Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1911 (Heft 34-35))

If we ask Rodin how he won his way to this belief, he replies with an
amused twinkle: “ Like many things that are important to us it was partly due
to accident. Take one of the most influencing things: ‘L’homme au nez
casse.’ I did not go out to look for that fellow. I was desperately poor as a
young man and could not afford to pay the usual rate for a good model. The
only person I saw was a terribly hideous man with a broken nose who used to
come in two or three times a week to clean out my atelier. Finally I had to have
somebody to model and I made this fellow sit for me. At first I could hardly
bear to do it, he seemed so dreadful to me. But while I was working, I dis-
covered that his head really had a wonderful shape, that in his own way he was
beautiful—and that is how I came to model ‘L’homme au nez casse.’ That
man taught me many things.”
But in spite of this amusing explanation, there were other moments in
Rodin’s life—moments of fierce adherence to a faith once conceived and never
renounced, moments of terrible struggle and deep wounds, until now the time
has come when he has ceased to battle and says to the world: “There is my
message. It is all I have to give. Take it or leave it, as you please,” which
one might alter, “Not as you please, but as the gods have made you,” for
these things are not of our volition. Agnes £rnst Meyer

RODIN’S BALZAC
EVERY ten or twenty years a work of art seems to be destined to become
typical of its period, a symbol of temporary accomplishment as well as
new aspiration. Chavannes’ “Le Pauvre Pecheur” was such a picture
which bewildered and filled me with languid curiosity to solve the everlasting
riddle of art. Whistler’s “Valparaiso Harbor,” dethroning the tyranny of
Grecian calm and ushering in the era of Japanese virility, impressed me the
same way. When I saw Manet’s “Dejeuner,” Monet’s “Rouen Cathedrals,”
Gauguin’s “Tahiti Woman,” I felt that old ideals were crumbling to dust, that
art was on the barricades and the expression of life passing through new
intellectual advancements. It is the moment when the muses pause in their
wanderings, take a deep breath, and lift their diaphanous robes to cross over
a boundary line into a new domain of the fairyland of art. Matisse may mean
the same to a younger generation. I have not seen enough of his work, or
rather not the one work of his that would sound the deeps of my esthetical
sensations.
Rodin’s “Balzac” in its passionate austerity is perhaps the highest
expression of this quest and transition of art convictions in modern times. It
possesses that sombre magnetism that instantly arouses all fibres of my heart.
In none of his other works burn the internal fires with intenser flame. I do
not know or care what other people think or say about this statue. That I
have to solve for myself.
Form is recognized by the muscular sweep of the eye in combining
adjacent points. A Greek statue affords beautiful lines under every aspect.

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