At the peak of his career Rodin was regarded as the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo. He challenged the established styles of his day and in so doing revolutionized sculpture. Today his pioneering work is a crucial link between traditional and modern art. 

RODIN'S LEGACY INCLUDES:

Faithfulness to nature 

Rodin refused to idealize his subjects. He chose to show his people as he found them, old and wrinkled or young and supple. He believed all of nature was beautiful and that any artist who tried to improve upon nature by adding “green to the springtime, rose to the sunrise, carmine to the young lips…creates ugliness because he lies.” [Rodin on Art and Artists, Conversations with Paul Gsell.] 

Examples:

• Mask of the Man with the Broken Nose 

• Saint John the Baptist Preaching

• Eve

Expressively modeled surfaces 

Rodin’s ability to represent the vitality and emotion of his subject was in part due to the rough, expressive, and light-catching modeling of the surfaces.  “I forced myself to express in each swelling of the torso or of the limbs the efflorescence of a muscle or of a bone which lay deep beneath the skin.” [Rodin on Art and Artists, Conversations with Paul Gsell.] 

Examples:

• The Thinker 

• Monumental Head of Pierre de Wiessant 

The transformation of monumental public sculpture 

Along with many of his contemporaries, Rodin sought work and recognition by competing for commissions for public monuments. Once his talent was recognized, he received numerous such commissions, such as The Burghers of Calais and the Monument to Balzac. He revolutionized the public monument by departing from the academic standards of his day in favor of emotional poses and symbolic themes. 

Examples: 

• The Burghers of Calais 

• The Monument to Balzac 

• The Call to Arms

• The Monument to Victor Hugo

Treating partial figures and fragments as complete works of art 

Rodin was one of the first artists to insist that part of a figure – such as a torso or a hand – could by itself convey meaning and thus be a complete work of art. He found inspiration and new creative energy in the power and formal beauty he saw in such fragments. Rodin's partial figures greatly influenced modern sculpture at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, a time he was very active and admired. European artists like Maillol, Brancusi, Archipenko, and Matisse all learned from Rodin’s achievements. 

Examples: 

• Narcisse 

• The Prayer 

• Large Clenched Left Hand 

Recycling figures: marcottage and assemblage 

Throughout his career Rodin recycled his own works. He would create entirely new works by reusing, in part or in whole, sculptures that he had already created (marcottage). He also pioneered the technique of repeating the same figure in a work (assemblage). Rodin used his figures as a type of artistic vocabulary, one which he could apply in a great variety of creative circumstances. 

Examples: 

• The Three Shades 

• Dance Movement, Pas de Deux ‘B’ 

• The Cathedral