August Rodin, Pierre de Wissant, 1884-1886, KMSKA

Slow acceptance

A slew of monuments to commemorate historical events were commissioned in the 19th century. Rodin broke new ground, however, in the way he developed the idea. He broke with traditional academic rules, which required the figures to be placed on a high pedestal, above the public. Rodin approached the burghers as six individuals. And he placed them on the same level as the people, without a pedestal, making them a kind of tableau vivant. He came in for a lot of criticism as a result. It was only 38 years after the bronzes were finished that they were finally installed at a low level, eye to eye with the public. Sadly, it was too late for Rodin to see the result, as he had died seven years previously.

Rodin, French sculptor of The Thinker

Rodin was one of the founders of modern sculpture and is considered 19th-century Europe’s greatest practitioner of the art. Take his world-famous work, The Thinker, for instance. Rodin’s sculptures are realistic, with an immediate visual language that parallels that of Impressionism. He allowed shifts of form in his work and departed from reality, all of which heightened his sculptures’ expressive power. And that’s not all: Rodin also gave his figures a specific posture that enables us to empathize with their state of mind. His sculptures are similar in that respect to Symbolism. The statue Pierre de Wissant, for instance, symbolizes all those who fall victim to the powerful.