Rodin and Dance
The show began by
looking at his interest in the Cambodian dancers who came to Paris for a state
visit in 1906. Rodin became fascinated by their unusual movements and spent
three days in Marseilles with the troupe sketching them. If you watch the
recent “Fake or Fortune” series on TV you’ll remember that featured one of
these drawings. These are very freely drawn and painted works with a real sense
of movement.
It then looked at
his interest in avant guard dancers of the time including Isadora Duncan, Ruth
St Denis and Loie Fuller. The show included photos of them as well as his
drawings. I loved a strange photo of Duncan dancing in a garden watched by
Victorian men in hats.
The main section
of the show focused on a series of small sculptures Rodin made in 1911 called
“Dance Movements”. These were displayed
as a wonderful parade of dancers down the middle of the room. It turned out
they were all based on two figures he’d modelled which he then broke up and had
moulds made of the various parts. He then recast these and put them together in
various combinations to produce these beautiful figures. Once you’d read this
you had to go back and look again more closely to see the similarities. I
wouldn’t have realised this was how they were made if it hadn’t told me.
Around the walls
were a series of drawings Rodin had done of nude dancers. Some had been drawn
with them in one position but shown so that they were in a different stance.
There were also some where he had cut out the outline of the dancer. I really
liked these as they seemed more distinct and seemed a mid-way point between
drawings and sculpture. Some of the drawings were quite erotic and I was
interested to see that the model for many of them, Alda Moreno, had also
appeared in an erotic magazine of the time.
Closes on 22
January 2017
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