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Revealing art

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In the Tate Modern there is a version of Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss (1901–4) which can be seen on the cover of this book. A couple emerges from the block of marble in a rapturous embrace, the meeting of their lips deliberately concealed from the viewer. The woman leans into the embrace, turning and pulling the man down. Her leg presses over his thigh, gently prising his legs apart, whilst his right hand rests tentatively on her thigh and his left rests round her torso, barely holding on to the discarded book they have been reading. What is it that makes this work special? Why are we inclined to savour the form of their caress as beautiful? Should knowing more about the couple and the sculpture affect our appreciation? Perhaps you think it shows us something about the nature of erotic love or that if it commends immoral passions we should think less of it as art. Do you think we can demand or expect that other people appreciate it as art as we do? The ways we treat art works, describe them, discuss them, argue about them, painstakingly care for and restore them, award prizes or put prices on them, involve assumptions about these questions.
Think about how you’re inclined to appreciate and value The Kiss. Would it matter if it turned out not to be by Rodin at all but by one of his pupils or a forger? Rodin’s sculpture and drawings both remould the nineteenth-century tradition of classicism, with its emphasis on formal ideals of the nude, and look forward to the modernism of the twentieth century, with its explicitness regarding both the materials of art and subject matter.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Revealing art

Call Number

-

Publisher

USA : Routledge., 2005

Collation

1-292

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0-203-64235-X

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

1st Edtion

Subject(s)

Communication

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

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