Rodin, a Japanese Dream

Was Rodin Japanese? Like many contemporary artists, at the end of the 1880s,  the artist succumbed to the craze for Japonism, in the footsteps of the Goncourt  brothers, Claude Monet, Georges Clemenceau and Octave Mirbeau. Utamaro,  Hiroshige and Hokusai, admired through e xhibitions held in Paris, became his  new masters, after Michelangelo and Phidias. Around 1900, Rodin added  Japanese prints and art objects to his collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman  antiques. This late collection consists mainly of 19th century works, sometimes  specifically designed for exports, which were given or exchanged among friendly  circles of artists and collectors. This exhibition will present forty prints, books,  albums, drawings and stencils, as well as nineteen objects from his collection,  including statues, incense-burners in cloisonné bronze, netsukes, masks and  ceramics.

Although Rodin did not fall entirely under the spell of Japonism, he nevertheless  showed an interest in Japan, expressed in several forms. The ex hibition will  show about ten so-called Japanese drawings from the years 1896-1900. It will  also include several versions of two statues interpreted by the sculptor in  sandstone, a material traditionally used by Japanese artists and rediscovered by  ceramists under the influence of Japan: La Pleureuse by Edmond Lachenal and  the monumental Head of Balzac by Paul Jeanneney.

But the highlight of the exhibition is the encounter between Rodin and the  actress Hanako in Marseilles in 1906, placing Japan at the centre of his oeuvre.  We will display a series of 26 sketched poses, accompanied by 26 sculptures in  which Rodin illustrates in clay, plaster and then bronze, the expressiveness of his  model, in turn dramatic or dreamy.  Rodin’s relations with young Japanese artists will be illustrated by a donation of  twenty prints by m embers of t he journal Shirakaba, published in 1911. A  documentation section will be d evoted to the Japanese sculptor and  cabinetmaker Kichizo Inagaki, who left the mark of h is Japanese style on the  pedestals and frames of Rodin’s works and collection. A few books from the  library and items from the sculptor’s personal archives relating to Japan will also  be presented. And what if Rodin’s Japan turned out to be merely a dream?  

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, co-published by Flammarion  and the Rodin Museum, with a preface by Dominique Viéville, General Curator  and Director of the Rodin Museum, and seven essays revealing the links  between Rodin and Japan: A Dream Collection and In the Stud io of Kichizo Inagaki,  Rodin’s Cabinetmaker,, by Bénédicte Garnier, researcher and librarian at the Rodin  Museum; Rodin and Japan: Between Symbolism and D ecadence, by Christina Buley-  Uribe, researcher and librarian at the Rodin Museum; An Interplay of View: Rodin  and Hanako, by François Blanchetière, Curator at the Rodin Museum; Rodin and  Japan: The Itinerary of an Encounter, by Véronique Mattiussi, researcher and  librarian at the Rodin Museum; and finally, Rodin and Japanese Sandstone Art, by  Christine Shimizu, Curator-in-Chief of the National Ceramics Museum in  Sèvres.