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This summer, the College’s Iris
and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery presented Rodin’s
Obsession: The Gates of Hell, Selections from the Iris
and B. Gerald Cantor Collection.
This marks the first summer exhibition to be held at the
Cantor Art Gallery in its 20-year history.
Organized and circulated by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor
Foundation to small museums and universities throughout the
country, the exhibition focuses on the individual sculptures
that Rodin modeled as he developed and designed The Gates from
1880 until 1890. The artist’s most ambitious commission,
the undertaking involved the completion of a “decorative
portal,” to be used as an entrance to the proposed museum
of decorative arts. While the plan for the museum was never
realized, and The Gates were never cast into bronze
during Rodin’s lifetime, the artist used this work as
a jumping-off point for many of his most widely known sculptures.
The Gates of Hell, which reveals
Rodin’s vision
of the human condition, features hundreds of figures modeled
in high relief and in the round. The imagery in The Gates
was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy – an
imaginary tale of a journey through hell and purgatory to
paradise – and by Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs
du Mal, a volume of poetry that examined complex, often
morbid emotional states.
This exhibition presents two preliminary maquettes made
by Rodin of the form of The Gates, as well as many
of the sculptures he produced as components of the final
design.
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Auguste Rodin
The Three Shades, 1880-1904,
single figure conceived about 1880,
group composition by 1904,
Musée Rodin cast 10 in 1981
Bronze, 38 1/4 x 37 1/2 x 20 1/2 in.
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