“I admit, that the commonplace man can never, by copying, produce a masterpiece; he notes every detail but he does not really see - the artist penetrates below the surface into the very heart of nature; for him everything is beautiful because beauty in art consists of character.”

— Auguste Rodin

RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911

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Auguste Rodin 73

French sculptor 1840–1917

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“I admit, of course, that the artist does not see nature as the vulgar do. His emotion reveals to him the inner truths that underlie appearance. But the only principle In art is to copy what one sees. Every other method is ruinous. No one can embellish Nature. It is simply and solely a question of seeing. Doubtless a mediocre man, when he copies will never produce a work of art. He looks without seeing. No matter how minutely he observes, the result will be flat and without character. But the artist's trade is not for mediocre men, and no amount of training can supply them with talent. The artist sees - he sees with his heart. He sees deep into the heart of Nature. To the artist everything in Nature is beautiful.
The vulgarian imagines that what looks to him ugly In Nature is not material for the artist. He would forbid us to represent what displeases and offends him. He makes a grave mistake. What is commonly called ugliness in Nature may become a great beauty in art.
In the realm of realities, people regard as ugly everything that is deformed and diseased and that suggests sickness, weakness and suffering. They regard as ugly everything that defies regularity, which is to them the symbol and condition of health and strength. A hump is ugly, bow-legs are ugly, misery in rags is ugly. Ugly, again, are the soul and conduct of the immoral, the vicious, the criminal man, the abnormal man who is an enemy of society; ugly is the soul of the parricide, the traitor, the unscrupulous slave of ambition. And it is right that the lives and the of which we can expect only evil should be given an odious epithet.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

“I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.
But, after all, the only principle in Art is to copy what you see. Dealers in esthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal. There is no recipe for improving nature.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. I. Realism in Art, p. 33

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