Rodin Sex and the Making of Modern Sculpture David J. Getsy

During his lifetime, Auguste Rodin's name became synonymous with modern sculpture. It also became linked with sex. 'Desire! What a formidable stimulant', he once remarked. Rodin came to emphasize the importance of desire and the sexual as the markers of his individual perspective, using them to fuel his increasingly daring treatments of the nude. Bodily passion became the primary means through which he sought to make sculpture evocative, expressive and universally appealing. Concurrently, Rodin staged his own acts of making through the manipulation of sculptural techniques, prompting viewers to imagine the scenes of the creation of his objects in his studio.

In the minds of many viewers, the dramatic and activated surfaces of his sculptures came to be seen as evidence of not just a sculptor's touch but a lover's touch as well. David Getsy examines these developments by focusing on two pivotal moments in Rodin's career: first, 1876, the year his work is catalyzed through an engagement with Michelangelo; and, second, 1900, the year of the one-person exhibition that catapulted him to international public notoriety.

This fascinating book makes a case for reconsidering the terms of Rodin's influence, arguing that the sculptor placed renewed emphasis on the materiality and objecthood of sculpture as a means of asserting his own desire's inseparability from his works. In his compelling analysis of this practice, Getsy offers a critical account of the origins of modern sculpture and how sex became a key term in Rodin's making of it.

David J. Getsy is the Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Chair in Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the author of Body Doubles: Sculpture in Britain, 1877-1905, also published by Yale University Press, and editor of From Diversion to Subversion: Games, Play, and Twentieth-Century Art and Sculpture and the Pursuit of a Modern Ideal in Britain, c.1880-1930.

"This is an important book presenting arguments that are of great interest for the study of late nineteenth and early twentieth century sculpture and of modernism generally……Gestsy has established himself as one of our leading scholars of late – nineteenth century sculpture." —Dennis Wardleworth, Cassone

"A refreshing counterpoint to the impressive archive-based research of the last twenty years... his arguments are totally worth listening to."—Catherine Lampert, Burlington Magazine

"Thoroughly recommended"—Claire Jones, Sculpture Journal

Page spreads