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Europe 1800 - 1900
Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 5
Lesson 5: SculptureRodin, The Gates of Hell
Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell, 1880-1917, plaster (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker When the building, earlier on the site of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, was destroyed by fire during the Commune in 1871, plans were drawn up to replace it with a museum of decorative arts. Rodin won the competition to design a great set of doors for its entry way. Although the museum was never built, Rodin continued to work on the doors. They became an ongoing project; a grand stage for his sculptural ideas. It's fitting that the plaster of this great unfinished sculpture, The Gates of Hell, is now on display at the d'Orsay, the former railway terminal that was built on this site instead of the museum of decorative arts and that, by lovely coincidence, was converted into one of the world's great art museums. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
Has anyone ever discussed trying to finish this piece? Unfinished works are completed in literature, why not in art?(11 votes)
It was put together and finished under the direction of Léonce Bénédite with Rodin's permission, but it wasn't finished until after his death. In Paris most people see this plaster version at the Musée d'Orsay, but the 1928 bronze version is much more impressive in my opinion (although it is quite dark, so not easy to show in photographs). It is at the Musée Rodin.
You can see a fantastic photo of it here: http://www.musee-rodin.fr/fr/collections/sculptures/la-porte-de-lenfer(12 votes)
The bronze cast in Philadelphia IS FINISHED. Should that be the subject of the video??(6 votes)
The bronze casts, including the one in Philadelphia were cast after the sculptor's death. We chose to discuss the plaster in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris because it was made by the artist and it is the source from which the later bronze casts were made.(9 votes)
why is it that when u look on a sculpture, there is so often the arms and heads cut off??(5 votes)- They are more probably not cut off, but broke on their own. Natural stone has weak points called fissures that reduce the strength of the stone. If someone bumps into them or wind hits it just right or acidic rain and a lot of other factors influence the sculpture, the weaker arms and head may fall off. Not to mention tomb robbers and artifacts thieves.(10 votes)
- Is anyone familiar with the Rodin 'Gates of Hell' in Philadelphia? Where does it fit in?(4 votes)
from the web: It was the Philadelphia theater entrepreneur Jules Mastbaum who commissioned the first two bronze casts of the doors, one for his native city and the other for the Musée Rodin in Paris. Today the Philadelphia cast still stands at the entrance to the Rodin Museum that Mastbaum gave to the City of Philadelphia.(3 votes)
Does anyone else see a Prometheus type cynicism in having the Thinker looking down upon The Gates of Hell?
It is almost as if Rodin is trying to say something about Adam and Eve and the seed of knowledge but I am not sure if he is saying the Thinker is above the Gates of Hell or guarding it. Maybe it is something entirely different. Does anyone know what Rodin meant by putting the Thinker in his position?(4 votes)
I think what it means is that he is contemplating, what is in Hell , and thinking about if he might go there when he dies.(2 votes)
- They said in the beginning of the video that this was a plaster cast. Does that mean that this is not the original?? If so where is the original??(3 votes)
- The plaster exists prior to the bronze so one could say that this is a state prior to the bronze casts authorized by the artist. Its important to remember that 19th-century French sculpture, like prints, were often made in specified editions so the idea of "the original" functions differently than it would for a painting, for example.(3 votes)
I find it fascinating that The Thinker is a tiny sculpture within The Gates of Hell. Are there other examples of works-within-works in art history? I can think of Duchamp's "Boite-en-valise" which is almost a self-homage, but I'm curious if there are others.(3 votes)
This video is restricted and not approved for you to view it(1 vote)
Huh? I saw it just by opening the lesson. It's a Smarthistory video, and Smarthistory works with Khan Academy on this course. think that you may be wrong about restriction and approval. Who restricted you, and from whom are you seeking approval?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] We're at the Musee d'Orsay, and we're looking at a cast from 1917, the year that Rodin died,
of his The Gates of Hell, which is this huge project
that the artist worked on for the last decades of his life, that he never finished. In fact, we're not even
sure how it fits together because it was found in
pieces in his studio. - [Voiceover] We're
looking at a plaster cast. It's impossible to think about doors without thinking about Ghiberti's doors on the baptistry of the
Cathedral of Florence, which were called The Gates of Paradise, because they were so beautiful. Because of course those
depict biblical scenes from the Old and New Testament, but here we're really unmoored from that tradition,
from that iconography. - [Voiceover] Well, it's
a literary tradition. It's referring back to
Dante, but ever so loosely. - [Voiceover] So, we have
Dante at the top there. - [Voiceover] Right, he's in the tympana. You know that's also a
stand-alone sculpture, which is called The Thinker, and it is here Dante gazing into hell. We should actually say
this was a commission, and this was intended to be for a building on the side of the Musee d'Orsay which was to be a museum
of decorative arts, which was never built. This was a commission that Rodin got, and when he had finished
the design of the doors he was ready to cast it, but then the project itself fell through so he kept working on it, and the sculpture continued to evolve. - [Voiceover] You do see so many figures that you recognize as
stand-alone sculptures by Rodin. The thing that strikes me most is just how much the figures emerge from the 'background' of the doors, and I said background in quotes-- - [Voiceover] And the
door should be in quotes-- - [Voiceover] The door
should be in quotes-- - [Voiceover] Because they
could never function any more. - [Voiceover] The doors don't
even look like solid forms, they're like vapor from
which these forms emerge and spill out into our space. - [Voiceover] It's almost as if we imagine the surface of those doors to
be the surface of the ocean. Waves coming forward and these figures rising and then falling. There's this constant sense
of motion and undulation, form taking shape and then
receding into indistinctness. - [Voiceover] Eternal becoming. - [Voiceover] The stand-alone
figures that we're seeing are tragic. We have Paolo and Francesca, Ugolino. - [Voiceover] The figures
who Dante finds in hell being tortured and punished for their sins on earth. - [Voiceover] All the way at the top, instead of angels, we have three shades. These are figures that repeat, one figure that's seen three times, almost cinemagraphic like creating a unified form with shoulders that actually
create a flat plateau and three arms that pull our eye down into the gates themselves. - [Voiceover] I'm so
reminded of Michelangelo when I look at all of these figures, and the expressive power of the body, especially the male body. Also the way some of
the forms are fragmented reminds me of looking at Ancient
Greek and Roman sculpture. - [Voiceover] This is a
really modern reinvention of sculpture, yes, clearly
informed by Michelangelo, clearly informed by the classical. But this notion of the fragmented
self re-used, reworking, very much a modern notion. - [Voiceover] The forms although derived from the narrative of Dante's Inferno, come to take on a more
universal significance about the human condition, about suffering, sin, emotion
and the power of the body. (jaunty piano music)