Auguste Rodin: Erotic Sketches Erotische Skizzen (Prestel's Erotic Sketchbooks) (German and English Edition)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists
Auguste Rodin: Erotic Sketches Erotische Skizzen (Prestel's Erotic Sketchbooks) (German and English Edition) Details
From Publishers Weekly This slim, beautifully-bound collection compiled by art historian Wolf features more than 30 of Rodin's nude sketches and provides a brief overview of the artist's scandalous presence within fin-de-siecle Paris. These simple but suggestive watercolor and pencil drawings, taken from the artist's later years, convey an immediacy and sensuality that belie his better-known work in monumental sculpture. Dismissed as obscene at the time of their drafting, the influence of Rodin's confident but delicate eroticism can be seen in the later works of Schiele, Picasso, and Matisse. Art enthusiasts will love this new perspective into the master sculptor's life and work. 38 color illustrations.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Read more Review "Handsomely produced." -- Art Times, May 2006 Read more
Reviews
Though very small in format and in brevity of content (a mere 64 pages with 38 illustrations), this little book serves art lovers and art historians well. Contained in this slight volume, and interspersed with cogent commentary by Norbert Wolf in both English and German, are Auguste Rodin's final sketches in pencil, watercolor and gouache of the female nude. Quite in contrast to his monumental sculptures these sketches reveal a different aspect of Rodin's genius - he introduces nude and nearly nude drawings of women in tandem, works that at the time of creation were scandalously dismissed as pornography.In today's harsher light these fine sketches provide a glance at not only Rodin's psyche but also at his amazingly fluid style of committing drawing to paper, a style in significant contrast to his strictly anatomically correct sculptural figures. The book is a delight to read and to peruse and allows us entry into the climate of the late 19th and early 20th century art realm. Grady Harp, September 06