Camille Claudel Charles, Victoria
2020, 2020-12-30, 2018-04-11
eBook
Fascinated from a young age by crafting models with her hands, French sculptor, painter, and draughtswoman Camille Claudel (1864-1943) fought to overcome the hurdles placed in the way of female ...artists and carved a place for herself in the history of art. Following an apprenticeship with Alfred Boucher, Claudel entered the studio of Auguste Rodin, with whom she had a tumultuous ten-year love affair which often threatens to eclipse her art. The two artists had a profound impact on one another, each of their features appearing in the other's work. After breaking off the relationship to forge her own path, Claudel created a stunning, incredibly modern oeuvre of works. Though many were destroyed by her own hands, those that remain are a powerful testament to her artistic genius.
Mellom 1892 og 1901 var Gustav Vigeland på to lange opphold i Paris, i en periode som ledet opp til hans gjennombrudd. Arbeidene han slo gjennom med kan tolkes som inspirert av samtidig fransk kunst. ...Fra disse årene finnes flere likheter mellom Vigelands og franske Camille Claudels verk. I hvilken grad var hun en inspirasjon for Vigeland? Gjennom kontekst og utvalgte verk diskuterer artikkelen en mulig forbindelse.
This article interprets various letters by the French sculptor Camille Claudel, in the light of fin-de-siècle French discourses on the 'femme artiste' and 'art féminin'. Drawing on the ...psychopathological concept of the 'double bind' and theoretical discussions of the gendering of genius, the article argues that the artistic and epistolary persona constructed in these letters throws light on the psychological conflicts typically experienced by talented women faced with paradoxical injunctions. It concludes that Claudel's personal negotiation of these constraints contained elements of success and failure that cause us to rethink the typical formulaic, pathologizing explanations of her life story.
Camille Claudel is a sculptor who has traditionally been approached in terms of her relationship to Rodin and his influence on her work. Indeed, the two shared a passionate relationship and there are ...certainly similarities between the two sculptors' work which provide for fascinating analyses. However, one of the acknowledged but previously unexplored speculations on Claudel's art suggests that it involves a measure of veiled spirituality sealed within its stone. It is precisely this sacred element within her sculptures that offers viewers an opportunity to experience transcendence while identifying with fundamental themes. Furthermore, Claudel created her figures as a method of interior healing and deliverance. This theme of redemption will be essential to arriving at the more profound, multifaceted interpretations of her sculptures. To highlight the connections to the various artists and movements discussed in the thesis, Claudel's piously thematic art can be compared to the nontraditional illustrations by Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and the religious depictions of James Tissot, as well as being seen as engaging with the idea of theosophy and the Symbolist art movement. It is true that in fin-de-siècle France, due to the advancing secularization of society, viewers did not understand religious and spiritual symbolism in art as comprehensively as they had in the past. However, it will be necessary to show that Claudel was not the only artist interested of her era who persisted in conveying spiritual themes within supposedly secular scenes. Yet, Claudel's work remains unique in that it communicates the theme of redemption through its creation as well as through its creator. Chez Claudel, the art and the artist are united and one cannot be fully understood without the other. Moreover, through her masterpieces, she did not only offer insight into the meaning of existence; through her redemptive works she found momentary salvation for herself and for others from the excruciating outward oppression present at the close of the 19th century. Unfortunately, since the moment she began to successfully achieve recognition for her work critics have been content to view each of Camille Claudel's sculptures as a deliberate response to her tumultuous relationship with Rodin. This thesis will investigate more enlightened interpretations made possible when one simultaneously considers the role of her spirituality. It will become unmistakably clear that Camille's brother Paul was right when he stated that her work is vastly different from all other artists' "because it welcomes light and radiates the inner dream that inspired it" (Ayral-Clause 157).
THE equally powerful Niobide blessée (Wounded Niobid), cast in bronze in 1907, is the last work by Camille Claudel to survive. This biographical note comes from Ayral-Clause, who gives a blow-by-blow ...account of Camille's terrible final years, her existence slowly destroyed by paranoid delusions in which "Auguste Rodin and his 'gang'" loomed large. By 1913, the year her father died, Camille was 48 - not much older than Rodin when she met him - isolated behind closed shutters in her filthy atelier, scavenging for food in garbage cans, attacking with a hammer the sculptures she had made. Her mother, who never forgave the scandalous affair with Rodin, had cut Camille out of the family's life. Two days after Monsieur Claudel's funeral (Camille was not invited), Madame Claudel arranged for her daughter's forcible removal to an asylum, insisting she be fully sequestered from the outside world. When Camille's persecution mania subsided, the doctor suggested letting her out on a trial basis: "Madame Claudel immediately replied with a complete refusal," writes Ayral-Clause. A collection of Camille Claudel's sculptures is on display in a room at the Musée Rodin in Paris. I've not been there myself, but .when I emailed a friend and happened to mention the ballet, she replied: "I love Camille's work. I brought the kids to the Rodin Museum last summer and we visited the Camille section (it's like an annex; one can have a feminist reading of the Rodin Museum!). The work was absolutely superb, in every part as great as Rodin's. ... Wow, I would really like to see Les Grands Ballets' interpretation."
Rather than take us through the phases of Claudel's life -- her formal studies with Boucher in Paris, her long professional and personal relationship with Auguste Rodin, her years of solitary ...struggle culminating in mental illness and institutionalization -- the museum provides an elegant overview of the major tropes, preoccupations and styles of French sculpture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Works by Nogent's other master sculptors feature prominently, along with monumental groups and interior pieces from dozens of artists ranging across 10 galleries devoted to historical and mythological themes, nudes and movement studies. A highlight here is a preparatory plaster model for Paul Richer's "Tres in Una" (c. 1903), which compares idealized women from classical antiquity, the Renaissance and the modern age, commenting on an aesthetic debate over the depiction of the female form that is strongly felt in Claudel's work.
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