RODIN AND THE ART OF ANCIENT GREECE

A British Museum and Thames & Hudson co-production with 203 illustrations, the book tells the story of the reception of the Parthenon sculptures in the modern era, as well as Rodin's continued engagements with them throughout his life. Famous for The Thinker and The Kiss, Auguste Rodin drew energy and inspiration from the art of Classical antiquities, and he absorbed and assimilated the modes of ancient Greek and Roman art in his own work in innovative ways. The Parthenon sculptures in particular were a lifelong passion and he first encountered them in books, plaster casts at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and some originals in the Louvre, and then drew them first-hand on several visits to the British Museum. He amassed a collection of antiquities, including many fragments of marble sculpture, which he regarded as complete objects in themselves and introduced the idea in his own work of the headless, limbless torso as an object of art, much influencing his contemporaries. Here is all the emotion and the motion, and essays and texts by such experts as Celeste Farge and Ian Jenkins on the French Romance for Greek marbles, and Bénédicte Garnier on The Thousand Parthenons of Auguste Rodin. Rodin rejoiced in the Parthenon sculptures as precious survivors of the art of Pheidias, the most famous sculptor of all antiquity, and in him Rodin found a spiritual companion and mentor. Rodin's modernism bridged the abyss of time, and the headless, armless The Walking Man seems to stride into the 20th century announcing a new purpose for sculpture, for art, for mankind. Exquisitely printed and bound with hundreds of full page and double page spreads, illustrations, close ups and working plasters, Rodin at work in photographs and old gelatine silver prints, with large pull quotes, this is a rare exhibition catalogue Bibliophile is lucky to offer at a discount. 240 very large pages.