”Every word Rodin said seemed pregnant with meaning, as I watched him working…” The Kiss is smoothly carved in gleaming white marble, its massive lovers presented as idealised and divinely beautiful protagonists. The Bizac on the other hand, crudely cast in plaster(other versions in bronze and marble were made later), is strikingly unpleasant, with Jagged profiles, rough textures and a more or less complete disregard for anatomical detail, accuracy and finals. In The Kiss, the entwined couple enact a titillating, almost comic encounter. The figures were originally inspected by Danto’s lovers Paolo and Francesca, dammed eternally for incest, but here revealing nothing of their awful, poetic fate(Rodin made another, darker version for the doors). (1)
It is the women who has initiated proceedings – while she forthrightly embraces her lover and has moved her right leg over onto his lap, he only tentatively touches her left hip.In his own love affairs it was usually Robin who made the running. (2)
Rodin created most desperately passionate sculpture “The Kiss” through his romance. For me, Rodin is an elevation of mind. I believe he admired women that he put them on the pedestal. In “the kiss” Robin suggests the effort of marriage physical and intellectual.
Reference List
(1) Andrew Graham-Dixon, Artist Their Lives And Works, pp. 236
(2) Rainer Maria Rilk, Rodind, pp. 27-30.
1924593 Alina Barticel 