Rodin in His Time

The sculpture of Auguste Rodin has become an enduring part of our visual culture and his work has greatly influenced sculptural art since the turn of the century. Its universal appeal springs from its expressiveness, its vitality and its passionate mirroring of the human condition. "Rodin in his Time" presents a major collection of sculpture, the Cantor Gifts to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Forty-one of Rodin's works are featured, all specially photographed and many shown in multiple views. The book also features sculptures by his most important predecessors - including Carpeaux, Carrier-Belleuse and Rude - and his contemporaries. The comparative analysis includes such significant subjects as: the birth of romanticism after Canova; the eclectic taste for neo-Gothic; the new heroes of romanticism and realism: and the revival of the rococo style. Rodin's peers, competitors and pupils are all featured, but attention focuses on the master himself, who overthrew academic orthodoxies with his impressionistic yet anatomically accurate technique, and led traditional allegorical themes towards 20th-century abstraction.
The most influential sculptor of the modern period, Rodin embodied the romantic myth of the artist as heroic creator.