My name's not important

I'm really late to jump on the bandwagon, but I've been too busy designing the fjords for Earth mk III to blog...

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Louvre - 1st visit

Arriving early has its benefits...
...almost no queue!


Venus de Milo is always shown in postcards and books front-on.

I think that there is a reason for this - she seems to show a serious case of 'plumber's crack' - an inevitable side effect of wearing your robe so low down on your hips. Not just an early 21st century fad.




















Hey! Don't point that camera up MY NOSE!!

But.. I think she is very elegant from every angle.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Musée Rodin III - Balzac






The upper portion of the finished commission prior to going to the foundry for bronze casting, photographed in Rodin's studio in Meudon, 1897.

Rodin was commissioned to sculpt the writer Honore de Balzac by the writer Emile Zola in his capacity as president of the Société des Gens de Lettres, in 1891. The finished bronze casting was completed in 1898 - all the studies below were done over the intervening years.




On the Wikipedia site for Balzac's biography, an undated (assumed contemporary) portrait shows the writer bore a distinct likeness to Australian comedian Mick Molloy. Sculpted close to five decades after Balzac's death, most of Rodin's studies gave me a flavour of former Federal leader of the Australian Labour Party, Kim Beazley. Not only the body shape - also the brow, the proud stance, even his nose and cheeks from some angles.

Balzac's ball-sack - a nude study Rodin executed to get the right bulges under the gown in the final commissioned cast:



... though those aren't really his genitals there - Rodin gave the model what I think is referred to in Hollywood nowadays as a 'modesty pouch'.


Oddur's sketch of the Balzac study


Loni's sketch of the same Balzac study, from a slightly different angle

Drawing the big brassy study of Balzac in the nude was a great chance to sketch an unconventional body. Most of what we saw in Paris was sculpture based on classical Greek notions of representing humans. Rodin certainly sculpted archetypes - but he was also interested in getting some realism in commissions for historical figures. Balzac's features are quite probably exagerrated, but do not stray into caricature.


Turn off the bloody flash, will you!?

Monday, January 22, 2007

Musée Rodin II - 'Meditation' enigma & collected painters


'Meditation' 1894

This sculpture could be Rodin's Venus de Milo, or maybe his sculpted Mona Lisa - or perhaps even both. I get the feeling this shape mattered more to Rodin personally than his Thinker or any other work he might be more famous for. Read more on the above hyperlink from Musée Rodin, also in the image below, which you can click on to enlarge:


Loni sketched her from this angle









The work is sometimes also known as The Inner Voice. Here's two more snapped from other angles:
Some paintings collected by Rodin, or acquired by the museum after his death:



Edvard MUNCH 'Rodin's "The Thinker" in the garden of Dr Linde in Lubeck' (undated)


Vincent VAN GOGH 'View of the viaduct near Arles' 1888


Vincent VAN GOGH 'The Harvesters' 1888

Some more detailed images of 'The Harvesters':







































You can also see the famous van Gogh, Father Tanguy, here at the Rodin website.

Lastly, two snapshots of a Monet that was guarded under thick greenish glass. The island in Brittany where this was painted was, for many years, home to a little-known Australian painter, John Peter Russell. The house where he lived on the island was frequently visited by both Monet and Henri Matisse.






Claude MONET 'Belle-Ile' 1886

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Musée Rodin

There is a song that goes, 'I love Paris in the springtime'...
...well you have to love it in late Autumn too when the weather is as mild and delightful as this. Hard to believe it is 1st November! In just a few more days, Loni's family arrives; and it does get cold - bitterly so - for the first time in my five-week stay in Europe.



Thanks to the country of my birth, the coldness does not bother me. However I will not complain about warm or mild weather either. Of course, if this is in fact due to climate change... well we're all screwed.





What did you say?
You mean, I can bare more than just my upper thigh? Hooray for togas!


Aargh! No! Don't encourage him! He'll streak at the drop of a hat!


Yes, global warming is probably welcomed by some sections of society - naturists who advocate a clothes-free lifestyle, and life drawing models who make a living out of posing naked for artists (and perverts posing as art students).


Well, that's it for silly stuff in this posting. Now to a pose that Rodin obviously liked (or maybe it just didn't sell as well as 'The Thinker' so there were lots of these left over when his estate was handed over to the people of France).















Apologies for the mixed-up layout of these images. Of course, there were meant to be lots of these left over and lying around - they are studies for an ensemble of people who are interacting within a large assembled group. It's one of the figures arranged in Rodin's Monument to the Burghers of Calais.

Mr Porter did actually write further:

I love Paris in the fall.

I love Paris in the winter

when it drizzles

I love Paris in the summer

when it sizzles.

I love Paris evry moment

ev'ry moment of the year