A Celebration of Rodin

As 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the death of the most famous sculptor to emerge fromthe  19th Century,  I recently got a double dose of Auguste Rodin. His work was the subject of a special exhibit both at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum. The former closed on the fourth, but the latter is to remain open through April 22.

The Burghers of Calais
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It's worth seeing, not because you can't see these Rodin pieces in other exhibits but because of some of the insight it offers. For example, there's a video that shows the process currently used for casting in bronze that still uses lost wax as it did in Rodin's day, though it also incorporates some modern materials that would not have been been accessible to him.

But the one part of the exhibit that made the biggest impression on me was the account of Rodin's early art education. When he was 14, he began his formal art eduction at  the École Impériale Spéciale de Dessin et de Mathématiques – known as the “Petite École," to distinguish it from the   the top school, the École des Beaux-Arts. Rodin applied to that school at 17 and was rejected -- not just once but three times.

It's an amazing thing when you think about: the biggest name in sculpture in his day was seen as unworthy of the best art school. It's possible to infer a great many things from this about the limits of expert knowledge in terms of predicting success, self-awareness of talent that rises above the assessment of others, or even the possibility the true achievement is not a matter of what one is taught but what one learns to do on his own.