Back to the gallery – but Rodin is no blockbuster

As our frenzy of COVID-19 lockdown-easing culture blitz continues, The Other Half and I nipped over to Tate Modern for The Making of Robin exhibition.

A little note: it might feel like a “frenzy”, but while getting out and about a bit, we’re also avoiding the centre of London and venues that would entail using the Tube or crossing central London. Let's all be sensible.

 

Living in east London, Tate Modern is easy for us as it’s a single bus ride and a walk away. I’d deliberately booked for late on the Sunday morning of a bank holiday weekend as that was almost certainly going to be quite quiet. It was. And we also walked most of the way home – but that’s a different story.

 

Now, this is billed as a major exhibition, but while it is interesting, it’s no blockbuster for the uninitiated. That said, we are living through exceptional times, so leeway has to be given as arts organisations try to get back up and running in the face of a deeply anti-arts government in Westminster.

 

The exhibition concentrates on the processes that Auguste Rodin used in creating his iconic sculptures. This means looking primarily at how he created, used and re-used the plaster works that were rarely intended as being finished items.

 

So, for instance, there is an entire display cabinet full of hands that were initially created when he was working on The Gates of Hell. These are really interesting ... but particularly if you’ve seen a finished version of The Gates of Hell. The OH and I are fortunate enough to have visited the Musée Rodin in Paris twice, spending time with castings of many of the works we see represented here in their development phases. Including The Gates of Hell.

 

Personally, I love Rodin’s monumental Balzac ... but can you fully appreciate all the maquettes (both very large and very small – and there are many of them) if you can’t see or haven’t seem one of the final castings?

 

Equally with The Burghers of Calais – although at least visitors to this exhibition can go and view the casting that stands in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to the Houses of Parliament without too much difficulty.

 

For me, the most interesting works shown here in their own right are those representing the Japanese actor and dancer Ohta Hisa, known as Hanako (left). They include works in bronze and glass and are fascinating.

They were unlike any Rodin works we'd seen previously.

It was also good to see a couple of works by Camile Claudel – Rodin's lover and co-worker – yet I find myself wonder whether, by forcing this tiny representation in, the exhibition doesn't do her a disservice rather than a service.

 

Indeed, the OH and I have a long history of finding some curators’ notes impossibly pompous or priggish. Here, this becomes the gallery’s attempt to be ‘woke’ (and I hate myself having to describe it as that).

Further, it actually risks misrepresenting Claudel's life – reducing her problems to her connection with Rodin, rather than noting, for instance, the massive damage done to her by her mother.

 

And seriously, who really needs to be pointed, via QR code, to a chat between two women saying that there was a “gender imbalance” in art in the 19^th century? Not least for an essentially art geeky exhibition ... is Tate really assuming that visitors won’t know that the 19th century was deeply unbalanced in gender terms in general?

 

Equally, do we need a mini lecture on ‘cultural appropriation’? I mean – the examples of Rodin's personal collection of objects from the far east, then turned quite casually into new works are genuinely interesting. But would the gallery also, in such context, mention Ai Weiwei, or is smashing centuries-old Chinese vases and claiming that doing so is a ‘work of art’ okay if you’re Chinese and the centuries-old vases you smash in the name of art are themselves Chinese?

 

Look ... it was great to get back into a gallery. In terms if Tate Modern, the social distancing etc all works well and allows you to feel comfortable, for which I am genuinely grateful, but this exhibition is, in essence, for Rodin geeks. If you haven't seen finished versions of these plaster works, then it's probably not worth visiting.

 

And such things can be done better. See Matisse in the Studio in 2017 at the Royal Academy showed how – my thoughts here.

 

And as for Rodin – some thoughts from the last time the OH and I visited the Paris museum.