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In episode 45 of Art Talk, I discuss how craftsmanship is seen in all great art.
‘The most important thing an artist needs to know is how to see. Da Vinci. Da Vinci’s style combined accurate observation and sensitive imagination.’
My day was over, and I sat with my last tea before bed, reading about Camille Claudel.
“A photograph dating from 1899 shows Camille Claudel, then aged 45, in her studio, wrapped in a long dark coat, standing opposite Perseus and the Gorgon she had sculpted that year. The work reveals Claudel’s sources and influences – Donatello, Cellini, Greco-Roman mythology – and the passion she was driven by: the Gorgon’s severed head is a self-portrait. This photo is very different from the clichéd images usually associated with Camille Claudel’s work and life, marked by her tumultuous affair with Rodin and her gradual descent into madness. It shows not only a sculptress capable of planning and producing a work of ambitious size, but also a woman scarred by the hardships she has suffered. It was no easy task for a woman to become an artist in the mid-19th century; she had to cope with moral prejudice, gender-related restrictions in her artistic training and the prevailing male dominance in the Ministry of Fine Arts and the Salon juries.” -Musee Rodin
This short piece inspired me to talk about how craftsmanship is seen in great art.
Many people have the need to express themselves, and rightfully so. There is a difference between the artists who learned the craft, which is not really taught anymore and those who chose to start at the end, which has become more rule than the exception.
In the time of Claudel, it was tough to follow that passion because, in that predominantly male world, it was not done. I wondered to what extent she mentally was not well. Who decided that and labelled her? Obviously, men did. However, that is not my focus for today.
My focus is craftsmanship, and Claudel did everything possible to gain the knowledge she needed to create her very sensitive sculptures. Her work is what Da Vinci was known for, accurate observation and sensitive imagination. She received her rightful recognition after she passed, in the 70ties of the 20th century when feminism was on the rise.