I devoted this week exclusively for working and research on sculpture in conjunction with the work that I am finishing for St. Merry. The wood sculpture is progressing quite rapidly and a midweek visit to Musée Rodin had given me a number of ideas and insights that I can apply to my own work. Having been in Paris midway into my residency I have also noticed some changes in my behavior and routine that reveals a certain level of grounded-ness on my part.
A tour (and attending part of the mass) of the abbey church of St.Pierre de Montmartre was the starting activity of the week, Sunday. This time I decided to take the bus (Line 96) to get to Pigalle and from the ascend the Butte Montmartre on foot. It has become a weekly habit for me to visit this area at least once a week to take in the panorama of the city and also to make sketches of people, places and scenes. The following day I took more tools to St. Merry to continue carving and this activity continued until the next day. With keys given to me by Marguerite I had access to the cellar and have on occasion worked for six to seven hours until evening. But at the end of Tuesday night I felt I needed some references in technique. I was working with my own blocking technique and wanted to know what other sculptors here used to make forms.
To this end I spent half a day's worth of hours in Musée Rodin in rue de Varenne. (For a more exhaustive account of this visit see my blog at riel.weebly.com) From this visit I was able to gather a number of insights into sculpture as a craft. Rodin's own body of work had developed from the tradition of figurative statuary, referencing the Greco-Roman examples of Antiquity. His works form a stylistic bridge between this tradition (carried on by Renaissance ateliers to Neoclassical academies) to the modern epoch with an increasing sense of consciousness of material and process. To be honest I have tarried in seeing this museum because my subject of research, medieval sculpture, was seen by artists like Rodin as a backwater of a linear view of art history. Rodin directly connects with the epoch after it, via Michelangelo and the one preceding it. Medieval statuary was influenced not by naturalistic observations but by systems of proportion of a mystico-mathematical geometry. And of course majority of medieval sculpture are engaged with architecture, as ornaments. Rodin, like the Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic artists that worked before him had freed sculpture as an independent work, although the highlight of the oeuvre of a master's career was still, the monument.
Rodin was always said to be a genius modeller. Which means his clay models almost always held the vigor that was essentially captured in bronze, or in marble, by many collaborators. I was amused to discover that this artist had employed several apprentices, casters and stone cutters that some have actually complained that Rodin always kept claiming all labors to his credit alone. A sly contemporary even took note that before the cameras and reporters came in to his numerous ateliers Rodin would have asked the workers to exit and place bits of marble on his beard to look as if he was in the middle of work! Rodin had improved his craft so much he made it into a career and later as an enterprise. (And engaging the services of writers such as poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Kahlil Gibran!) He milked the romantic idea that all sculptors worked alone, like Pygmalion, and became wealthy. Not bad!
My attention was held for a few hours at the special exhibit of his marble works titled, Flesh and Marble. It was a wonderfully curated show that featured Rodin's use of the non finito (unfinished) technique in carved stone which he was successful in employing in his bronzes and plasters. Although none of the 400 works of marble can be claimed to be worked on by him directly (he employed stonemasons) the result of the non finito technique was amazing in translation to stone. The exhibit so moved me that I began thinking of working in carving marble as well. (But when I saw a video of how marble was carved by hand, I realized I needed to build a new studio for this). I had several insights into the main characteristics of Rodin's work and learned some secrets behind their sense of power, besides monumentality. I promised myself to find a way to translate these in my own work as well.
This I attempted to do in the remaining days of the week with my sculpture project in St. Merry. I realized that the nearest technique that comes close to Rodin's carving process (or his stonemasons) is the gouge-work employed in Paete, Laguna in the Philippines. The carvings of indigenous peoples of the North employ more flat chisel (paet) techniques that result in more linear finish. Paete carvers utilize a wide range of gouges that is used to cut rounder pieces, in a Baroque fashion and style. But there is a whole universe between stone and wood carving! Stone uses punches to break the stone and then it is worked with rasps and files to achieve polish. Wood is technically cut and shaved (chipped). I was also able to observe an ivory carver near St. Germain de Pres and I was fascinated that he uses more rasps and files to create the shape he wants. Surely the subtractive method of sculpture is a world on its own.
With the conclusion of this week I begin my final 40 days in France. After the sculpture is finished I am off once more to a research mode. Next week I will be exploring regions outside Paris, from Ile de France to Normandy, Picardie and Champagne.
A tour (and attending part of the mass) of the abbey church of St.Pierre de Montmartre was the starting activity of the week, Sunday. This time I decided to take the bus (Line 96) to get to Pigalle and from the ascend the Butte Montmartre on foot. It has become a weekly habit for me to visit this area at least once a week to take in the panorama of the city and also to make sketches of people, places and scenes. The following day I took more tools to St. Merry to continue carving and this activity continued until the next day. With keys given to me by Marguerite I had access to the cellar and have on occasion worked for six to seven hours until evening. But at the end of Tuesday night I felt I needed some references in technique. I was working with my own blocking technique and wanted to know what other sculptors here used to make forms.
To this end I spent half a day's worth of hours in Musée Rodin in rue de Varenne. (For a more exhaustive account of this visit see my blog at riel.weebly.com) From this visit I was able to gather a number of insights into sculpture as a craft. Rodin's own body of work had developed from the tradition of figurative statuary, referencing the Greco-Roman examples of Antiquity. His works form a stylistic bridge between this tradition (carried on by Renaissance ateliers to Neoclassical academies) to the modern epoch with an increasing sense of consciousness of material and process. To be honest I have tarried in seeing this museum because my subject of research, medieval sculpture, was seen by artists like Rodin as a backwater of a linear view of art history. Rodin directly connects with the epoch after it, via Michelangelo and the one preceding it. Medieval statuary was influenced not by naturalistic observations but by systems of proportion of a mystico-mathematical geometry. And of course majority of medieval sculpture are engaged with architecture, as ornaments. Rodin, like the Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic artists that worked before him had freed sculpture as an independent work, although the highlight of the oeuvre of a master's career was still, the monument.
Rodin was always said to be a genius modeller. Which means his clay models almost always held the vigor that was essentially captured in bronze, or in marble, by many collaborators. I was amused to discover that this artist had employed several apprentices, casters and stone cutters that some have actually complained that Rodin always kept claiming all labors to his credit alone. A sly contemporary even took note that before the cameras and reporters came in to his numerous ateliers Rodin would have asked the workers to exit and place bits of marble on his beard to look as if he was in the middle of work! Rodin had improved his craft so much he made it into a career and later as an enterprise. (And engaging the services of writers such as poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Kahlil Gibran!) He milked the romantic idea that all sculptors worked alone, like Pygmalion, and became wealthy. Not bad!
My attention was held for a few hours at the special exhibit of his marble works titled, Flesh and Marble. It was a wonderfully curated show that featured Rodin's use of the non finito (unfinished) technique in carved stone which he was successful in employing in his bronzes and plasters. Although none of the 400 works of marble can be claimed to be worked on by him directly (he employed stonemasons) the result of the non finito technique was amazing in translation to stone. The exhibit so moved me that I began thinking of working in carving marble as well. (But when I saw a video of how marble was carved by hand, I realized I needed to build a new studio for this). I had several insights into the main characteristics of Rodin's work and learned some secrets behind their sense of power, besides monumentality. I promised myself to find a way to translate these in my own work as well.
This I attempted to do in the remaining days of the week with my sculpture project in St. Merry. I realized that the nearest technique that comes close to Rodin's carving process (or his stonemasons) is the gouge-work employed in Paete, Laguna in the Philippines. The carvings of indigenous peoples of the North employ more flat chisel (paet) techniques that result in more linear finish. Paete carvers utilize a wide range of gouges that is used to cut rounder pieces, in a Baroque fashion and style. But there is a whole universe between stone and wood carving! Stone uses punches to break the stone and then it is worked with rasps and files to achieve polish. Wood is technically cut and shaved (chipped). I was also able to observe an ivory carver near St. Germain de Pres and I was fascinated that he uses more rasps and files to create the shape he wants. Surely the subtractive method of sculpture is a world on its own.
With the conclusion of this week I begin my final 40 days in France. After the sculpture is finished I am off once more to a research mode. Next week I will be exploring regions outside Paris, from Ile de France to Normandy, Picardie and Champagne.
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