Summary
Talented from youth, inspired by nature, and captivated by love, Camille Claudel unlocked the emotive power of sculpture after centuries of its subtleties having been obliterated by excessive polishing and focus on technique. Drawn intuitively to the innocence of children, the experience of old age, and the complexities of love and madness, Claudel exhibited great skill in the portrayal of raw and real emotions. Whilst sculpture until this point had typically dealt in hard and impenetrable subject matter akin to its materials, Claudel managed to peer beyond the surface and add transformative elusiveness to formulaic solidity.
Sadly, following the end of her long-standing affair with fellow sculptor, Auguste Rodin, Claudel's own underlying delicacy unravelled and she experienced a psychological breakdown. As unsupported personally as she had been professionally, her own family placed her in an asylum. This action was the equivalent of caging a bird, and as Claudel could not fly in captivity, she instead became the living embodiment of her pain, a symbol of the destruction of love, existing only in her own despair. Although the woman herself died in relative obscurity, interest in her art grew organically and there is now a National Museum in France dedicated to Claudel's life's work.
Key Ideas
Most Important Art
Sakuntula (or Vertumnus and Pomona) (1886-1905)
Originally read as a surrender to love, the renaming in 1905 to introduce an aspect of disguise points towards Claudel's distrust of Rodin after their separation and complicates the meaning. According to the art historian, Angelo Caranfa, the piece expresses Claudel's worry that she can never detach herself entirely from Rodin. A letter written to Gustave Geffroy in 1905 indicates that the work had a particular personal and artistic significance for Claudel, "(...) I am still coughing and sneezing as I polish with rage the group destroying my tranqulity: with tear-filled eyes and convulsive groans I finish the hair of Vertumnus and Pomona. Let's hope that despite different accidents, they shall be finished in a logical way, suiting two perfect lovers." The sculpture is Claudel's hopeful recounting of tender, real, and vulnerable love. It is not an idealised symbol of love as Rodin's The Kiss has come to represent, but instead reveals love, even if in time lost, that was actually experienced by two people, not an untouchable vision, but a momentary actual joy felt in the course of everyday life.
The Waltz (1889-1905)
Most notable and unusual for the composition is the fact that whilst the male figure remains whole, his body fully formed from head to toe, the woman at the point of her buttocks becomes swirling cloth. Read in a positive light, the woman's transformation shows affinity with the environment and a great sensitivity to all that surrounds her. Construed negatively however, we see a warning sign that the female sense of self can be upset and in extreme cases, begin to disappear when engaged in all-consuming romance. Interestingly, after his ten-year affair with Claudel, Rodin began another ten-year affair with the British painter, Gwen John. Equally damaged by the relationship, John's self-portraits became increasingly muted and less defined afterwards.
Claudel made The Waltz in the same year that her relationship with Rodin began. In style and in spirit, the work introduced her as a significant artist in her own right, showing a love for the creation of movement in solid form and also her interest in the underlying psychology of relationships. When first exhibited however, the piece was confronted by gendered censorship and ignited indignation from critics; Armand Davot wrote, "this work cannot be accepted (...) the violent reality which emanates from it would forbid it, despite its value, a place in a public gallery." Mainly to ensure funding to get her clay maquette cast in bronze, Claudel modified the sculpture - which originally did present a whole nude woman -before presenting it to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Without realising, by forcibly adding 'a skirt', the critics had in fact added a new dimension to the meaning of this sculpture. Once altered, not only did it prefigure Claudel's own sad disintegration of self, but it also revealed the artist's interest in Art Nouveau, characterised by flowing, non-linear shapes inspired by nature. It is rumoured (although not confirmed) that Claudel may also have had a short relationship with the composer, Claude Debussy, at this time. She gave Debussy the sculpture, which remained in his study until his death.
Clotho (1893)
Throughout their ten-year relationship, both Claudel and Rodin were interested in the representation of old age. It became somewhat of an obsession in the work of Rodin, who had already explored the theme in She who was the helmet-maker's once beautiful wife (1884). It may be that Claudel had an anxiety surrounding old age, for as their relationship deteriorated she was aware that Rodin was attracted to younger lovers.
The work also shows how as an artist, she is able to portray unapologetic, raw representation of the female nude in a way which was considered scandalous and unacceptable at the time. The plaster model of Clotho shown at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1893 was received with mixed results. While Claudel herself never recovered from the tone of distress that she introduces in this work. Indeed, art historian Griselda Pollock notes, "Alone as a woman of her class, not married to the man with whom she had a sexual relation, perhaps deeply distraught by the loss of love and undergoing major changes in her life cycle, while she watched her own sculptural ideas make Rodin the lionised figure of French sculptures, she may well have had some kind of psychological breakdown."
The Gossips (1897)
Claudel had been separated from Rodin for several years by this point and increasingly attempted to absorb her own personal struggles into her work. Between 1893 and 1905 she called her pieces 'sketches from nature', drawing from life around her, these were original, captured great depth of expression, and were in general well-received. Claudel created many copies of The Gossips all the while experimenting with different materials. Art critic Gustave Geoffroy called the work "an apparition of truth, intimacy (...) a marvel of comprehension and human sentiment." At this time there was a great obsession in Vienna surrounding mind exploration and making portraits of those most expressive in society, including the mentally ill, but in France it was still extremely rare for artists to derive inspiration from mundane, everyday scenarios rather than from allegory or myth. In this sense, both Claudel and her works were pioneers of a new wave focused on self-investigation that would dominate 20th-century art.
Maturity (1899)
Rodin's involvement surrounding the work therefore becomes ambiguous; Claudel began to believe that he had intentionally sabotaged the work's development. In the words of Claudel's brother, the poet, Paul Claudel, this was an entirely autobiographical work, "(...) this vulnerable soul, this young girl on her knees...that's my sister! My sister Camille. Begging, humiliated, on her knees and naked, that proud and haughty creature (...) and what's being taken away from her at that very moment, under your very eyes, is her soul!" However, once again - as in Clotho - despite her pain, Claudel recognises that what is happening to her is less misfortune than it is destiny. Destiny has been recorded as an alternative title for the work and the old figure once again recalls Clotho, or this time Lachesis who determines the length of the life thread once woven by her sister. It seems that it has been decided by fate that Claudel will be abandoned and humiliated in love and left alone and exposed without any support or encouragement at the height of her career.
The Wave (1897-1903)
Shown first in its plaster version in the year that it was made, the artist later chose to cast the bathers in bronze and replicate exquisite ocean tones by using onyx marble for the wave. At the time in Paris there was a literal 'wave' of enthusiasm for Japanese woodblock printing and especially for the work of Katsushika Hokusai. Claudel would have seen The Great Wave (1832), getting a direct inspiration for her own work.
Indeed Japanese art also became a great influence for Vincent Van Gogh; he shared Claudel's experience of mental instability and had the same desire to explore such torment through his art. Although successful in incorporating a complex array of new influences and showcasing great skill, this work bears testament that Claudel will not fight the might of nature any longer, that this large looming wave will bear down, and that she will be tragically consumed and lost.