“Art,” Auguste Rodin once said, “is only a kind of love. I know quite well that bashful moralists will stop up their ears. But what! I express in a loud voice what all artists think. Desire! Desire! what a formidable stimulant!” Love was the drug that art, particularly sculpture, was waiting for, and Rodin positioned himself as the main dealer of that “formidable stimulant.” In David J. Getsy’s Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture, Rodin emerges not only as a sculptor of sexually charged works, but also as a sculptor who made sex integral to the very practice of sculpture. After centuries of art that looked back to classical days, Rodin brought sexy back to sculpture and ushered in a new age of modern sculpture emphasizing the individual, including the individual expression of desire. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to red more of "How Rodin Brought Sexy Back to Sculpture."
[Image: Auguste Rodin. Eternal Springtime. 1894.]
[Many thanks to Yale University Press for providing me with a review copy of David J. Getsy’s Rodin: Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture.]
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