Rodin's "The Martyr", 1910
IMG_1351f
Processed 2021
A sculpture that has been difficult to photograph and process, but with which I'm now satisfied.
This is Rodin's Half Length Figure of a Woman (The Martyr), 1910, cast in bronze. At the High Museum of Art, it's a difficult one to photograph as one can only use available light, as with all works, and this bronze drinks up the light. It's a peculiar piece with an interesting history, and has become a work that I favor over his others.
It began as a full figure piece standing piece used on The Gates, then was enlarged and returned to the horizontal positioning in which it was originally modeled. It's a tortured figured with a somewhat quieted face that has been described as ecstatic, suffering or expressive of death, body twisted and legs elevated in a manner that has described as if resting on pillows (perhaps they simply mean the model). For me, the manner in which the figure is frozen echoes the figures of Pompeii--but it is called "The Martyr".
That figure was used as the base for this one, the torso truncated, progressively tilted forward, and a new head/hair added.
The hair is odd, and I may be wrong but examining the hair on other statues of Rodin's, its exceptional for his work, the way it is matted, as if it could be wet--with water, with blood? But there's something about the figure that also makes me think of metamorphosis as well, the hair seeming even to have a plant-like affect, of leaves, reminding me of myths of women pursued by gods and others who were, however losing their humanity, preserved by transformation into different things, leaves, animals, so they may forever elude their captors. An ambiguous figure, it invites such meditations in an effort to comprehend it.
Details on Rodin's transformation of the figure can be found in Rodin's Art: The Rodin Collection of Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center of Visual Arts at Stanford University, by Albert Elsen and Rosalyn Jamison.
The High Museum of Art photo archival record.
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