Rodin and Mueck: Is There Anything in Common - Research Paper Example

Rodin and Mueck: Is there anything in common? Although the two artists may seem miles apart in artisticcircles, both August Rodin and Ron Mueck worked to portray their art from a realist perspective. Rather than presenting the idealized body of the Neoclassicists, Rodin’s sculpture concentrated on capturing the actual figure, complete with all its inconsistencies and imperfections, as it appeared in the here and now physical realm. Although the bodies are imperfect and cast in materials that don’t necessarily capture the natural coloring and textures of the human models thus losing some of their realism, they are beautifully rendered, highly expressive and emotionally moving. They are so realistic that there were several accusations made that he was working with a cast made from a living model in an early piece entitled “The Age of Bronze.”1 The problems that came from this encouraged him to make future sculptures of other than life-size scale as a means of proving this wasn’t the case. A future artist, Ron Mueck, also chose to work on realistic portrayals of the human body, but he took Rodin’s concepts into the metaphysical realm with his use of scale. Instead of employing scale to prove his artistic ability, Mueck uses scale to emphasize his artistic vision by portraying the figures according to the size of their importance. This effect is brought to even greater proportions by the degree of realism evident in his work, right down to the curling hair on the top of a boy’s big toe. In their work, both Rodin and Mueck utilize realistic portrayals of subjects and dramatic use of scale to portray the underlying universal human emotion of their ideas. August Rodin is a well-known artist from the late 19th century who made a big break from the traditional schools of art that were then focused on a Neoclassicism modeled after the perfectionism of the ancients. Although he had definite ideas regarding the importance of realism in his own work, he was the only one who recognized its worth within his early years. Refused admission to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the premiere school of arts in the region three times, Rodin never gave up on his ideals, choosing to support himself instead by completing decorative work for others.2 However, after the death of his sister, who had already devoted her life to a convent, Rodin felt it necessary to take her place in service of God. Fortunately, the Father Superior understood Rodin’s heart was already held elsewhere, within his art. By the time he was 24, he had moved in with the woman who wouldn’t become his wife until the last year of his life, Rose Beuret and completed his first known work, “Man with a Broken Nose.”3 It wasn’t until after he’d traveled with Carrier-Belleuse, worked with A.J. van Rasbourg and studied the arts of Donatello and Michelangelo in Italy before he made what many consider to have been his break-through piece, now referred to as “Age of Bronze.”4 From here, his artwork became more and more characterized by his careful sense of motion within the figures. Through his focus on realistic portrayal and subsequent ability to convey a deep sense of emotion and motion within his work, Rodin was commissioned to create a doorway for the still-to-be-constructed Museum of Decorative Arts. Rodin was supposed to create the “Gates of Hell” from Dante’s inferno, and spent most of the rest of his life dedicated to the project, but it was never completed. “For Rodin, the study of the human figure in a variety of poses indicative of many emotional states was a lifelong preoccupation … The gestures of Rodin’s figures seem motivated by inner emotional states.”5 By looking at one of his earlier works, the “St. John” and one of his later works such as “The Thinker”, one can see the way in which Rodin captures physical form and motion to illustrate inner tension and emotion. “His uncanny ability to convey movement and to show the inner feelings of the men and women he portrayed, the bravura of his light-catching modeling, and his extraordinary use of similar figures in different mediums, have established him as one of the greatest sculptors of all time.”6 Rodin’s second male nude sculpture was created larger than life in 1878. According to reports, “St. John the Baptist Preaching”7 was scaled at 6 feet, 7 inches as a deliberate means of refuting beyond doubt that the realism of the artist was the effect of the artist’s craft rather than a duplication, through simple casting, of a natural form.8 One of the first unusual things that one notices about this sculpture is that it seems to be moving forward even though both of the feet are flat on the ground. This is “a physical impossibility, and a technical achievement that was lost on most contemporary critics. Rodin chose this contradictory position to, in his words, ‘display simultaneously … views of an object which in fact can be seen only successively’.”9 Rodin achieves this effect in the careful positioning of the subject. The man is balanced in a wide forward stance such as a man would normally only take when in the process of moving forward quickly, as when moved by a powerful idea or emotion. This movement of the eye is carried upward into the further forward motion of the arm as it reaches out to emphasize his point. “In the St. John the artist caught the prophet at the moment when he was moved deeply, gesturing automatically by the strength of the idea he was presenting.”10 Although the man is nude, the lines of his muscles as they carry up through his torso are consistent with what we have seen of energetic, highly stressed motion. The muscles are both realistic and reinforcing to the dual concepts of motion and stasis. Thus, while it seems a realistic portrayal, the truth is this pose would be difficult to maintain for any length of time while the lines of the piece serve to keep the eye moving, reinforcing the idea of energy. Although Rodin’s masterwork “The Gates of Hell” was never completed, some of the pieces planned for this work were realized. One of these pieces is his now famous bronze sculpture “The Thinker.”11 This statue is often used as a symbol of philosophy or of man’s great intellectual endeavors because of its highly expressive qualities regarding the internal struggle the man is undergoing. The man, nude as a means of capturing the classical ideals of the heroic figure, sits on a rough pedestal in rigid thought. His back is bent as he rests his chin in his palm and his elbow on his opposite knee. The other hand loosely grabs this same knee as if all the stress is on one side of his body. Here, again, Rodin strives to portray a sense of realism while still breaking the rules to capture a deeper sense of the emotional nature of the piece. A normal man sitting on a stump thinking would tend to balance his elbow on the same side of his body rather than twisting, as Rodin’s figure does, to rest on the opposite knee. This twisting of the torso introduces a tremendous sense of unexplained tension as the body itself seems static. This is because the diagonal movement of his natural lines serves to introduce an idea of movement and suppressed energy. His brooding expression and introspective glance further serve to isolate him as he considers the weighty questions of the ages. By contrast to Rodin’s experiences, Ron Mueck found his way into high art through the unusual channel of television and film production. According to LifeCastings12, Mueck was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1958. His parents were toy makers and he grew up working somewhat in their field. As an adult, he worked in children’s television production, mostly in making models and as a puppeteer and designer.13 This eventually culminated in his participation in creating puppets and other special effects for David Bowie’s 1986 fantasy film “Labyrinth.” After this film, Mueck began his second career, starting his own company based in London in which he made models intended to be photographed for use in advertisements.14 Through this career, he was able to focus in on creating the lifelike details he wished to include in his art, but remained unfulfilled as a result of the primary medium through which his art was reaching the world. The problem was that photography only required him to get that portion of the model that would be within the camera’s frame to completion, the rest was surrounded by any kind of mess and, according to Mueck, the essential presence of the model was not conveyed through the finished image. He made his breakthrough when he began using fiberglass as a means of introducing more lifelike detail within his work medium and when Charles Saatchi noticed his piece entitled “Dead Dad”, a lifelike 2/3rds scale sculpture of his naked father lying dead on the floor. Saatchi has been a big supporter of modern art movements in Europe and made several commissions, which boosted Mueck from the realm of the advertising model business into the world of high art, where he has continued to surprise audiences with his often shockingly real, often called hyper-real, sculptures that are as often created in surprising scale.  A prime example of Mueck’s use of scale to help bring about an emotional reaction to the everyday can be found in his sculpture “Big Man.”15 The sculpture is exactly what it says it is, a big man, roughly 8 feet high sitting down. He is naked, including being completely free of any normal body hair anywhere, and sits flat on the floor with his knees drawn up in front of him. When asked about the lack of body hair in relation to other pieces the artist has made, Mueck replied, “The model was a ‘smoothie’ as they call them in the live modeling trade. It was very creepy. I had actually intended to put some hair on the figure, but in the end, the creepiness suited the size. I did think, however, that hairs on those big arms would have been quite nice actually – big, hairy gorilla arms.”16 The bent knees in front provide support for the big man to lean his beefy arms against, propping his chin in one hand and looking belligerently towards his viewers. Given his size, this stare can become quite unnerving. The artist’s use of fiberglass and resin enables him to achieve a very lifelike human color to the surface of his creation even as his choice of models illustrates his dedication to realism. The man, reportedly brought in as a live model unable to attain the tight fetal position the artist wanted because of his protruding belly, is by no means a perfect specimen of humanity’s ideals. Within the expressive surface of the sculpture are the subtle hints of soft fatty tissue drooping with age in the area just under his arms and in the soft ripples near his buttocks and ankles. Although the piece is incredibly realistic, the artist admits to purposely distorting portions of the body beyond the realistic to achieve his effects. For example, in “Big Man”, he says he purposely distorted the feet, which in actuality would be much too large for his body, as a means of emphasizing his bullish attitude and essence. In a similar way, the idea of the pregnant woman as all powerful is established in his sculpture “Pregnant Woman.”17 “At first, it’s the sheer technical brilliance of the figures that astounds. From the stubble on the chin of the small Man in a Boat to the mole on the neck of the 8 foot-tall Pregnant Woman, the attention to detail is awe-inspiring.”18 Her scale, 8 feet tall as opposed to the average mid-5 feet range, as well as her superb realism, contributes in large part to her impressive quality. Standing with her hands over her head and her feet slightly apart, this woman is not trying to hide any part of her body from the observer. Her face is slightly flushed, as if the room were too hot for her to bear in clothing and her hair is pulled up in an untidy knot, as a busy mother’s might be. This slightly flushed look provides her with a natural reason for having her hands above her head as she takes a moment to relax and cool off. She looks down toward the taut stretching of her belly as in a serene moment, which also has the effect, thanks to her large size, of allowing her to look down upon her visitors. This position provides her with an inherent power beyond that of her impending motherhood. With this position, she takes on the persona of everyone’s mother, exasperated and warm from keeping up with all her children even as she gets ready to bear another. In their artwork, both Rodin and Mueck demonstrate an obsession with representing as much of the real as they can while still acknowledging and utilizing the properties of art in its attempts to represent a lived experience. Both artists remain faithful to the imperfect forms of the human figure while also distorting these figures in some way as a means of more fully expressing the emotional appeals of their subjects. For me, it is easier to like Rodin’s sculptures because they retain that element of separation between living humans and artistic representation. Mueck’s work begins to take on realistic colorations and disturbingly distended or emphasized parts that are not normally so openly portrayed to a wide public. Because of their realistic qualities, it is impossible not to find a relationship with them, but because their unusual sizes, they force viewers to see the human figure and human behavior in an entirely new way that I find uncomfortable. Considering this, perhaps the modern world’s reactions to the works of artists such as Mueck, who attempt to capture the essence of a particular human characteristic or emotion, is much the same way in which the world of Rodin was disturbed by his unusually realistic approach to the human form. Understanding this connection, as well as the different reactions to the two artists, makes it possible for me to attempt considering Mueck’s work in a new light. Works Cited “Auguste Rodin.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia Foundation, (June 20, 2008). July 11, 2008 . This website offers a basic introduction to Rodin. It gives some of his history and discusses a few of his works. It also talks about some of the controversies that surrounded him. “Biography: Auguste Rodin.” Answers.com. (2008). July 10, 2008 This website provides a brief biography of the artist, quickly sketching through his artistic education and development. Although it is very brief, it does help fill in some of the gaps from other sources. Carter, Jonathan. “Hyperrealist Sculpture that Keeps up with its Neighbors.” Collective. Vol. 206. BBC. (June 22, 2003). July 10, 2008 This is a short website offered by the BBC that provides a brief introduction to Ron Mueck as an artist. It mentions his first breakthrough piece as well as his (then current) show featuring the Pregnant Woman statue. It helps to provide insight to the artist’s particular claim to fame. Mueck, Ron. “Pregnant Woman.” Fiberglass, resin. (2002). July 10, 2008 This is a website maintained by the National Gallery London. The page offers a frontal image of the Pregnant Woman statue against a white backdrop. This simple image enables close analysis of the statue’s artistry without embellishments or distractions. “Ron Mueck.” Resource Library. Arizona, (June, 2007). July 11, 2008 This site is a basic introduction to the artist. It is useful because it provides a little more detail regarding the artist’s earlier years and gives information about his history of work in high art. Rodin, Auguste. “St. John the Baptist Preaching.” July 10, 2008 This is an image website providing a picture of the statue. Rodin, Auguste. “The Thinker.” July 10, 2008 < http://www.musee-rodin.fr/images/imagra/S788.jpg> This is an image website providing a picture of the statue. Rodin Museum. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2008. July 11, 2008 This website is helpful because it provides a very quick characterization of Rodin’s work as a collection. It helps to understand what was important about Rodin’s work and how it was different or similar to other artists before and after. Tangey, Sarah. “The Progress Big Man: A Conversation with Ron Mueck.” Sculpture. International Sculpture Center. Vol. 22, N. 6, (July/August 2003). July 11, 2008 This website provides the transcript of an interview the author had with Ron Mueck specifically regarding the making of “Big Man.” Although it concentrates much of its attention on the actual, meaning physical, making of the statue, it also provides some of the background ideas and directions the author was thinking of as he approached and carried out the work. Read More