True Nature - Rodin & the Age of Impressionism

I am a little behind on this considering how busy I had been, so here is something I did about this time last month.

     I went to see the Auguste Rodin exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art on Tuesday July 18th. I love how involved and detailed, I guess you can say, large exhibits such as this are, because there were so much to look at not only from Rodin himself, but other artists that were associated him. There are paintings and sculptures from other Impressionist artists such as Edgar Degas, Paul Cezanne, Monet, and Renoir in the exhibit, among other artists, as well. It makes sense thinking about it now, but I wasn't totally aware about how closely Rodin, Degas, Monet, Cezanne, and Renoir were with each other. However, they were in the same social and artistic circle, so I should have put two and two together I guess. I have seen a couple of Monet's works already at the Philbrook Museum earlier this year, but I was excited to see works from Degas, Renoir, and Cezanne because I had not seen any of theirs yet. I was excited to be able to see and witness the sculpture called the Shade because I remember seeing this on the covers of textbooks and in art history books over the years. I was kind of hoping to see the Thinker sculpture while I was there, but it was not in the exhibit itself. That's quite alright, though, there were so much other art from Rodin available there. However, I did not realize what the Shade was originally sculpted for, which from what I remember, the Gates of Hell project. I love that knowing that. I actually had no clue about that or the fact there was a commission for a Gates of Hell project, really. I absolutely know of the Gates of Paradise from centuries before that.

    I love how contorted a lot of the figures were in a lot of his sculptures. I know from reading everything there at the exhibit and learning about him in art history classes that he tried as an artist to capture figures in motion in his work, but the contortions involved in the sculptures are very interesting to me because it looks like it would be fun to draw. 

     The exhibit itself took the entirety -- just about-- of the third floor of the museum. I did spend the time to explore the other exhibits there at the museum, so I ended up spending three hours total there. I was so sore after I was done. My back was calling it quits by the time I got back to the house.