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In⸱visible Bodies
An Investigation into Balzac's Dressing Gown
In autumn 2024, the Musée Rodin will showcase a little-known piece from its collections: Auguste Rodin’s Study for Balzac's Dressing Gown. Drawing on a series of sculptures from the museum’s collections, 19th-century garments from the Palais Galliera and never-before-shown archives from the Institut de France, the exhibition titled In·visible Bodies conducts an investigation into Rodin’s search for a body for Balzac, centred on his singular piece, Dressing Gown. This enquiry is a prelude to an exploration into the bodies – be they real, idealised, static or obscured – in 19th-century monumental statuary, which continue to populate our contemporary world today.
Balzac's body, as Rodin perceived it through his clothing after getting one of the late novelist's garments remade by Balzac's tailor, displays a physique considered less than flattering by those who had commissioned the monument: Balzac, in a word, was fat. Sparking a dialogue between fashion and sculpture, and drawing parallels between the practices of tailor and statue maker, the exhibition looks at how the perception of bodies shapes the production of their much-idealised bronze likeness. It reveals how much the myth of Balzac writing in his dressing gown ultimately allowed Rodin to conceal beneath wide pleats a body rejected for its corpulence. In·visible Bodies invites the public to reflect on how bodies are represented in public spaces, and on how those representations need to be expanded today.
Vue de l'oeuvre
In search of a body
Commissioned by the Société des Gens de Lettres in 1891 to sculpt a monument to Balzac, Auguste Rodin embarked on a quest to get to know the novelist who had died nearly half a century earlier: from studying Balzac's image at the home of a collector of Balzacian relics in Brussels to searching for his body in the writer’s native Touraine, where he found a portly carter for a model, the exhibition retraces the steps of Rodin's investigation. It is a little-known fact that Rodin even found Balzac’s tailor and had him remake one of the writer’s redingotes in order to better understand his corporal physiognomy. Visitors will have the chance to see the garment, made to the actual measurements of his body.
A body concealed
Rodin then took on the challenge of representing Balzac in clay and plaster over four years. The reaction of his contemporaries – for whom a great man of bronze ought not to be represented as short and plump – prompted him to look to the image of Balzac writing in his dressing gown and hide his body beneath the pleats of a large robe. A plaster cast of an actual dressing gown, made around 1896-97, was Rodin's solution to the search for a visual aid that could reconstitute the idea of Balzac, for want of an exact representation of his body. The extraordinary Study for Balzac's Dressing Gown, which is the subject of the second part of the exhibition, presents the sculptor’s journey towards an idealisation of the body and provokes questions about the current challenges concerning fatphobia and the marginalisation of bodies that deviate from the “norm”.
Bodies that matter
The exhibition ends by juxtaposing the statue of Balzac, completed in 1898 and immediately rejected by the Société des Gens de Lettres, with a work by contemporary sculptor Thomas J. Price depicting an anonymous Black woman in a tracksuit. On the one hand, a Balzac idealised yet hard to grasp by those who commissioned it in the late 19th century; on the other, the monumental celebration of an anonymous woman, the symbol of a new kind of diversity in 21st-century public statuary. Taking as its starting point the process of the creation of the Monument to Balzac, In·visible Bodies will spark a broader reflection on the changing representations of the body in public spaces.
Le commissariat de l’exposition est assuré par Marine Kisiel, conservatrice du département mode 19e du Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de Paris et Isabelle Collet, conservatrice générale, cheffe du département scientifique et des collections du musée Rodin.
Une exposition organisée avec la collaboration exceptionnelle du Palais Galliera, musée de la Mode de Paris, et avec le concours de l’Institut de France. |
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Partenaires médias de l'exposition
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Around the exhibition
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Exhibition(s) location(s)
Musée Rodin
77 rue de Varenne
75007 Paris
Dates
From 15 October 2024 to 2 March 2025
Opening times
From 10 am to 6.30 pm. Last admission at 5.45pm.
The Rodin Museum is closed on 25 December and 1 January.
Price(s)
Full price : €14
Additional information
The exhibition is curated by Marine Kisiel, curator of the 19th-century fashion department at the Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de Paris, and Isabelle Collet, chief curator, head of the scientific department and director of collections at Musée Rodin.
An exhibition organised with special collaboration from the Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de Paris, and with the support of the Institut de France.
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