No one can ignore that Camille Claudel (1864-1943) was the eldest sister of the poet and ambassador Paul Claudel, she was a student, model and the unhappy mistress of Auguste Rodin and it was interned in 1913 to asylum-Evrard City at the request of his mother and his brother Paul. Transferred in 1914 in Asylum Montdevergues, near Avignon, she died in 1943.  Many biographies and film by Bruno Nuytten in 1988 popularized his name and destiny disastrous. The conduct of Rodin and that of Paul Claudel to the designated him today to embody the woman artist abused by male power, unknown in his work humiliated in his body, sentenced to confinement to preserve the reputation of whether Christian Claudel family. All this is undeniable. But all this eventually cover the work of pages and images. It did comment that works, and The Age Sakountala mature, which appear to be explained by its association with Rodin and breakage.
The exhibition being held at the Rodin Museum. It shows in chronological order as plaster, bronze and marble as possible, over eighty. It focuses especially in the early days - the time before Rodin - the last works in the years 1900. It presents various states of the same parts, so that we can compare and shaped his drawing or its reinterpretation in stone. Scientific approach and presentation sober. The little-known works have reappeared, as a small bronze nude near a fireplace onyx found by a buyer at the Miami flea market. This presentation shows that the first working model according to the Academy Colarossi then in a workshop independent allows the artist to quickly master the techniques of sculpture and affirm as quickly about almost unique - the human figure -- and its willingness to realism, which makes it choose models as opposed to the beau ideal, old women and bad boys. Her arrival at Rodin in 1884, confirms this trend, accentuates - it does not create. The only difference, it is most true: the violence that has hitherto represented in a narrative style now passes through the gesture, the attack on the surface, disproportions, gesture nudes. The body twist, musculatures are formed, mouths shouting. What Rodin dares to Burghers of Calais or the Gates of Hell, Camille Claudel the dares to Clotho. The plaster shows the Parque emaciated body surrounded braids her hair, she braided the son of human destinies. Two other versions, without hair or arms, push expressionism one degree further. This work of occasions and variations that Rodin is subjected to its own creations. But if the method is the same, the destruction of the feminine ideal is solely because of the sculptor. That is basically what is the most: not only Camille Claudel is a woman artist, but in addition, she fails to comply with the canons of classical statuary or neoclassical female youth, beautiful proportions, volumes to caress. She subjects bizarre, it calls "new things", four causeuses which cancanent in their corner, girls alone before the fire. She likes onyx green absinthe that size and sometimes serious-shaped wood eighteenth, sometimes monstrous wave that will engulf three small baigneuses convicted. Allusion to herself? In any event, this art will countdown conventions and practices of the sculpture - commemorative lyrical. When Camille Claudel trying to comply with it, to live and polished white marble busts of the family Maigret, she use violence to achieve it. The violence added to each other, she could not stand it for a long time.
"Camille Claudel 1864-1943", Musée Rodin, 79, rue de Varenne, Paris-7^e. M^o Varenne, Invalides, Saint-François-Xavier. Tél. : 01-44-18-61-10. Until 20 july 2008.