Lampshard
Member
Last year I was reading about Auguste Rodin and was struck how in many ways his work and philosophy mirrored that of William Blake and other figures Dr. Peat admired, such as the Dutch painter Frans Hals and Dali. Rodin saw himself mostly as a craftsman, working with real material, instead of an abstract Picassian "genius" distanced from reality, even having to earn his living making ornaments as a "craft-worker", as Peat noted in the "Intelligence and Metabolism" article about Socrates and Einstein's "other" careers.
Rodin came from a working class family instead of descending from the aristocracy and was generally interested in common people (a general trend in Peaty figures, e.g. Paracelsus always preferred to discourse with peasants and farmers and stayed at their houses if possible, avoiding the day's nobility), always trying to capture the uniqueness of each of his models. Even though pseudo-metaphysical motives predominated in his era, he always focused on real persons and used established mythological themes only as a vessel to portray their likeness. For example his St. John the Baptist's story of meeting the model for the work is explained by him thusly:
"As soon as I saw him, I was filled with admiration; this rough, hairy man expressed violence in his bearing… yet also the mystical character of his race. I immediately thought of a Saint John the Baptist, in other words, a man of nature, a visionary, a believer, a precursor who came to announce one greater than himself. The peasant undressed, planted himself firmly on his feet, head up, torso straight, at the same time putting his weight on both legs, open like a compass. The movement was so right, so straightforward and so true that I cried: ‘But it’s a man walking!’ I immediately resolved to model what I had seen."
The physiological aspects are emphasized, a popular example being The Thinker's toes gripping the ground in intensity of thought. "Toes (and internal organs) are part of everything we do, making up part of the substance and meaning of things, except when indoctrination directs attention away from them." -R.P. No stone organ exists separately from the organism's body. A friend of mine, expert in the topic, said the best way to learn to analyze other people's gaits was precisely studying Rodin's sculpture, a testament to its anatomical accuracy. Every detail directly corresponds to a real tissue and its function, similarly to how every word in a language is ultimately tied to something real in existence, down to the infinitesimal flexions of finger tendons.
Every work seems to try to capture an idiosyncratic, unusual aspect of its model, be it posture, traumatism such as a broken nose, etc., which is similar to Frans Hals' approach of finding the unique in the common, which Peat suggested should serve as a foundation for new directions in art for the future. I decided to email him then and was pleasantly surprised to find out he also had labored over the topic long ago:
Once again energy and relaxation intertwine. I believe during his days as a teacher of sculpture, he came up with a softer beeswax-based substance, which probably had an inherent tendency to produce relaxed and fluid forms, helping students not to adjust to too rigid stone shapes. But the relation between the matter of stone and sculpture's form reminds me of him talking about his baking experiments, where he found substances as caffeine affected the dough's comportment not too unlike a human being's physiology. I guess it's harder to nixtamalize a statue than Italian pasta though. Brancusi was another figure who emphasized the physical properties of the stone used for statue-making and treated it like a living substance with its own life and personality.
This makes me believe a key to better understanding Dr. Peat's worldview will be studying the works of Rodin and his writings, as well as sculpture in general. Should Peaters go on pilgrimages to the Rodin Museum? Offer libations to his grave? I wouldn't know, as I am a simple teenage Somali girl.
Rodin came from a working class family instead of descending from the aristocracy and was generally interested in common people (a general trend in Peaty figures, e.g. Paracelsus always preferred to discourse with peasants and farmers and stayed at their houses if possible, avoiding the day's nobility), always trying to capture the uniqueness of each of his models. Even though pseudo-metaphysical motives predominated in his era, he always focused on real persons and used established mythological themes only as a vessel to portray their likeness. For example his St. John the Baptist's story of meeting the model for the work is explained by him thusly:
"As soon as I saw him, I was filled with admiration; this rough, hairy man expressed violence in his bearing… yet also the mystical character of his race. I immediately thought of a Saint John the Baptist, in other words, a man of nature, a visionary, a believer, a precursor who came to announce one greater than himself. The peasant undressed, planted himself firmly on his feet, head up, torso straight, at the same time putting his weight on both legs, open like a compass. The movement was so right, so straightforward and so true that I cried: ‘But it’s a man walking!’ I immediately resolved to model what I had seen."
The physiological aspects are emphasized, a popular example being The Thinker's toes gripping the ground in intensity of thought. "Toes (and internal organs) are part of everything we do, making up part of the substance and meaning of things, except when indoctrination directs attention away from them." -R.P. No stone organ exists separately from the organism's body. A friend of mine, expert in the topic, said the best way to learn to analyze other people's gaits was precisely studying Rodin's sculpture, a testament to its anatomical accuracy. Every detail directly corresponds to a real tissue and its function, similarly to how every word in a language is ultimately tied to something real in existence, down to the infinitesimal flexions of finger tendons.
Every work seems to try to capture an idiosyncratic, unusual aspect of its model, be it posture, traumatism such as a broken nose, etc., which is similar to Frans Hals' approach of finding the unique in the common, which Peat suggested should serve as a foundation for new directions in art for the future. I decided to email him then and was pleasantly surprised to find out he also had labored over the topic long ago:
Once again energy and relaxation intertwine. I believe during his days as a teacher of sculpture, he came up with a softer beeswax-based substance, which probably had an inherent tendency to produce relaxed and fluid forms, helping students not to adjust to too rigid stone shapes. But the relation between the matter of stone and sculpture's form reminds me of him talking about his baking experiments, where he found substances as caffeine affected the dough's comportment not too unlike a human being's physiology. I guess it's harder to nixtamalize a statue than Italian pasta though. Brancusi was another figure who emphasized the physical properties of the stone used for statue-making and treated it like a living substance with its own life and personality.
This makes me believe a key to better understanding Dr. Peat's worldview will be studying the works of Rodin and his writings, as well as sculpture in general. Should Peaters go on pilgrimages to the Rodin Museum? Offer libations to his grave? I wouldn't know, as I am a simple teenage Somali girl.
