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Post by Jazz on Feb 12, 2009 20:13:04 GMT
Camille Claudel (1864-1943) worked as a sculptor in the Victorian age in Paris, a time when women were restricted emotionally, socially, physically and certainly, artisically. Her family background was modest and in 1881 she moved to Paris to study. Two years later she became the gifted student of Rodin and soon, his mistress. They greatly influenced each other's art. Over time, she drifted into obscurity and was reduced in memory to only the mistress and muse of Rodin. Here is a very early work, Jeune Fille a la Gerbe, 1887. The following few years with Rodin were tempestuous (he was married) and she expressed her emotion in her art, The Prayer, and The Implorer, at the final breakup in 1898,
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Post by Jazz on Feb 12, 2009 20:25:50 GMT
Free from the influence of Rodin, Camille entered into her most creative period, 1895-1905. She began to work in her own voice, deeply influenced by Art Nouveau and the Japonaise movement. Here she is in her atelier, La Valse (The Waltz), Causeuses (the Chatterers), La Vague, (the Wave).
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Post by Jazz on Feb 12, 2009 20:40:02 GMT
Camille became increasingly disturbed after 1905 and the end of her life was slow and sad. There were two beautiful works, the Flute Player (the Little Siren), And, Woman Kneeling Before Hearth, Camille was incarcerated in an asylum by her family in 1913 and kept there for 30 years until her death in 1943. 'Even the doctors said she wasn't insane' but her family refused to acknowledge that diagnosis.' Her brother, Paul Claudel, a noted writer, forbade his mother and sister to visit her. She destroyed much of her own work but about 90 statues, sketches and drawings survive. The Rodin Museum in Paris has the largest collection of her work. They are beautiful and powerful. There is a great film, Camille Claudel, with Isabel Adajni and Gerard Depardieu, which brought her into people's minds once again.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2009 21:09:23 GMT
Those are beautiful jazz, I recall hearing about her,perhaps a piece in the New Yorker or Times. I will check out the film. And what a beautiful photo of her. The tragedy of creative genius. Nowadays they would all be put on Prozac. I recently read a piece on Brando in the New Yorker and how his true acting abilities were probably never realized because he was "mentally ill" and Hollywood couldn't deal with him. But that's a horse of a different color. Forgive my digression.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 13, 2009 6:15:50 GMT
Oh, that is incredibly interesting, Jazz! What a sad life for someone who was only driven to create beauty. The 30 years incarcerated for wanting to realize herself is almost too much to assimilate.
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Post by Jazz on Feb 13, 2009 13:14:18 GMT
The 30 years incarcerated for wanting to realize herself is almost too much to assimilate. I know how you feel. Camille now has her own museum in the Claudel family home in Nogent-sur-Seine, sixty miles south of Paris. "Nearly all of her surviving output is owned by her surviving great-niece, Marie-Reine Paris, who said that Claudel would have preferred to be displayed a long way from Rodin...Camille damaged her own standing by destroying much of her work when the passionate affair ended...that Camille was shunned by the art world, despite her beautiful work, can be explained by the fact that she was a woman. It was just not acceptable that a young lady could sculpt erotic pieces showing men and women in the nude." Many think that some works attributed to Rodin are actually Claudel's. She was his muse and lover in his most productive years. "There is something sad and closed in her art which we do not find in Rodin. Her works are interiorised portraits where she expresses her melancholoy." This was her gift to the man she loved... L'Abandon, also known as Sakountala, 1905,
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Post by komsomol on Mar 10, 2009 21:43:36 GMT
I just saw the film recently - fascinating stuff.
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welle
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om sweet om
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Post by welle on Mar 20, 2009 20:51:00 GMT
30 years incarcerated...what a tragedy. Amazing artist.
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 27, 2017 16:32:34 GMT
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