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 | Now let's talk about Rodin, the artist. What made him special? Why is he so highly regarded? |
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Rodin is kind of a figure that crosses between the nineteenth century and the twentieth century traditions in art. Realize at the time that he is working in the late nineteenth century is the time of the impressionists and the post-impressionists. It's really a great deal of radical energy and there's a reinventing art going on at this time. Rodin sort of transcended the whole field of sculpture.  | | Photograph of Auguste Rodin |
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He came out of a very classical kind of training. In fact, he was actually not admitted into the Ecole des Beaux-Arts which is the main area for studying sculpture at the time in the nineteenth century in France. He was actually rejected three times and so he went to the Petit Ecole, which is the sort of decorative arts college. That's where he got his formal training. He went into sculpting, and the only real sculpting that was going on at the time was decoration for buildings. There was a huge building campaign going on in the late nineteenth century in Paris and so there was a lot of job opportunity - The Paris Opera House and various other buildings at the time - so he worked in that area. But then what he was able to do is - and the reasons why, one never knows what sort of spurs the creative abilities here - but he sort of transcended that more decorative, the kind of idealist kind of sculpture that was from that time and really brought sort of a strong expression to his pieces, an abstraction to his sculptures, that were really quite unique and special. His first piece, The Age of Bronze, the one he first really received recognition for, was criticized because it was life-sized and because they said it was a life cast of the model. The fact that the model's face was not idealized in any way but it was sort of a recognizable figure, they knew there was a model, and he was criticized for that, much the same way the impressionists were criticized for their looking at the banal. So what he did is, in his next figure, he just totally abstracted the body, I mean he enlarged . . . . his feet are huge, you know if you saw the exhibition. He just has these massive feet and massive hands and the figures just contain this power and this energy that is really quite remarkable and dramatic. So, what Rodin did is he made that transition from nineteenth century aesthetic into an early twentieth century modernism. And for a sculptor, he is really seen as the father of twentieth century sculpture, really setting that initiative that other sculptors would then take and expand upon. |
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| | Was he considered to be a great artist during his lifetime? |
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In his day he was extremely well regarded and highly collected. His burial when he died was almost like a state burial. It was a massive affair. He was highly regarded. He was given some major commissions, although they almost always ran into difficulty of one sort of another. His Gates of Hell commission, which he was given in the 1880's, was never completed because they never built the building that they were supposed to go on. But he used that as a way of building many of his pieces for the latter part of his life. His Balzac commission in the exhibition saw a number of different stages of that. His final result, which you can see at the Museum of Modern Art in New York or I think there might be one at Stanford as well, was rejected by the organization that commissioned him to do it. It was his final piece before he died and it was rejected and I think it was very hard on him for that. But popularity-wise he was highly regarded. |
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| | You mentioned, and I heard the docents talk about it, the controversy where they couldn't believe he'd sculpted freehand, that it was a cast of a model. |
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That's that early one, The Age of Bronze. But you see the very next piece and you know, I mean, there's no way, nobody has size 40 feet, you know. I think in some ways it was a response to that criticism that he started exaggerating the figure. But also that criticism really established him at an early stage of his career in the public eye, and he became in a sense kind of adopted by some of the major players in the Parisian art scene at the time. And so that controversy, in a sense, established his career.
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| | Now that the show is over, how do you look back on it?
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It's far exceeded all of our expectations on success. It's been a success in every category. We handled it well as an institution, as a staff. It was probably one of the most demanding installations that we've ever had to do because of the sheer scale of these pieces. We did a lot to prepare for it - replace the floors, a total re-do of the galleries, and I think it all worked out because I think the show looked gorgeous during it's installation. Our education programs were well thought out and they were carried off without a hitch. We felt really good about that, too.  | | L. Martina Young performance |
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I mean, we not only did the visual Touch Tours, but we also did movement exercises and movement tours. We hired a professional art educator who is involved with movement as a way of expressing the visual arts to work with kids, school groups and adult groups. So there was a lot of variety in that. And then it was simply the way the community came out for the exhibition. It was just truly sensational. We're just really thrilled with it. We know there will probably be a let down at this point as we move into other exhibitions, but we also feel that now people know that we exist and that hopefully they'll come back because we have other exhibitions that are going to be equally challenging and interesting and exciting. So hopefully we're going to be able to transcend - through Rodin - transcend into a higher level of community involvement and participation.
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| | Does the Rodin show "legitimize" Reno as a potential site for more of these high-profile types of shows?
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I don't think it legitimizes it, I mean, the community is . . . the community, but I think what it does do is it shows the potential that the arts can bring to the community. I think the arts as a whole are a nice part of the whole that describes what Reno is. I like to say that the arts help to define a community. It's not the only definition of the community, but it's an important part of that definition. I think for a long time now Reno and people in this community have thought that "the arts don't necessarily play a role in my life," and that's too bad. As I said earlier, there's some incredible arts organizations in this community, and I was knocked out by the level of art activities for a city of three hundred thousand when I first came here. But they were kind of hidden in a way. I mean, they had their constituencies and audiences, but people couldn't be proud of them because they didn't really . . . . . it wasn't a unified whole. And I think what's been happening lately, and I think the Uptown, Downtown, Artown festival has had a lot to do with this, is the fact that we're recognizing the types of arts activities that are available in this community and that we can be proud of them, we can embrace them as part of our culture. This then complements the other parts of our culture that are important to us - the gaming aspect of our culture is very important, it brings in a lot of money and it employs a lot of people. So that's a very important part of our culture. And then the environment that we have is so powerful and vibrant and so unique and it really is an important thing that defines who we are as northern Nevadans. So I think if we start looking at these as sort of a composite of things that define the community, we have a lot to offer and it's something to be really proud of, and in that sense is how we're going to be able to go out and bring in other types of things is through this community pride. 
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Part III of Art Beat's interview with Steven High, Executive Director at the Nevada Museum of Art.
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