Musée Rodin

Yesterday, my boss from last summer was in town for the day. She is a commercial airline pilot, so visits Paris quite a bit, but had never been to the Rodin Museum and said she had always wanted to go. I met her there.

I really love that museum, not only for his work, but because of the general feel of the place. It is a large mansion that has been cleared out and which houses work of his as well as a few of his contemporaries and students, including his muse of 10 years, Camille Claudel. It has a beautiful walled garden behind with his sculptures scattered throughout. The inside of the house is amazing, it has a broken grandeur about it. The paint is chipping, some doors are half-painted and then there will randomly be an old wardrobe amongst the art.

I love his work in the same way as I love the mansion. The craftsmanship is astounding, but at the same time it is not necessarily smooth, manicured, tranquil or calming. Plus he has some sexy, sexy stuff which is always nice.

While walking with my friend, we started to talk about the eyes of the sculptures, her noticing how kind of strange it was that most of his work just has holes where they should be. She said it is the stuff horror movies are made of. But it made me so much more aware of their faces and the emotion behind the piece.

So I went looking for sculptures around the museum with eyes, and I came to the conclusion that this was exactly the perfect touch to his scultures. Adding eyes makes them look lifeless, but giving you a space to look into makes each person a little more full of life. Example:

Rodin sculpture of Gustav Mahler (no eyeballs)

Old statue of Julius Caesar (with eyeballs)

From now during a Sculptorades challenge when I play Cranium, I will dig out the eyes...