what's up with cedric bouchard?

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originally posted by Joel Stewart:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
It's like Rodin signing his talented protgs' work.

who's work? me curious.
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
Did he do that? (I mean, without the protege's name on it, too?)

There is still confusion over whether some pieces are the work of Camille Claudel or of Rodin. But I recall reading (source lost to the sands of time) that he would give his imprimatur to certain stellar students by graciously bestowing his own signature on the piece. Hearsay, by now, since I can't confirm with quote.

would be interesting to see the pieces in question...was this an accepted part of the atelier system back then?

Most likely you have, and sure.

There is a movie about Camille Claudel, called, I believe, Camille Claudel if you are curious.

Michelangelo and Rembrandt would be other notable examples of those who used a studio system. Research about them today is often concerned with the "who's hand?" question.

There are plenty of Renaissance triptych works where the middle panel is said to be by one person, a side panel by another.

The idea of the solitary artist in his lonely room starving so he can afford paint is just one conceit. You might call it the Van Gogh model.

Duchamp punctuated that whole solitary model with a gigantic question mark that still exists today.

If you think about our contemporaries, Jeff Koons for instance, has a quite large team of assistants.
 
It's like Rodin signing his talented protgs' work.
[/quote]

i guess it's a way to get cheaper Rodin.
 
Chihuly is another example. This doesn't really burst a bubble for me, though I'd prefer to see the work first (with regard to the Rodin/student issue). Hard to fake his stuff, but there were some (literally) smooth efforts that I had already written off to being "earlier work" before he found his style, which I could imagine being someone else's work after all.

It is news to me about Michelangelo....there's no mention of him running his own atelier in Vasari's "Lives". If accepted at the time (and of course it was) one would expect Vasari to have written about it...you have any suggested reading? Rembrandt no doubt....I still love his work, well at least the self portraits.

I'm not sure what you mean with the Duchamp reference. Did you mean to write punctuate, not puncture?

Jeff Koons is an artist? I thought he just stole other people's stupid ideas. Warhol is a better example....well that's because I prefer his work to Koons'.
 
The use of interns/studio assistants is very widespread today and reaches down to moderately successful regional artists - not just the artists commanding $200k+. Kehinde Wiley, a major artist these days, actually set up a large shop in China to assist in his paintings. It has been accepted for a long time certainly dating back to the Renaissance, but today it is far more prevalent.
 
Huh. I just googled Rodin. Here I'd always thought he was that big monster in those Japanese movies, but no! This thread makes a little more sense now. The things one learns on Disorder...
 
originally posted by Steve Guattery:
Huh. I just googled Rodin. Here I'd always thought he was that big monster in those Japanese movies, but no! This thread makes a little more sense now. The things one learns on Disorder...
There is a decent collection of Rodin sculptures in Philly, maybe the second biggest outside of Paris?
 
originally posted by Marc D:
originally posted by Steve Guattery:
Huh. I just googled Rodin. Here I'd always thought he was that big monster in those Japanese movies, but no! This thread makes a little more sense now. The things one learns on Disorder...
There is a decent collection of Rodin sculptures in Philly, maybe the second biggest outside of Paris?

I'm pretty sure that it is. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the collection of the Rodin Museum in Philly is on a par with that of the Paris museum. The attraction of the Paris museum is seeing some of the marble models he (presumably) made.

Mark Lipton
 
The entrance to the museum in Philly has the Gates of Hell, which is an impressive piece. I bet he had a lot of help with that one.
 
originally posted by Marc D:
The entrance to the museum in Philly has the Gates of Hell, which is an impressive piece. I bet he had a lot of help with that one.
There's a difference between having a workshop that is under the artist's supervision do part of the work -- plenty of artists such as Rubens did that and there is nothing troubling about it -- and signing a work that was done entirely by someone else.
 
Per Wikipedia, the original plaster was used in 1917 to make three bronze copies (Paris, Philadelphia, Tokyo). Additional copies were made subsequently (Zurich, Stanford, Seoul, maybe more).
 
The Cantor Arts Center's collection of Rodin bronzes at Stanford is the largest in the world outside Paris, second only to the Musee Rodin. All of their 200 bronzes are on display at the museum right now. If you're in the Bay Area, it's definitely worth a visit.
 
originally posted by Joel Stewart:

It is news to me about Michelangelo....there's no mention of him running his own atelier in Vasari's "Lives".

I'm not sure what you mean with the Duchamp reference. Did you mean to write punctuate, not puncture?

Jeff Koons is an artist? I thought he just stole other people's stupid ideas. Warhol is a better example....well that's because I prefer his work to Koons'.

You're right about Michelangelo. I should have clarified that I meant his work for other people in their workshops.

Duchamp very fundamentally and profoundly brought the question of artistic authorship into question, with the readymades and also with persona shifts. If you take a bottle drying rack and present it in a new context (essentially a non-functional context) as your artwork, what are you doing in terms of authorship, exactly? Duchamp didn't himself make the actual bottle drying rack. When he assumes the persona of a woman and signs the piece with that woman's fantasy name, what does that say about artistic authorship? I said that Duchamp punctuated the situation with a question mark because these are still very much questions today. I meant punctuated, although I was implying puncture in my use of the word (reinforcing the sense that I was bringing to the discussion), as well as implying signature through the use of "mark". It was a layered sentence.

Koons lines up nicely with Rodin because of the emphasis on sculpture.
 
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