Rodin - The Birth of Venus

This drawing shows two subjects dear to Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) : Antiquity and the female nude. Rodin was passionate about Antiquity and a great collector. According to him, "Antique is life itself". He drew creative inspiration from it: "These mutilated gods instruct me, they are animated and I animate them even more." But Rodin was also obsessed with the female sex as shown in his many erotic drawings. In his eyes, it represented "the source of life par excellence".

What is astonishing, above all, is the life that emanates from these pencil creations. Normal, Rodin, rich and famous (he was made a knight of the Legion of Honor in 1887), could afford the services of live models. His competitors wanted very fixed poses that imitated those of antique statues. He demanded that they remain natural. " Be angry, dream, pray, cry, dance," the artist ordered.

In fact, Rodin wanted his models not to pose. Instead of the conventional postures of Venus, the drawings show very intimate moments of daily life: his young women yawn, do their hair... another dimension where the banal, the vulgar, are filled with a divine essence.

What he wants to show is no longer the exterior, the envelope, but the interior of beings, the enjoyment. Hence the exhibition of models. In his sculptures too, all of Rodin's art is to render the complexity of inner emotions through the tension of nerves and muscles.

Nude woman with one hand between her thighs, known as the Birth of Venus, 1900
© Rodin Museum, Paris