About the Sculpture
By the time of his death in 1885, the author Victor Hugo has become a national hero in France. Rodin was chosen to create a memorial to the writer that would be placed at the Pantheon, a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris and the monument at the heart of Paris where Hugo and other illustrious french citizens are buried. As with so many of Rodin's other monumental projects, disagreements arose with the committee that commissioned the sculpture, and the design change numerous times before it was definitively rejected. However, The Monument to Victor Hugo was eventually installed in Paris in 1964, long after the death of the artist.
Rodin portrays the Romantic poet and playwright as an athletic figure sitting on rocks in the island of Guernsey, where Hugo had retired from Paris during Napoleon III's Second Empire (1852 - 1870). He is surrounded by two allegorical figures: Meditation (behind) and the Tragic Muse (above). As the poet reclines his head, he lifts his arm, expressing both the passive and active nature of his literary genius. Hugo's works are both overwhelming and enduring, and Rodin has given these ideas sculptural form in the commanding and forceful shape of the figure accompanied by non but his own eternal muses - transcribed from accompanying interpretive
There are other educated and informed opinions about the controversy regarding this sculpture: Rodin's 1897 model sank into oblivion. Only in 1950, when Victor Hugo´s 150th anniversary, the year 1952, was nearing, the City of Paris, looking for a suitable monument, thought of Rodin's attempts again, and commissioned a bronze cast from a model Ruth Butler describes as a: ... three-figure plaster in the Musée Rodin, a work that had so been out of view for the past fifty years that it was neither mentioned nor illustrated in the official catalogue of the museum, a catalogue considered as nearly complete" It would take another 14 years before the bronze cast could be installed on the junction of the Avenue Victor-Hugo and Avenue Henri Martin, on 18 June 1964. In 1986, a second monumental cast was commissioned by the Cantor Foundation, giving rise to a bitter discussion on the true significance of this work: Was this really "an underappreciated masterpiece" [Lampert, p. 115] or was the casting rather inspired by the need of the Cantor Foundation to produce a colossal eye-catcher for their exhibition - as purported by Robert Torchia, former curator at the Cummer Museum, who claimed Rodin never released this plaster model for bronze casting. In other words: Was the 1897 plaster never executed in bronze or marble because of political resistance - as suggested by Jane Mayo Roos - or because the time was not ripe yet to understand Rodin's artistic genius, or was it rather the sculptor's inability to adapt to external requirements and take definitive decisions about compositional questions, that retarded and finally obstructed the realisation of this version, till it was dug out again in 1950? The question is still open to debate. SOURCE
About the Writer
Victor Marie Hugo (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism,[citation needed] and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He was buried in the Panthéon. SOURCE
About the Artist
François-Auguste-René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), known as Auguste Rodin, was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.
Sculpturally, Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface in clay. Many of his most notable sculptures were roundly criticized during his lifetime. They clashed with the predominant figure sculpture tradition, in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory, modeled the human body with realism, and celebrated individual character and physicality. Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, but refused to change his style. Successive works brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.
About the Museum
The NRHP site is located across from the Museum’s main building and featuring a beautifully preserved Art Deco façade, the Perelman Building holds the museum’s vast costume and textile collection. Also on display are photographs, modern and contemporary designs and several pieces from the Museum’s private collections (the kids loved that). With approximately 2,000 square feet of gallery space, the Perelman Building features a glass-walled study gallery providing access to the esteemed costume and textile collection, which includes some 30,000 pieces. SOURCE Wikipedia describes the building as an Art Deco building that features cathedral-like entrances and is adorned with sculpture and gilding. SOURCE All true.
Philadelphia architectural firm Zantzinger, Borie and Medary, which had collaborated on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, designed the building to be the headquarters for Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company.[2] Construction began in 1926 and the building was completed in 1928. Sculptor Lee Lawrie created its decorative scheme, which features polychrome facades adorned with figures symbolizing attributes of insurance: the owl of wisdom, the dog of fidelity, the pelican of charity, the opossum of protection, and the squirrel of frugality.[2] Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company occupied the building from 1927 to 1972.[3] In 1982, it was acquired and restored by the Reliance Standard Life Insurance Company, which in turn relocated in 1999. SOURCE
This wonderful and very fun building represents the first major expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In fact, we didn't even know what it was until a bus ferried the kids and I over from the main building for the Museum's Splash event, a program for children. The building is now a hot spot for kids and moms & dads, with five family-friendly exhibitions, Pay What You Wish family festivals, interactive art and play zones, and daily family programs. We explored every inch of the building as well as learned how to make embossed art. I was most impressed with the outside of the building. I spied over 20 examples of relief art, and that was only the front and the two winged sides; lord knows what's going on in the back of that thing.