Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell

Auguste Rodin, the most celebrated sculptor of the late nineteenth century, was born in Paris. He worked originally as a mason but soon devoted himself to sculpture. His great master was Michelangelo ("he freed me from academicism"). He was a supreme realist as well as a romantic; his first major work, The Age of Bronze, seemed so lifelike that he was even accused of having cast it from a living model (there are more than 150 recasts of it). Many of his sculptures are extremely popular and widely reproduced, such as The Kiss, The Thinker, and the haunting Burghers of Calais. One of his innovations was the torso or the fragment as a complete work of art. His main work is the vast Gates of Hell. Many of his works, or recasts of them, are in U.S. collections.