Original subtitles

Auguste Rodin 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.

Auguste Rodin was born on the 12th of November, 1840,

here on the Rue de la Ballette in the Muftar 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.

But Rodin's background was modest.

His father was a lifelong clerk in the police force

and his mother was a country girl from Lorraine.

His school record was poor, but from an early age,

Rodin 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 Rodin discovered sculpture as his true vocation

at a time when painting dominated the Parisian art scene.

Like any artist embarking on their career,

Rodin 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 Ecole des Beaux-Arts,

a prerequisite for success for an artist in 19th century France.

Rodin was turned down on three occasions.

The rejections, however, didn't dent his determination to succeed.

But Rodin had to start making a living for himself,

so he applied his skills to the decorative arts.

He met the prominent sculptor Carrier Belleuse

and worked for him at the Cerve porcelain factory,

designing the friezes for vases.

Paris itself was also undergoing a transformation.

Baron Haussmann had been appointed to redesign the city

with massive building works in progress,

offering work to builders and craftsmen.

So Rodin 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 Rodin

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 theatre in Paris in 1862

that Rodin met Rose Bure.

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 Prussia.

Within weeks, the country was invaded and Paris fell.

Rodin was drafted in to serve his country

but declared unfit due to his poor eyesight.

But on returning to civilian life,

Rodin was unable to find work in a city ravaged by war

and with its citizens near starvation.

But his old employer, Carrier Belleuse,

offered Rodin work in Brussels,

where the decorative arts were still flourishing.

Rodin accepted, but had to leave his family behind.

But the work enabled him to send money back home to support them.

In 1876, Rodin 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,

Rodin began to rework a sculpture he'd begun a few months before

of a man standing with raised arms,

initially called the Vanquished or the Conquered,

but about to be transformed into the much more heroic Age of Bronze.

In this figure, Rodin 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 Rodin 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 Nett,

who he uses for weeks into months,

studying his body almost as an object,

looking at different facades,

sometimes studying in from way up 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 Rodin.

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 murmuring charge went round

that perhaps he'd cast it live from the human body.

This, though, was refuted by Rodin,

who took it to Paris in 1877

to show in the Great Salon where his reputation could be made.

But the charge was reiterated

that, in fact, Rodin had cast this directly in plaster

from a human body.

And in the end, he had to refute charges

by showing photographs of Nate

in order to prove that what he'd produced

wasn't an exact replica of his model.

In a way, he had to make bare his own artistic processes.

And it took him three more years

before he finally persuaded the French state

and the new director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts

to buy the work

and finally cast the age of bronze in bronze.

Now approaching 40,

Rodin was at last starting to make a name for himself

after two decades struggling for recognition.

Rodin's big break came in 1880

when he was commissioned to produce two vast bronze doors

as an entrance to a proposed new museum of decorative arts.

Now, the museum was never finished

but the resulting work was the most important of Rodin's life

and the most celebrated cast of it resides here

in the gardens of the Musée Rodin

amidst the hustle and bustle of Paris.

Now, for his inspiration or his springboard,

Rodin took the work of the great Italian poet Dante

and in particular, his divine comedy,

that redemptive journey from hell through purgatory

to heaven or paradise.

But Rodin focused entirely on the first part of the comedy

and produced The Gates of Hell.

In effect, Rodin 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 Rodin'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 bowled over by the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti

whose bronze gates of paradise adorned the baptistry in Florence.

Now, like Ghiberti,

Rodin begins with eight individual bronze panels.

But very quickly, this changes from eight into two.

And what we have is a rather seething, pulsating mass of 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,

Rodin replicates one figure three times

in what are 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

that point us down into what is there below.

And then the most iconic image in the entire gates,

the thinker, Dante himself, the poet,

contemplating and presiding over his creation,

this horrifying mass below,

but also Rodin's alter ego,

Rodin himself as the creator.

And so important was the image of the thinker for Rodin

that he scaled it up

and had it as an individual sculpture in various guises,

the most important of which was on his own tomb.

And then, from the thinker at the apex,

the forms seem to emerge.

We can pick out various ones.

Not least, Ugolino,

a 13th-century peasant tyrant

who was locked up in a tower,

condemned to starve to death,

and in turn, ate his own children.

And you can see Rodin showing the bestial side of Ugolino

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 frenetically,

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 Rodin 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 Rodin,

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

as some kind of creative laboratory for Rodin

is nowhere better exemplified than with this work, The Kiss.

But, in fact, this image is so ecstatically happy and upbeat

that Rodin felt that it had no place

in the tumultuous horrors of the gates of hell.

And so it evolved as a sculpture 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 di Rimini

and Paola Malatesta,

who are brother and 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 Rodin 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.

What are 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 Rodin 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 struck an extraordinarily broad chord

because there's a tragedy here too.

Because after this moment,

this moment of embrace,

the two lovers are discovered

by Francesca's husband

and Paolo's brother.

And his reaction is extreme.

He murders them brutally.

And then, in Dante's Divine Comedy,

they are consigned forever

to hell

because of their forbidden love.

And for these universal reasons,

the fact that the work seems to,

in various ways,

have 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 Rodin's sculptural production,

developed in the 1890s,

was that of assemblage.

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 accretion,

of bringing together

various elements

to make sculpture,

became one of the dominant methods

of the 20th century.

With Rodin,

its often unacknowledged father.

In 1884,

Rodin received a public commission,

backed by a public subscription

to fund it

from the people of Calais

to commemorate

an extraordinary event

which had taken place

back in 1347

and had been chronicled

by a writer called

Jean de Froissart.

What had happened

was that the English

had besieged the city of Calais

for 11 months

and finally,

the city fell.

But,

led by Eustache de Saint-Pierre,

five other burghers

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 event

that Rodin is commemorating.

Now,

the burghers of Calais

in the 19th century

wanted Rodin

to produce a pyramidal sculpture

with Eustache de Saint-Pierre

heroically at the top.

But what Rodin 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,

Rodin used local models

from the region

and also began

by making life-size studies

of them,

naked,

in order to get the naturalism

as close as possible

and also to produce

a 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 a financial problem

which saw funds run out.

So, for two or three years

after he'd started

to make the work,

he showed individual sculptures

and then,

in 1889,

in a celebrated exhibition

along with Claude Monet

and his Impressionist 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.

Rodin, however,

wanted the work

to be shown

as it is here

in the gardens

of the Musée Rodin,

low down.

Why?

Well,

he wanted these figures

to seem part of the fabric

of the city.

He wanted the spectator,

metaphorically,

and I can't literally

walk into the sculpture,

but he wanted the spectator

to be able to project

him or herself

into the work,

as Rodin put it,

to get as deeply

as possible

into the sacrifice

and drama

of the tragedy here.

And it's that

that gives the work

his expressive force.

The work struck a chord

across the Channel

and the British government

commissioned a cast

of the monument

in 1913.

Rodin 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,

Rodin met a young sculptor

called Camille Claudel.

He was 43.

She was just 19.

And he immediately

fell in love with her.

And Camille soon

became Rodin's student,

mistress,

and collaborator

for the next 15 years.

Camille wanted marriage,

but Rodin refused to leave

his long-time companion,

Rose Bure.

Deeply distressed,

Camille went into

self-imposed seclusion

in Paris

and suffered

a mental breakdown.

Her face, though,

sometimes a vision

of serenity,

other times a tragic muse,

can be seen

on many of Rodin's sculptures.

By the early 1890s,

Rodin 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

des Jeans de Lettre,

an eminent literary society,

commissioned Rodin

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 his most celebrated books

was La Comédie Humaine,

which, like Dante,

explored human fleshly temptations.

The problem for Rodin, 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 as close

to Balzac as possible.

Rodin 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 Calais,

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 this giant robe,

like the one that Balzac

was reputed to wear,

a kind of dressing gown

come monk's 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,

Rodin purchased a house

at Meurdon

on the outskirts of Paris.

With his own fame

firmly established,

Rodin 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,

Georges Clemenceau.

In 1897,

the first major study

of Rodin's drawings

was published.

Rodin always said

that his drawings

were the key to his work.

He would sketch the model

without ever taking

his eyes off her.

And when a particular moment

caught his attention,

he would do a whole series

of line drawings

and watercolours.

Later,

Rodin turned his attention

to dance,

and when the Cambodian

dance troupe

became the sensation

of Paris in 1906,

Rodin 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

gynaecological.

They're among the most erotic

of any drawings

and sculptures made

in the 19th century,

showing the deft touch

of a mature artist,

but also perhaps

the yearnings

of an ageing man.

In 1908,

Rodin rented studio space

in the Hotel Biron

in Paris.

The premises

were soon afterwards

threatened with demolition,

and Rodin was given

notice to quit.

But he resisted,

suggesting he'd bequeath

all his works

and his collections

to the state,

on the condition

that he remain there,

and that on his death

it would be turned

into a museum.

The government agreed

to Rodin's wishes,

and today,

as the Musée Rodin,

it remains a lasting

tribute to his life

and work.

At the end of January

1917,

Rodin finally married

his lifelong companion,

Rose Bure.

But ironically,

within 25 days,

Rose died.

And then Rodin himself

died a few months later,

on November the 17th.

A week later,

Rodin was buried

with his wife,

here,

in the grounds

of the family home

at Meurdon,

appropriately enough,

with a magnificent

bronze cast

of Rodin'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.

We'll be right back.