Original subtitles

What goes Road down redefined the idea of sculpture in European art, without losing any

of its power and grandeur, he liberated it from the constraints of classicism and created

three-dimensional forms which pulsated with life and energy. In effect, he recreated the role

of sculpture as a public monument and became one of the fathers of modern art.

Well, Goose Road down was born on the 12th November, 1840, here, on the Ruder-Larber

let in the Muff-Dye District of Paris, just on the edge of the Latin Quarter. Then,

as now, the area was a labyrinth of streets with cafes and bars and vibrant street markets.

The road-hands background was modest. His father was a lifelong clock in the police force

and his mother was a country girl from Lorraine.

His school record was poor, but from an early age, Road down showed a great talent for

drawing, enabling him to go to art school at the age of 14. There, he worked relentlessly

and in his spare time, he went to the Louvre, making sketches of the Greek and Roman

sculptures there. Excited by the three-dimensional art of the distant past, the young Rodan

discovered sculpture as his true vocation at a time when painting dominated the Parisian

art scene. Like any artist embarking on their career, Rodan used those closest to him

as his earliest models. The first to sit for him was his father, Jean-Baptiste.

At the age of 19, he sat the entrance exam to the top Parisian art school, the Eccol

their bows are, a prerequisite for success for an artist in 19th century France.

Rodan was turned down on three acasions. The rejections, however, didn't dent his determination

to succeed, but Rodan had to start making a living for himself, so he applied his skills

to the decorative arts. He met the prominent sculptor, Carrier Bellers, and worked for him

at the serve, porcelain factory, designing the freezes for vases. Paris itself was also

undergoing a transformation. Baron Hausman had been appointed to redesign the city with massive

building works in progress, offering work to builders and craftsmen. So Rodan went from

job to job, contributing his anonymous efforts as a decorative artist, supplying ornamentation

to buildings in the city. And it was this kind of work that would supply Rodan with an income

for the next 20 years, whilst continuing to work on his own sculptures in his spare time.

It was while he was working on the decoration of a small theater in Paris in 1862,

that Rodan met Rose Buray. Rose would remain his lifelong companion. A year into their

relationship, a son was born. Domestic bliss, though, was not to last long.

In 1870, France was at war with pressure, within weeks, the country was invaded and Paris fell.

Rodan was drafted into service country, but declared unfit due to his poor eyesight.

But on returning to civilian life, Rodan was unable to find work in a city ravaged by war

and with its citizens near starvation. But his old employer, Carrier Bellers, offered Rodan

work in Brussels, where the decorative arts were still flourishing. Rodan accepted, but had to

leave his family behind, but the work enabled him to send money back home to support them.

In 1876, Rodan made the obligatory trip for any aspiring artist to Italy. There, he was

able to study the works of the Italian Renaissance masters at first hand, above all, the sculptures

of Donatello and Michelangelo. Back in Brussels, after his trip to Italy, Rodan began to

rework a sculpture begun a few months before, of a man standing with raised arms, initially called

Vanquist or the Concord, but about to be transformed into the much more heroic age of bronze.

In this figure, Rodan combines the two facets of art that have struck him most strongly in Italy.

The first is the classical, in particular, balance, poise, grace, and harmony. And then,

the art of the Renaissance, in particular that of Michelangelo, where Rodan sees a kind of restless

energy, and also the idea of a figure looking in on himself. And he gets, as his model,

a Belgian soldier, called August Net, who uses for weeks into months, studying his body,

almost as an object, looking at different facades, sometimes studying in from what he had above,

other times from down below, as well as on normal level. To produce a work that is also a kind of

abstracted gesture of constriction and breaking free, where the figure seems almost to be clutching

a spear, but that's taken away by Rodan. He doesn't want any accessories. And what he produces is

something theatrical, but also something a little awkward. However, when people saw this work,

there was a feeling that this was extraordinarily natural. Now when it was first shown in Brussels,

there was a murmur in charge went round that perhaps he'd cast it live from the human body.

This dough is refuted by Rodan, who took it to Paris in 1877 to show in the great salar,

where his reputation could be made, but the charge was reiterated. That in fact, Rodan had

cast this directly in plaster from a human body. And in the end, he had to refute charges by

shown photographs of Nate in order to prove that what he produced wasn't an exact replica of

his model. In a way, he had to make bear his own artistic processes. And it took him three more years

before he finally persuaded the French state and the new director of the Muse de la Bosa to buy

the work and finally cast the age of bronze in bronze. Now approaching 40, Rodan was at last

starting to make a name for himself after two decades struggling for recognition. Rodan's big break

came in 1880 when he was commissioned to produce two vast bronze doors as an entrance to a

prose new museum of decorative art. Now the museum was never finished, but the resulting work was

the most important of Rodan's life. And the most celebrated cast of it resides here in the gardens

of the Muse de Rodan amidst a hustle and bustle of Paris. Now, for his inspiration or his springboard,

Rodan took the work of the Great Italian poet Dante, in a particular his divine comedy,

that redemptive journey from hell through purgatory to heaven or paradise. But Rodan focused

entirely on the first part of the comedy and produced the gates of hell.

In effect, Rodan gives us a morality tale where he explores human frailty and the consequences

of human sin. He turns the human body both physically and morally inside out.

The structure for Rodan's gates of hell comes paradoxically from a sculpture called

the gates of paradise. He's been to Italy and like many people, he was bold over

by the work of Lorenzo Gibberti, whose bronze gates of paradise are dawned the

battery in Florence. Now like Gibberti, Rodan begins with eight individual bronze panels,

but very quickly this changes from eight into two. And what we have is a rather seething, pulsating

massive humanity, where everything seems to fuse into one entity.

But if we start from the top, that's the key, I think, or the keystone, to the entire work.

Rather than just having one figure, Rodan replicates one figure three times,

in what it called the three shades or shadows, these are ghostly presences or spectres

that hover above the gates. Their hands aren't really visible, just fists,

but point us down into what is there below. And then the most iconic image in the entire

gate, the Finca, Dante himself, the poet, contemplating a presiding over his creation,

this horrifying mass below, but also Rodan's alter ego, Rodan himself as the creator.

And so important was the image of the thinker for Rodan, that he scaled it up,

and had it as an individual sculpture in various guises, the most important of which was on his own

and then from the finger at the apex, the forms seem to emerge. We can pick out various ones,

not least, uglino, a 30th century peasant tyrant, who was locked up in a tower, condemned to

starve to death, and in turn, et his own children. And you can see Rodan, shown the best

steel side of uglino, as he's on all fours, like an animal, crouched above his poor children

that he's about to devour. There are more biblical figures, there are extraordinary acrobatic figures.

There's also this amazing feeling when you stand in front of the gates of closeness and intimacy,

as well as seeing small scale figures from huge distance, where it seems as if some of the figures

have been rammed into the door and others have been pulled out. And there's a fantastic sense of

spontaneity here, of a man working phonetically, as he did for the first four or five years of this

work with his clay and with his plaster. And there's also a sense of a man collaging elements.

We know that Rodan made hundreds of freestanding sculptures, parts of which he then assembled and

added to other figures to create what we see here. Ultimately, the gates of hell is the greatest

public sculptor of the 19th century, indeed of the last 200 years, but it's also a private laboratory

for Rodan, where you can see his creative imagination running riot, and in effect it becomes a

repository from which some of the greatest most important and most iconic sculptures of his

entire career emerge. The idea of the gates of hell is some kind of creative laboratory for Rodan

is nowhere better exemplified than with this work, the kiss. But in fact, this image is so

ecstatically happy and upbeat that Rodan felt that it had no place in the tumultuous horrors

of the gates of hell, and so it evolved as a sculptor in its own right. And it depicts the moment

in a story that was reputed to have happened that Dante heard about and incorporated into his

divine comedy, where two people, Francesca de Rimini, and Paula Malatesta, who are brother in

sister-in-law, but who gradually and slowly fall in love, and who when they read books of

courtly love, are so overcome with passion that they push the book to one side and start to embrace.

And allegedly, that's the moment that Rodan has captured. I say allegedly, because you can see

the book behind Paolo's hand, but the idea that this somehow is spontaneous love is

clearly spurious. One of these two people doing naked, if they're reading, demure,

sagas of courtly love together. So we can push that in a way to one side. It's a wonderful

romantic ideal. But what Rodan is really getting at is both ideal beauty, but the beauty and the

pleasure of sensual erotic coupling. It's one of the most erotic works of the 19th century to many

people, and it's struck an extraordinary broad chord because there's a tragedy here too, because

after this moment, this moment of embrace. The two lovers had discovered by Francesca's husband

and Paolo's brother, and his reaction is extreme. He murders them brutally, and then then,

in Dante's Divine Comedy, they're consigned forever to hell, because of their forbidden love.

For these universal reasons, the fact that the work seems to in various ways of struck a universal

chord, the French state within three years commissioned a version of the kiss, and then other

cities in Europe also got their versions, and very quickly, the work became one of the most

reproduced that's ever been made. Aside from the mass reproduction of his work, using a pointing

machine, the other radical aspect of Rodan's sculptural production developed in the 1890s was

out of a semblage. Instead of creating a single body, he would produce various arms, legs, hands,

which were then used in various combinations later on. This process of a Christian of bringing

together various elements to make sculpture became one of the dominant methods of the 20th century,

with Rodan, it's often under acknowledged father. In 1884, Rodan received a public commission

backed by a public subscription to fund it from the People of Kelly to commemorate an extraordinary

event which had taken place back in 1347, and had been chronicaled by a writer called Jondafoisar.

What had happened was that the English had besieged the city of Kelly for 11 months, and finally,

the city fell. But, led by you stashed a sampiae, five other burgers sacrificed themselves to the

English, along with the keys of the city, in order to save the rest of the inhabitants. And it's that

that Rodan is commemorating. Now, the burgers of Kelly, in the 19th century, wanted Rodan to

reduce a pyramidal sculpture with you stashed a sampiae heroically at the top. But what Rodan wanted

to do was commemorate all six men, whose names had only just been discovered the decade before.

Now, in order to be as authentic as possible, Rodan used local models from the region,

and also began by making life-sized studies of them naked, in order to get the naturalism as

as possible, and also to produce the kind of scaffolding, on which he could then clothe the figures,

also life-sized, and produce the finished monument. Then there was a whole battle about how the

work should be displayed, which was scuppered in a way, by financial problem, which saw funds run out.

So for two or three years, after he started to make the work, he showed individual sculptures,

and then, in 1889, in a celebrated exhibition, along with Claude Monne, and his impression

is paintings, he unveiled the finished plaster in Paris, which was then celebrated by critics.

However, there was still a battle with the people of Calais, which the people of Calais won.

And in 1895, the monument was unveiled on a large high pedestal, because they thought it

made it seem more heroic. Rodan, however, wanted the work to be shown as it is here in the gardens

of the Muze Rodan, low down. Why? Well, he wanted these figures to seem part of the fabric of

the city. He wanted the spectator, metaphorically, in a can't literally walk into the sculpture,

but he wanted the spectators to be able to project him or herself into the work, as Rodan put it,

to get his deep-breest possible into the sacrifice and drama of the tragedy here. And it's that,

that gives the work is expressive force.

The work struck a chord across the channel, and the British government commissioned a cast of

the monument in 1913. Rodan himself travelled to London to find suitable locations.

It now sits on Victoria Tower Gardens, in the shadow of the houses of Parliament.

In 1883, Rodan met a young sculptor called Camille Claude Del. He was 43. She was just 19.

And he immediately fell in love with her, and Camille soon became Rodan's student,

mistress, and collaborator for the next 15 years. Camille wanted marriage, but Rodan refused

to leave his long-time companion, Rose Buray. Deeply distressed, Camille went into self-imposed

seclusion in Paris, and suffered a mental breakdown. Her face, though, sometimes a vision of

frenity, other times a tragic muse, can be seen on many of Rodan's sculptures.

By the early 1890s, Rodan was at the height of his artistic powers, and the artist

to get for public commissions. And in 1891, the celebrated French novelist, Emile Zola,

then president of the Society de John de Letch, an eminent literary society,

commissioned Rodan to produce a monument for another celebrated French writer,

Honoré Balzac, who died back in 1850, and this is the result.

Balzac was a robust radical free spirit, among whose most celebrated books was La Commedy Human,

which, like Dante, explored human fleshly temptations. The problem for Rodan, though, was because

Balzac had died four decades before. He hadn't met him or seen him, so what did he do? Well,

he read the novels. He went back to terrain where Balzac had lived. And also, he got contemporary

portraits, early photographs, and even caricatures. Better still, he got in touch with Balzac's

old tailor, and had a suit made up to be the exact same size that he stuffed and had in the studio.

Consequently, he could get his close to Balzac as possible. Rodan said he wanted to

produce an immortal monument to one who boils over with passion and who frantically violates his own

body. And the result is something larger than life that, in a way, is tantamount to his creative

power rather than a physical likeness. Like the Burgers of Cali, he made studies of Balzac's head,

and then he proposed the idea of a naked monument, but that was too controversial. So in the end,

he clad him with his giant robe. Like the one that Balzac was reputed to wear,

a kind of dressing gown come amongst robe, which, in a way, hints not just at his creative power,

but is his sexual one too. And when critics saw this work, they said it was like some kind of

ancient monolith, and one person remarked that it was tantamount to a volcanic eruption.

At the end of 1895, Rodan purchased a house at Merdon on the outskirts of Paris.

With his own fame firmly established, Rodan was then courted by the celebrities of the day,

particularly politicians, writers, and artists, many of whom commissioned portrait busts.

These included the poet Baudelaire, the English man of letters, George Bernard Shaw,

and the future prime minister of France, George Clemanso.

In 1897, the first major study of Rodan's drawings was published. Rodan always said that his drawings

were the key to his work. He would sketch the model without ever taking his eyes off a,

and when a particular moment caught his attention, he would do a whole series of line drawings

and watercolors. Later, Rodan turned his attention to dance, and when the Cambodian dance

troop became the sensation of Paris in 1906, Rodan rushed along to sketch them.

And later, some of the more erotic drawings were turned into sculptures, such as this one,

of Iris, Messenger of the Gods. There's an intensity of vision in these works that seems

almost gynecological. There are among the most erotic of any drawings and sculptures made in the 19th

century, showing the death touch of a mature artist, but also perhaps the yearnings of an aging man.

In 1908, Rodan rented studio space in the hotel Bira and Paris. The premises were soon afterwards

threatened with demolition, and Rodan was given notice to quit. But he resisted, suggesting it

bequeath all his works and his collections to the state, on the condition that he remained there,

and that on his death, it would be turned into a museum. The government agreed to Rodan's

wishes, and today, as the Muze Rodan, it remains a lasting tribute to his life and work.

At the end of January 1917, Rodan finally married his lifelong companion, Rose Birae. But I

ironically, within 25 days, Rose died, and then wrote down himself died a few months later,

on November 17th. A week later, Rodan was buried with his wife, here, in the grounds of the family home

at Murdoch, appropriately enough, with a magnificent bronze cast of Rodan's thinker above their graves.

Because of the first World War, there was no state funeral, nonetheless, politicians and

dignitaries from all over the world came to the ceremony to pay homage to the man who,

passionately and thoughtfully, had put sculpture right back in the mainstream of Western art.