"A life rarely unfolds in linear fashion. Rodin's was no exception. Still, it is necessary to follow the road he traveled from his first works to those in his triumphant retrospective at the Exposition Universelle of 1900, when Rodin assumed his position as the most widely known and respected sculptor in Europe." ¹

Rodin: In His Own Words, Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation is a nonlinear survey of Rodin's achievements organized thematically. The themes are (1) faithfulness to nature, where one finds the Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose; (2) expressively modeled surfaces, where one finds The Thinker; (3) development of monumental public sculpture, where one finds The Burghers of Calais and Head of Balzac; (4) partial figures and fragments as complete works of art, where one finds Torso of the Walking Man; and (5) recycling of figures, where one finds I am Beautiful, a work that is a combination of the figures of The Falling Man and The Crouching Woman. Finally, a section on Rodin's working method explains the ten-step lost-wax casting process.

1. Jacques Vilain, foreword to The Shape of Genius, by Ruth Butler (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), p. ix. Return to text