Rodin's work is a conspicuous, a shining
example of the return to nature on the part not of a mere realist,
naturalist, or other variety of "mediocre artist," but of a profoundly
poetic and imaginative temperament.
This is why, one immediately perceives in studying his works, Rodin's
treatment, while exhausting every contributary detail to the end of
complete expression, is never permitted to fritter away its energy
either in the mystifications of optical illusion, or in the infantine
idealization of what is essentially subordinate and ancillary. This is
why he devotes three months to the study of a leg, for example--not to
copy, but to "possess" it. Indeed, no sculptor of our time has made such
a sincere and, in general, successful, effort to sink the sense of the
material in the conception, the actual object in the artistic idea. One
loses all sense of bronze or marble, as the case may be, not only
because the artistic significance is so overmastering that one is
exclusively occupied in apprehending it, but because there are none of
those superficial graces, those felicities of surface modelling, which,
however they may delight, infallibly distract as well.
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