Works of Auguste Rodin featured at Brunnier Art Museum…
March 26, 2007 by Sandy Renshaw
Filed under Arts, Community, Education, Events, Guest Writer: Friedrich, Brenda
Rodin at Meudon, 1915
Photograph by Limet
It isn’t every day that an average Joe – or Jane – can view the work of a master. But through April 29, Brunnier Art Museum at Iowa State University is presenting the work of Auguste Rodin, who was widely regarded as the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo.
“Rodin: In His Own Words” features over 30 bronzes from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation along with a number of Rodin works on paper and a selection of original letters written by the artist.
Included in the exhibition are early works, such as The Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose and Saint John the Baptist Preaching plus many independent works from The Gates of Hell include The Thinker and Ugolino and Sons.
An added highlight is the award-winning documentary “Rodin: The Gates of Hell,” slated for March 29. This film depicts the painstaking process of the lost-wax casting of The Gates of Hell at the Coubertin Foundry in France in 1981.
Feature lectures covering varying aspects of Rodin and his work are also scheduled over the course of this exposition — such as Dr. John Cunnally’s talk, “Passion Made Visible: Rodin as Rebel, Lover, and Prophet” planned for Sunday, April 1. So be sure to visit the University Museums Web site for the complete schedule.
The Brunnier Art Museum is located on the 2nd floor of the Scheman Building, Iowa State Center (map).
Guest Author: Brenda Friedrich
This sounds awesome. There are also some Rodin pieces at the Des Moines Art Center - one of the greatest places on the planet. Neat blog, BTW!
NEWS RELEASE
January 8, 2007
News Release titled: 29 FAKE RODINS
from: Gary Arseneau
Ribault’s Gallery of Fine Art
319 Centre Street Fernandina Beach, Florida 32034
(904) 321-0021 gwarseneau@hotmail.com
Note: Footnotes are enclosed with { }.
The upcoming Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation’s Rodin: In His Own Words exhibition, opening May 25, 2007 at the Gibbes Museum of Art, is a -FRAUD{1}-.
In this exhibition, all of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation’s so-called Auguste Rodin “bronzes{2},” promoted by Gibbes Museum of Art as “by Auguste Rodin{3},” are, at best, non-disclosed reproductions. At least twenty-nine of these non-disclosed reproductions were posthumously reproduced between 1925 and 1995 with counterfeit “A. Rodin” signatures posthumously applied, some eight to seventy-eight years after Auguste Rodin’s death in 1917.
If we accept the common sense perspective that “dead men don’t create sculptures,” much less “sign and number” anything, wouldn’t the deceptive promotion of reproductions as sculptures make them “something that’s not what it purports to be{4}” which is one legal definition of -FAKE-?
An example of one of these non-disclosed fakes is Burghers of Calais, 1st Maquette listed above as “1884, date of cast unknown, Bronze, Godard {foundry}, 5{5}.” In the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation’s 2001 Rodin A Magnificent Obsession catalogue, it is also listed as “Signed and numbered A. Rodin No. 5 and inscribed E. Godard Fondeur{6}.” Since, the Godard foundry didn’t begin working with the Musee Rodin till 1969{7} some fifty-two years after Auguste Rodin’s death in 1917, how’d a dead Auguste Rodin sign and number anything?
FOOTNOTES:
1) On page 679 of the Seventh Edition of Black’s Law Dictionary, “fraud” is defined as: “A knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment.”
2) http://www.gibbesmuseum.org/learn/learn_main.html
3) http://www.gibbesmuseum.org/learn/learn_main.html
4) page 617, Seventh Edition of Black’s Law Dictionary, ISBN 0-314-22864-0
5) Northwestern Michigan College Dennos Museum Center’s 2006 “Rodin: In His Own Words” exhibition checklist from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation
6) page 180, RODIN, A Magnificent Obsession, ISBN 1 85894 143 1 hardback
7) page 293 of the former Musee Rodin curator Monique Laurent’s “Rodin and His Founders” essay, in the National Gallery of Art’s published 1981 Rodin Rediscovered catalogue, the curator documents that the “{E.} Godard” foundry began working with the Musee Rodin in “1969.”