Camille CLAUDEL,
Born in 1864, Camille Claudel is a complex figure, intimately linked to the story of another great sculptor, Auguste Rodin, of whom she was the pupil and then the lover. A large part of the sculptor's work is crossed by the question of the relation to the other, of his relation to Rodin. It therefore deals with a lot of loneliness. The originality of Camille Claudel lies in the autobiographical aspect of her work in which she addresses all the themes of life: childhood, old age, love, the portrait… Often interpreted in a simplistic way, the autobiographical aspect is not confined to the state of his relationship with Rodin, but is part of a process of sublimation of the events of his personal life. She was not twenty when she met Auguste Rodin in Paris after a self-taught artistic training. He is twice his age. A year later, in 1884, Camille Claudel joined the workshop established by Rodin in Paris. The two fell in love and Camille worked hard to make feet and hands for the statues of the great master.
Claudel's works are embodied, as explained in this 1994 archive by Nicole Barbier, curator of the Rodin Museum: "The works are very alive, the way Camille sculpts is life itself, it is the breath that You don't find it anywhere else, not even in Rodin which is a much more virile art, much less spiritualized than that of Camille. That of Camille is very internalized, which makes it very moving. "
Fifteen years later, it is the final break of this artistic and emotional bond, Rodin did not want to leave his partner on bad days, Rose Beuret. This post-breakup period brought to light Claudel's most beautiful sculptures such as La Valse or the famous L’Âge mur, which depicts the Claudel-Rodin separation. This one represents Claudel on his knees trying in vain to retain a determined Rodin who leaves with Rose Beuret. But Camille suffers from a paranoid psychosis. She is convinced that those whom she names the band to Rodin want to harm her and her sculptures. To protect herself from Rodin, she destroys an incalculable number of works: this will sign the beginning of her self-destruction as Nicole Barbier specifies: "Her destruction of work is part of this register, she could not bear this excess of violence in her and she sent it back to her works. Her works being a part of herself, it is a kind of self-harm that she inflicts on herself. "
At forty-nine, fifteen years later, it was psychiatric internment forever: she died thirty years later, in 1943, without having ever seen Rodin, her mother, or agreed to start sculpting again. Camille’s universe appears to be closed like her sculptures, still imprisoned, wrapped in a veil, in their hair… "Her life is terrifying and terribly moving, but she herself ha
s not arranged things in her relations with people, with artists, with art critics, with her family, with no one. She was really locked in on herself, "concludes Nicole Barbier.
In the 1994 documentary, Jean Grosjean, author of a preface devoted to the life of Camille Claudel, draws a parallel between the fate of Camille and that of Rimbaud notably "by the candor which animates them". According to him, the two artists were sure that they would change everything without lending themselves to anything. Auguste Rodin had said about her: "I showed her where to find gold, but the gold she finds is hers."
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