Rodin And Ancient Greece

A fascinating look at how Classical sculpture inspired Rodin and his work Rodin, famous for The Thinker and The Kiss, was captivated by the sculptures of Classical antiquity and he constantly reworked and assimilated the forms of ancient Greek and Roman art in his own work. Rodin visited the British Museum for the first time in the summer of 1881 and there greatly admired the sculptures of the Parthenon. Before he saw the originals, he was already acquainted with plaster casts of them displayed in the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. The Parthenon sculptures continued to be a major influence on his own work and he visited them frequently on his return visits to London. He also amassed a huge collection of fragments of ancient sculpture that served as a great source of inspiration. An introduction to this volume, published to accompany an exhibition at the British Museum, by Hartwig Fischer, the Museum’s director, reflects on the internationalism of the Parthenon sculptures and their global reach, and essays by the curators of the exhibition tell the story of their reception in the modern era, and chart the lifelong relationship between these sculptures and Rodin. The works featured are arranged thematically, with sections on Rodin’s Parthenon, Truth to Nature, the Monument, the Fragment and Motion and Emotion. The book includes examples of Rodin’s drawings as well as his sculpture.

The Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum are unrivaled examples of classical Greek art, an inspiration to artists and writers since their creation in the fifth century bce. A superb visual introduction to these wonders of antiquity, this book offers a photographic tour of the most famous of the surviving sculptures from ancient Greece, viewed within their cultural and art-historical context. Ian Jenkins offers an account of the history of the Parthenon and its architectural refinements. He introduces the sculptures as architecture--pediments, metopes, Ionic frieze--and provides an overview of their subject matter and possible meaning for the people of ancient Athens. Accompanying photographs focus on the pediment sculptures that filled the triangular gables at each end of the temple; the metopes that crowned the architrave surmounting the outer columns; and the frieze that ran around the four sides of the building, inside the colonnade. Comparative images, showing the sculptures in full and fine detail, bring out particular features of design and help to contrast Greek ideas with those of other cultures. The book further reflects on how, over 2,500 years, the cultural identity of the Parthenon sculptures has changed. In particular, Jenkins expands on the irony of our intimate knowledge and appreciation of the sculptures--a relationship far more intense than that experienced by their ancient, intended spectators--as they have been transformed from architectural ornaments into objects of art.

Met biografie, beknopte bibliografie en register.

Rodin’s erotic depictions of women in drawings, sculptures, plasters, bronzes, and marbles The theme of the erotic is ever present in the work of August Rodin, both in his sculptures and in his many drawings. Throughout his career, he depicted sexual desire in all its facets, in every mood from delicate innocence to frank intensity, bearing witness to an endless fascination with the flesh and a love of the female form. Taking a chronological path through Rodin's career, this is an intimate approach to the many faces of sex and sensuality in his body of work and in the society within which his art was forged, from mythological portrayals of passion to the context of contemporary erotic literature. The topics featured include his relationships with women, his friendships with poets and artists, and the controversy that his sculptures caused in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when French society was marked by a hypocritical disparity between public morals and private desires. In a 1916 interview, Rodin spoke out against his critics: "They protest against the immorality of my work, they criticize me for loving women…. But they are incapable of understanding what I do." This witty and insightful book, packed with beautiful images, will shed new light on this intriguing aspect of the artist's world and his skill at capturing the fleeting nature of pleasure in timeless art.

The Art of Rodin is a beautiful and informative guide to the life and work of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The book contains numerous full-color illustrations of Rodin's most famous works, as well as detailed descriptions and analysis of his techniques and influences. It is a must-have for anyone interested in sculpture and the history of art. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed 'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post 'Marvellous...Finkel is an expert in Mesopotamian cultures at the British Museum, and is one of the most clever, and nicest, of people it has ever been my pleasure to encounter...A fascinating journey' - The Scotsman There are few things more in common across cultures than the belief in ghosts. Ghosts inhabit something of the very essence of what it is to be human. Whether we personally 'believe' or not, we are all aware of ghosts and the rich mythologies and rituals surrounding them. They have inspired, fascinated and frightened us for centuries - yet most of us are only familiar with the vengeful apparitions of Shakespeare, or the ghastly spectres haunting the pages of 19th century gothic literature. But their origins are much, much older... The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies takes us back to the very beginning. A world-renowned authority on cuneiform, the form of writing on clay tablets which dates back to 3400BC, Irving Finkel has embarked upon an ancient ghost hunt, scouring these tablets to unlock the secrets of the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians to breathe new life into the first ghost stories ever written. In The First Ghosts, he uncovers an extraordinarily rich seam of ancient spirit wisdom which has remained hidden for nearly 4000 years, covering practical details of how to live with ghosts, how to get rid of them and bring them back, and how to avoid becoming one, as well as exploring more philosophical questions: what are ghosts, why does the idea of them remain so powerful despite the lack of concrete evidence, and what do they tell us about being human?

Oxbow says: This book's author does not shy away from expressing her opinions on the destruction of ancient sites in Greece and her belief that the Elgin Marbles are best left in the care of the British Museum, or at least for the time being.

The Necessity of Sculpture brings together a selection of articles on sculpture and sculptors from Eric Gibson’s nearly four-decade career as an art critic. It covers subjects as diverse as Mesopotamian cylinder seals, war memorials, and the art of the American West; stylistic periods such as the Hellenistic in Ancient Greece and Kamakura in medieval Japan; Michelangelo, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and other historical figures; modernists like Auguste Rodin, Pablo Picasso, and Alberto Giacometti; and contemporary artists including Richard Serra, Rachel Whiteread, and Jeff Koons. Organized chronologically by artist and period, this collection is as much a synoptic history of sculpture as it is an art chronicle. At the same time, it is an illuminating introduction to the subject for anyone coming to it for the first time.