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Lot Essay
The Comité Auguste Rodin under the direction of Jérôme Le Blay will include this work in their forthcoming Rodin Catalogue critique de l'oeuvre sculpté under the number 2009-2880B.
Les mauvais génies is a unique cast of a composition that evocatively showcases Auguste Rodin’s supremacy as a sculptor, while also expressing the Symbolist undertones that infused his work at the end of the Nineteenth Century. First conceived in 1899, the group was born out of Rodin’s assembling working method: the group’s seated figure existed first as an individual composition – and was indeed exhibited as such at the Pavillon de l’Alma in 1900 as Femme qui se peigne – while the figure to her left relates to La douleur no. 2. Once assembled, the group was enlarged into four marble sculptures. A unique cast, the present work represents the only bronze enlargement of the subject executed during Rodin’s lifetime: Les mauvais génies was bought from the artist in 1903 by Jules Rehns and has remained in the family ever since. Rodin himself wished the cast to be unique; the year the work was executed, he wrote: ‘The Two Spirits group is in fact a unique piece. I do not intend to have others cast’ (A. Rodin to Victor Perdoux, September 7, 1903, in A. Beausire & H. Pinet, eds., Correspondance de Rodin, vol. II, 1900-1907, Paris, 1986, no. 109). The work’s only other existing bronze exemplar, slightly smaller than the present one, was posthumously cast by the Musée Rodin, for its permanent collection, in 1928.
While carving the work in marble, Rodin had wished for the figures to maintain the lightest possible form, their legs suspended in the air. Constrained by the weight of the medium, however, the artist was forced to limit his ambition, resting the figures’ legs on marble props. In its bronze incarnation, Rodin returned Les mauvais génies to its original concept, precarious and free: the legs of the figures sprawl in the air, augmenting the image’s pathos and dynamism. A female figure is seated on a rock, her abundant hair dishevelled in front of her as she bends under the assault of two other female nudes. Violent in its action, the work is nevertheless suffused with sensual tones which ambiguously obfuscate the distinction between attack and embrace, drama and play, pain and pleasure.
Presenting this group of women as a mysterious spectacle, inspiring fear as well as fascination, Les mauvais génies evokes one of the themes cherished by the Symbolists, the femme fatale: an alluring yet dangerous creature, muse of the artist. The work, however, welcomes multiple meanings. Rodin himself titled the group differently on a number of occasions: at the 1900 exhibition at the Pavillon de l’Alma, a small version of the sculpture was called Les génies mauvais entraînant l’homme, while a larger version, exhibited on that same occasion, was titled Jeune fille entre deux génies. Evoking occult forces and confounding the narrative of the work, Les mauvais génies seems akin to the Symbolist aesthetics, while perpetuating Rodin’s fascination for unexpected assemblage of forms, from whose discordance is born pathos and expressive power.
Les mauvais génies is a unique cast of a composition that evocatively showcases Auguste Rodin’s supremacy as a sculptor, while also expressing the Symbolist undertones that infused his work at the end of the Nineteenth Century. First conceived in 1899, the group was born out of Rodin’s assembling working method: the group’s seated figure existed first as an individual composition – and was indeed exhibited as such at the Pavillon de l’Alma in 1900 as Femme qui se peigne – while the figure to her left relates to La douleur no. 2. Once assembled, the group was enlarged into four marble sculptures. A unique cast, the present work represents the only bronze enlargement of the subject executed during Rodin’s lifetime: Les mauvais génies was bought from the artist in 1903 by Jules Rehns and has remained in the family ever since. Rodin himself wished the cast to be unique; the year the work was executed, he wrote: ‘The Two Spirits group is in fact a unique piece. I do not intend to have others cast’ (A. Rodin to Victor Perdoux, September 7, 1903, in A. Beausire & H. Pinet, eds., Correspondance de Rodin, vol. II, 1900-1907, Paris, 1986, no. 109). The work’s only other existing bronze exemplar, slightly smaller than the present one, was posthumously cast by the Musée Rodin, for its permanent collection, in 1928.
While carving the work in marble, Rodin had wished for the figures to maintain the lightest possible form, their legs suspended in the air. Constrained by the weight of the medium, however, the artist was forced to limit his ambition, resting the figures’ legs on marble props. In its bronze incarnation, Rodin returned Les mauvais génies to its original concept, precarious and free: the legs of the figures sprawl in the air, augmenting the image’s pathos and dynamism. A female figure is seated on a rock, her abundant hair dishevelled in front of her as she bends under the assault of two other female nudes. Violent in its action, the work is nevertheless suffused with sensual tones which ambiguously obfuscate the distinction between attack and embrace, drama and play, pain and pleasure.
Presenting this group of women as a mysterious spectacle, inspiring fear as well as fascination, Les mauvais génies evokes one of the themes cherished by the Symbolists, the femme fatale: an alluring yet dangerous creature, muse of the artist. The work, however, welcomes multiple meanings. Rodin himself titled the group differently on a number of occasions: at the 1900 exhibition at the Pavillon de l’Alma, a small version of the sculpture was called Les génies mauvais entraînant l’homme, while a larger version, exhibited on that same occasion, was titled Jeune fille entre deux génies. Evoking occult forces and confounding the narrative of the work, Les mauvais génies seems akin to the Symbolist aesthetics, while perpetuating Rodin’s fascination for unexpected assemblage of forms, from whose discordance is born pathos and expressive power.