Evenings with Rodin

Unless otherwise noted, activities on Thursday evenings are FREE and have no participant limitations.

May 30 - Film: Camille Claudel (1988)
Introduced by Mary Lyle, Director of Education.
Isabelle Adjani (Best Actress nominee) and Gerard Depardieu star as Camille and Auguste Rodin. The film traces the development of the couple’s intense romance, the rise of Claudel’s career from her start as Rodin’s model, then assistant, and finally as an artist in her own right. Claudel must overcome prejudices against female artists, and the tempestuous relationship with her mentor, Rodin. The film is in French with English subtitles and is rated R for nudity and sexually explicit content.

June 6 - Family Art Fun
Families can participate in an art activity, inspired by the work of Rodin. This week join us for a foil sculpture activity. Create sculptures out of tin foil and try to mimic Rodin’s use of movement and emotion.

June 13 - Film: Rodin (2017)
Introduced by Mary Lyle, Director of Education.
This film is the most recent attempt to capture the life and loves of one of the world’s most famous sculptor, Auguste Rodin. The film takes place around 1880 when Rodin received his first state commission for “The Gates of Hell,” which included two of his most famous sculptures, “The Kiss” and “The Thinker.”  The film is in French with English subtitles. This film is not rated but has nudity and sexually explicit content that is not appropriate for anyone under the age of 18.

June 20 - TBA

June 27 - Llano Estacado's Drink and Draw
Artists are welcome to join their friends in the Rodin exhibit for an evening of sketching. Rodin’s technique of “Blind Contour Drawing” will be demonstrated. Bring your sketch pads and we will supply the “drinks.”

July 11 - Sculpture Workshop
Art instructor Nancy Powell will teach a beginning sculpture workshop. $10/person (covers all of the materials); limited to the first 15 people; must be 10+ years old.

July 18 - TBA

July 25 - Llano Estacado’s Drink and Draw 
Artists are welcome to join their friends in the Rodin exhibit for an evening of sketching. Bring your sketch pads and we will supply the “drinks.”

August 1 – TBA

For more information, please call the Museum at 575-492-2678 or visit our website at www.nmjc.edu/museum.

Rodin: Father of Modern Sculpture

FATHER OF MODERN SCULPTURE

Rodin covered in plaster wearing his iconic beret

Auguste Rodin is widely regarded as the “father of modern sculpture,” and by some, as the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo. Throughout the nineteenth century, artists found new ways of expressing themselves on canvas and print. The many innovative art movements included the Impressionists, Post Impressionists, Symbolists, and Expressionists. Sculpture during that same time remained tethered to the French academy. Rodin, was a contemporary of Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Gaugin. Just as they had done in painting, Rodin would transform the medium of sculpture and bring it into the modern era in art.

Born in Paris in 1840, to a modest middle-class family, Rodin showed an innate talent for art from an early age. In his teens, he attended the government school for art and craft design. There, he learned the traditional practice of observational drawing from plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. He also learned how to model in clay, a technique that he would continue to use throughout his career. He applied to the École des Beaux-Arts, an influential French art school, but was rejected three times. 

For almost a decade, Rodin worked as an anonymous member of a workshop and produced decorative sculpture for another well-known artist named Albert Carrier-Belleuse. Rodin continued to want to exhibit his work under his own name, and in the 1860s he submitted his sculpture to annual juried Paris Salon exhibitions. However, he again suffered a series of rejections.  

Rodin’s father had written his son an encouraging letter. His words of wisdom sustained the artist through the rough patches in his career. His father advised him: “You must not construct your future on sand so that the smallest storm will bring it down. Build on a solid, durable foundation [so that] the day will come when one can say of you as of truly great men – the artist Auguste Rodin is dead but he lives for posterity, for the future.”

Rodin finally received the recognition he sought in his 40’s when he was commissioned to create a sculpture for the entrance of a new museum. Rodin’s concept was inspired by Dante’s literary masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. His Gates of Hell were conceived to rival the great doors of the Baptistry in Florence known as The Gates of Paradise. The museum was not built, however, and the commission was canceled. Rodin decided to use some of the figurative reliefs from the door and he turned them into independent sculptures, also reusing some of the parts to create new sculptures. 

Later, Rodin was commissioned to create other monuments, portraits of famous people at the time, as well as noncommissioned works. During the 1890s, Rodin created many artworks, and by the year 1900 he was the most famous sculptor in Europe. The Paris World Exposition dedicated an entire pavilion to a retrospective exhibition of his work. In 1908, Rodin moved his studio and gallery to the Hôtel Biron, a large mansion in Paris, where he worked until his death in 1917. 

Before he died, Rodin donated the contents of his studio and his home to the people of France in exchange for an agreement that a Rodin museum would be established. Today, the Musée Rodin is made up of two sites: the Hôtel Biron and the structures and land in Meudon, the suburb of Paris where Rodin’s home was located.

If you would like to learn more about Rodin please visit the museum’s website www.nmjc.edu/museum and click on the Educator Guide for Rodin: Truth, Life, Form – Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections. 

Rodin: Truth Form Life Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections

The Western Heritage Museum and Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame is proud to present a first for Southeastern New Mexico and the surrounding regions.  From May 23 through August 11, visitors can see RODIN: TRUTH FORM LIFE/ Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections.  This special exhibit is a retrospective of the popular French artists’ work using 22 pieces from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections and organized and made possible by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.

“Rodin is the father of modern sculpture,” says Erin Anderson, Interim Executive Director of the Museum.  “This exhibit allows our visitors to follow his train of thought from early in his career up until the end.”

Eschewing tradition methods, Rodin let his models inspire the creative process rather than telling them a specific pose to strike. Rodin’s genius lay in his ability to model sculpture that captured the moving and evolving figure and that combined bodies in ways that expressed emotions and provoked responses.  “You may be familiar with The Thinkerby Rodin,” mentions Mary Lyle, Director of Education at the Museum.  “While The Thinker is not a part of this particular exhibition, you are able to see how Rodin created a sculpture that so uniquely captures the consternation of man’s existence.”

Never-before has anything like this been presented in Southeastern New Mexico.  “We are honored to have the opportunity to work with the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation in order to bring this exhibition to Hobbs,” explains Anderson.

Do not miss this exhibition at the Western Heritage Museum and Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame from May 23 through August 11, 2019.  Come on out for a free opening reception on Thursday, May 23 at 5:30pm.  Refreshments will be served.  Parental discretion is advised as some of Rodin’s subject matters are adult in nature.

THE IRIS AND B. GERALD CANTOR FOUNDATION

The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation promotes and recognizes excellence in the arts and enhances cultural life internationally through its support for art exhibitions and scholarship and for the endowment of galleries and sculpture gardens at major museums.  Most unusual for a philanthropic foundation, the Cantor Foundation also owns this significant collection of Rodin sculpture.  During the last four decades it has loaned individual works and entire exhibitions to museums in more than 160 cities in Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and the United States.  Nearly eleven million people have seen these shows.

The Foundation also actively supports healthcare, with a current emphasis on comprehensive women’s clinical care facilities. Indeed, through its support of the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center in Los Angeles and the Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York, the Foundation pioneered a new model for clinical care for women that provides “one-stop shopping,” as Iris Cantor describes it. 

The Cantor Foundation is chaired by its president, Iris Cantor.  Its offices are in Los Angeles.  The Foundation’s Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Judith Sobol, organized this show. More information about what the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation does and the achievements of its founders is available at www.cantorfoundation.org.