Quotes by Auguste Rodin

“I invent nothing, I rediscover. And the thing seems new because people have generally lost sight of the aim and the means of art ; they take that for an innovation which is nothing but a return to ...”

“I feel it, but I cannot express it,... I cannot analyse the Celtic genius to my own satisfaction. In the Middle Ages art came from groups, not from individuals. It was anonymous ; the sculptors of ...”

“I believed before that (journey to Italy in 1875)... that movement was the whole secret of this art, and I put my models into positions like those of Michael Angelo. But as I went on observing the ...”

“To produce good sculpture it is not necessary to copy the works of antiquity; it is necessary first of all to regard the works of nature, and to see in those of the classics only the method by whic...”

“Nobody does good to men with impunity.”

“Gsell: What astonishes me, is that your way is so different from that of other sculptors. They prose the model. Instead of that, you wait till a model has instinctively or accidentally taken an Int...”

“Rodin: I am not at the model's orders; I am at Nature's. Doubtless my confreres have their reasons for proceeding as they do. But when one constrains Nature in that way and treats human beings as m...”

“I admit, of course, that the artist does not see nature as the vulgar do. His emotion reveals to him the inner truths that underlie appearance. But the only principle In art is to copy what one see...”

“But when a great artist or a great writer lays hold upon either sort of ugliness he transfigures it instantaneously. With a touch from the magic ring he metamorphoses it into beauty. His Is a sort ...”

“In art a thing is beautiful whenever it has character. Character — this is the intense truth of any natural spectacle, whether beautiful or ugly. You may even call it a double truth. For it is the ...”

“Now to the great artist, everything in nature has character.”

“I obey nature, I never presume to command her. The first principal in art is to copy what one sees.”

“I admit, that the commonplace man can never, by copying, produce a masterpiece; he notes every detail but he does not really see - the artist penetrates below the surface into the very heart of nat...”

“Drawing is but a means to an end. One imagines that drawing can be beautiful-it is not the lines which are beautiful, but what they signify, the sentiments which they translate. In reality, there i...”

“The artist who parades his drawing, the writer who calls attention to his style, is like the farmer who devotes his energies to polishing farm implements and never uses them.”

“It is too evident that if the drawing is bad, the color false, the deepest emotion must fail to express itself.”

“No sudden inspiration can replace the long years of arduous labor necessary to train the eye to observe, the hand to reproduce.”

“If in looking at a picture you have been profoundly moved by it, but have not noticed the color or drawing, you may be sure that they are technically perfect.”

“An artist must possess consummate technique in order to make us forget it.”

“The great difficulty and crowning glory of art is to paint, to draw, to write, naturally and simply.”