The Idea Behind My Works

What is the idea behind my works and what appeals in people about them? It is the pivot on which all art turns— equilibrium, a counterbalancing of masses which gives rise to movement. That is the crux of art, whether those who conceive art as something different from "crass reality" like it or not. Art is like love. For many people it is a dream, an event of the soul, a palace, a sweet odor, a jewel. But none of these are the real thing. What is essential in love is union. Everything else is detail— delightful, thrilling maybe, but detail. The same is true of art. If someone comes and praises my symbolism, my power of expession, still I know that the only important thing are the surfaces. Respect the surfaces, depict them correctly from every side, and movement will come; shift the masses, and create a new equilibrium. The human body can be compared to a striding temple; and like a temple, it has a center of gravity around which the volumes of the body are distributed and ordered. Once you have realized this, you know everything. It is simple, but you have to see it. Academic artists don't want to see it. Instead of realizing that this is the key to my method, people call me a poet... They say my sculpture is the sculpture of an enthusiast. I do not deny that it contains much of a violent nature, but this overwrought quality does not come out of me, it is a part of nature itself and its motion. The works of God are by their very nature exaggerated; I am only true to them. Nor is my temperament overexcited; it is tranquil. Nor am I a dreamer, but a mathematician, and if my work is good, then it is because it's geometric...

When you follow nature, you find everything... It is not a matter of creating "The New"; the words "creating" and "inventing" are superfluous words. Revelation comes only to those who perceive with their eyes and minds. Everything is contained in what surrounds us. Everything is given in nature, which is imbued with eternal, uninterrupted movement. A woman's body, a mountain, a horse are one and the same thing in terms of conception, and they all are built according to the same principles.

— Ernst-Gerhard Güse, Auguste Rodin: Drawings and Watercolors
     translated from the German by John Gabriel & Michael Taylor,
     Rizzoli, New York, 1984