezanne, “Still Life with Plaster Cast,” 1895

Cezanne, “Estaque: Bay of Marseilles,” 1883-5 In later years, Cezanne’s landscapes of Mt. Ste. Victoire make the mountain take

on a deity-like dominance and monumentality

Cezanne, “Bathers,” 1898-1905 uses patterning of color, which in some places makes figures melt into the ground

or background and enhance the flatness of the canvas still interested in creating 3D figures and creating space but does so in a way that

acknowledges the painted-ness of the image very popular artist among artists and progressive patrons and dealers came from a bourgeois family so he didn’t struggle financially

Plan for Charles Garnier’s Paris Opera, 1863-74

Nouveau riche, neobaroque, bombastic

kept the lights on during the performance so everyone could see each other

very opulent and lavish sculpture played a big part in the

decoration of the building

Jean-Baptist Carpeaux, “Dance,” Opera sculpture, 1869 considered

scandalous; would have been removed if the Franco-Prussian war hadn’t begun

Rodin: tried to be admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but was rejected 3 times Rodin frustrated people because he didn’t always give a narrative to his sculpture;

people were still in the frame of mind that art wasn’t for art’s sake

Rodin, “Burghers of Calais,” 1885-95 unconventionally put on a shallow pedestal so that viewers are almost at eye level

with the figures instead of below them “looking up to them” each figure, of differing ages, confronts their death in different ways individual pedestals of each figure remain visible Rodin museum owns the cast of these sculpture and has the right to produce

authentic casts of them up to a certain cap

Rodin, “Walking Man,” 1877 Wouldn’t be able to

replicate this in real life See movement of walking,

not a stopped instant of walking; weight is on back leg but if you follow leg up torso you see the shift of the weight and then the front leg also has the weight on it

Rodin, “Gates of Hell,” c. 1881 pessimistic view of life shows various figures with

little anecdotes; for example, there’s a pair of intertwined lovers who are slipping past each other, implying that love is transitory and not enduring

the thinker was originally Dante himself pondering over creation

o upper body and head are larger than lower body so it would look correct from far away

Three Shades at the top of the gates; same figure cast three times