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Los Angeles has a bit of everything. Let's say you decide to visit the La Brea Tar Pits down on Wilshire – to this day they're still pulling saber-toothed tigers and wooly mammoths out of the ooze, and the bubbling tar pools make the place smell like hot asphalt and raw, sweet crude oil. But right next door, a few steps west, is the county art museum, LACMA – and in the courtyard, right there on Wilshire, are all the Rodin masterworks, under the palms, in the faintly oily air.
Are these the real thing? Auguste Rodin willed to the state – of France, not California – his studio and the right to make casts from his plasters, the molds used to cast the bronze. To deal with unauthorized reproductions, the Musée Rodin in Paris set twelve casts as the maximum number that could be made from Rodin's plasters and still be considered his work. These figures in Los Angeles were cast posthumously as authorized by Rodin's will. So, as these are authorized by the museum in Paris, they're the real thing, sort of. Los Angeles is like that.
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Marsyas (torso of "The Falling Man") – first modeled 1882-89
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Monument to Honoré de Balzac, first modeled 1897
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Jean d'Aire, first modeled c. 1886
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Jean de Fiennes, Draped, first modeled 1885-86
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Monumental Head of Jean d'Aire, first modeled 1884-86
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Monumental Head of Pierre de Wissant, first modeled 1884-85
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Here's Rodin himself, by his student and collaborator, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle –
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Bourdelle is cool. This is his Head of the Figure of Eloquence – and you might have figured out that one of Bourdelle's students was the young Alberto Giacometti.
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Time to move on, and Bourdelle points the way, with Herakles, the Archer –
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If you wish to use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me. And should you choose to download any of these images and use them invoking the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, please provide credit, and, on the web, a link back to this site.
Technical Note:
These photographs were taken with a Nikon D200 – the lenses used were AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or AF Nikkor 70-300 mm telephoto. The high-resolution photography here was modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 software.
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All text and photos unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 - Alan M. Pavlik
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