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Auguste Rodin has been understood by Unlike much earlier sculpture, one needed many to have inaugurated modern sculp- no story or explanation to understand the DAVID J. GETSY ture, liberating it from its conventions and electricity of touching a body or being traditions. While the singularity of this rep- touched. Rodin’s contribution to modern utation could be contested, his work has sculpture was to bring attention to the often overshadowed his competitors and material object as the product of the sculp- alternatives among the divergent routes tor’s hands, and he amplified that attention into and out of modern sculpture across by sculpting naked bodies that seemed to The Materiality and Europe. Across the twentieth century, his convulse in space as the result of those originating status was often assumed, and hands. With Rodin’s work, the sculptor’s Mythology of Rodin’s Touch he became the sculptor against whom oth- touch in the clay was often taken for the ers were gauged in the modern sculpture’s lover’s touching of the nude — despite the early development. That reputation has missing limbs, contortions, or imprints of persisted, and he remains one of the most fingers and hands on Rodin’s sculptural recognizable of modern artists globally bodies. Under his hand, sculpture was because of his way of making sculpture. seen to have become more sensual, and Then and now, his works have appeared the evidence of his manipulations of mat- direct and expressive, with dramatic ter reinforced the frankness that viewers gouges, marks, and finger impressions perceived in the unclothed bodies writhing littering his surfaces. Previously, European in passion, shame, heartbreak, or ecstasy. sculpture had privileged the carefully The popularity of Rodin’s work rested on detailed surface, often smooth and unbro- this elision of the sexual and the material.2 ken. It was only in sketch models that one His contribution to modern sculpture was might find such abbreviated articulations, to make it more physical, more palpable, traces of the plasticity of clay, or seemingly and a closer record of the frenzied scene unfinished surfaces that have become char- of creation — or at least that is what his acteristic of Rodin’s hand. supporters would have us believe. Rodin not only retained such evidence In what follows, I will discuss the tactics of sculptural process; he elevated it as used by Rodin to draw attention to his proof of his own acts of making. Viewers of touch. He invented few new techniques; Rodin’s sculpture were led to visually recon- rather, he reorganized existing practices struct those acts, following the thumbprints, of nineteenth-century sculpture in order marks, and other remnants of his touch. to foreground his own acts of making. He deemphasized narrative, and his nude Whereas earlier sculptors had focused on bodies were often freed from any identify- a finished and refined product, for Rodin ing story (or were only tenuously related it was sculptural process that was the to a recognizable character from mytholo- main focus. He emphasized facture — the gy).1 This practice left viewers with only the evidence of the materials and physical contortions of the unclothed body to eval- processes that the artist uses to make an uate, and they could imagine how Rodin’s artwork. I will discuss two main areas in hands had brought that body — touch by which Rodin performed sculptural facture: touch — into existence. For these reasons, first, his use of the multi-stage process the viewing experience of a Rodin sculp- of casting and, second, his foreground- ture seemed more direct and unmediated. ing of the reproducible and temporary 42 43 plaster model. These sculptural practices sculptural image and its material constitu- were normally kept out of sight, but Rodin tion. Customarily, a sculptor would model celebrated and showcased them. The the figure in clay. Because clay is a fugitive secret to Rodin’s success lies in the ways material, it needed to be kept damp in in which he brought to light his own pro- order to keep it from cracking and crum- cess, prompting viewers to believe they bling. Once the sculptor had completed the were vicariously touching these sculptural work, it would then be cast in plaster bodies. Such material traces and perfor- in order to freeze the form in a more perma- mances of incompleteness became his nent, but still inexpensive, material. In this signature style, and he became renowned process, the initial clay figure would most for “inventing” modern sculpture that often be destroyed. This resulting plaster, seemed so alive and direct in contrast to however, could then be exhibited in hopes the seamless and glabrous surfaces of of convincing a patron to pay for it to be previous nineteenth-century statues. He cast in bronze or carved in marble. From did this by redirecting sculptural processes the first plaster cast, numerous additional to manufacture evidence of his touch. plaster casts, marble statues, or bronze casts could be produced. The “final” statue Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), Léonce Bénédite, mould maker we see, however, was often executed by a (1859–1925) and Paul Cruet, RODIN’S PERFORMATIVE highly-skilled team of practitioners such as moulder (1880–1966) bronze casters, mould makers, and stone Cast of Auguste Rodin’s hand MARK-MAKING: CLAY’S PASSAGE holding a female torso TO BRONZE carvers who used a variety of technolo- 1917 Plaster, assemblage cast directly gies and devices to ensure that the image from Rodin’s hand The mid-nineteenth century discourses of that had been initially sculpted in clay Musée Rodin sculpture in which Rodin emerged had a was faithfully translated a second time to highly vexed attitude toward the issue of its new material. Nineteenth-century pro- sculpture’s materiality.3 The term “mate- cedures of sculpture relied upon this divi- riality” refers to the constitution of the sion of labor between the conception of sculptural object by and as actual mat- sculptural images and the manipulation of ter — stone, metal, wax, plaster, ivory, wood, sculptural matter.5 The actual practice of and so on. A statue’s image (for example, sculpture was not, however, categorically the human form) is created in and through different from techniques used since the the manipulation of the material, and the Renaissance.6 By the nineteenth century, sculptor must negotiate to some degree the industry of sculptural production had the integration of or interference between become elaborate, with many specialist sculpture as image and thing when creating technicians and artisans employed to turn a representational sculpture. Nineteenth- sculptors’ initial models into finished objects century practices often preferred to obscure in bronze or marble. The nineteenth-century sculpture’s materiality.4 Viewers were not sculptor’s artistic labor was located primar- meant to look at a hunk of marble or a ily in the conception and initial modeling piece of bronze but rather were meant to of the clay form, not in the creation of the see such images as mythological heroes, sculptural object.7 great statesmen, or beautiful nudes. Rodin, however, came to be seen as The practice of nineteenth-century sculp- more than a creator of form, and his Auguste Rodin ture itself ensured a division between the reputation became that of the virtuoso The Thinker Modelled 1880 (cast 1904) Bronze 44 Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek maker of clay objects. He did not develop more physical, more material, and a closer of Rodin is as physically present, touching surfaces. Such strategies were not unique a comparable expertise in bronze cast- record of the scene of creation. each object in a way that is visible and in the history of sculpture. Michelangelo, ing, patination, or marble carving.8 As These marks, however, are by no means recoverable on the surface of the sculp- for one, had been a catalyst for Rodin’s his contemporary biographer Frederick direct or unmediated. We need to recall ture.14 The French art critic Roger Marx, development of his own version of the Lawton made sure to state (perhaps that most basic of conditions for the inter- for instance, spoke of Rodin’s caress of non-finito.20 However, for Rodin it was overly so), Rodin was always a modeler pretation of nineteenth-century sculpture: the modeling clay even though he and his not just that his works appeared to be and never a practitioner, “[A]lthough the initial object created (the clay sculp- readers would only ever see bronze, mar- stopped midway in the process of being occupied for many years in the studios or ture) is lost. We never see the material ble, or plaster: “Under [Rodin’s] fingers made. The performances of incompleteness for the studios of sculptors as an assistant, (the clay) that Rodin touched. This con- the clay quivers with feverish throbs, and and unfinish were tactical stylistic choices he was never, as has been erroneously dition is largely opaque to many viewers, trembles with every spasm of suffering and repeated across the various modes and stated, a praticien, i.e. a rough or a fine and it is frequently forgotten or overlooked anguish.”15 This focus on Rodin’s hands and materials of his sculpture. In addition, he hewer of stone or marble. Indeed this is (even in many art-historical discussions of evidence of touching was made central by exaggerated the occasional use of approx- the one branch of the statuary art which nineteenth-century art) that the sculptures the Bohemian-Austrian poet (and, for a imated details and sketchy surfaces that he has never practically learnt.”9 While are the products of translation from an time, Rodin’s secretary) Rainer Maria Rilke, other nineteenth-century sculptors would no doubt Rodin did, in fact, have at least already secondary object, the so-called who began his Rodin-Book by discussing sometimes use.

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