Camille Cadel Essay

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Camille Claudel, a noteworthy sculptor and graphic designer from France, was responsible for the creation of multiple fine works of art throughout her long career. Though she was relatively obscure as an artist during her life, she and her works would later gain recognition and notoriety after her death in 1943. This paper will analyze one of these works, La Fortune created 1902-1905. Through the analysis of this artwork, an understanding of Camille Claudel, her life, her art style, and the time that it was created will be established. La Fortune is a bronze sculpture with black platina which stands at 48cm (roughly 19 inches). The sculpture in its entirety is dark colored, but it has a glossy sheen that brightens up the image. The sculpture depicts a woman perched in pose atop a spinning wheel. Said woman is wearing no clothes, draped only in what appears to be a sheet or plain dress which is falling to the ground beneath her. She almost seems to be dancing upon the spinning wheel; the woman stands tip-toe on her left foot with her right leg mildly raised, left arm is raised to the air, her right arm out to the side. This position gives the figure the appearance of what could be either a graceful flowing motion, or a mad and precarious whirl. La Fortune seems present an overall joyous and even celebratory image: a woman whirling about gracefully with reckless abandon and joy, completely uninhibited. Camille Claudel, though she did work in other mediums such as drawing, worked primarily in sculpture. …show more content…
She was actually taught in the craft and heavily influenced by the famous artist Auguste Rodin, as she began working in his workshop early in her career. Claudel and Rodin were deeply entangled with each other artistically, professionally, and romantically. She became Rodin’s muse, model, confidante, and eventually entered an on-again off-again affair with him. Though they did eventually break apart for good after ending the romantic aspect of their relationship, and a fairly amicable friendship, Rodin had an undeniable influence on Claudel’s early art style and her life. The art style of Claudel was met with great praise by several figures of the art world of the time. She has been stated to have had an innate and natural talent for sculpture which was recognized at an early age; she was even considered to be a genius by some. Claudel tended toward sensual and lively pieces of art. Her sculptures were noted to be filled with emotion, an intimacy that connected the observer. Some of her rawest and most revolutionary works were created in the period after she broke ties with Rodin. Most of her works were human figures, or at the very least human heads, many of them naked. Her style deviated more from Rodin’s as time passed, taking on a more decorative quality. She is actually considered by some to have become somewhat of a rival to Rodin. Camille Claudel’s life eventually took a very unfortunate turn around 1905, the year this sculpture was completed. She began to display some signs of mental illness, such as bouts of paranoia, and actually wound up destroying many of her own works. Eventually she shut herself away in her workshop. After the death of her father, she was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital by her surviving family. Officially, her family insisted that she had been committed “voluntarily”, but she was noted to appear clear-headed while she was working on her art and her doctors did attempt to convince her family that she did not need to be kept in the institution. Her family decided to keep her there. Claudel was rarely visited by her family, and they were criticized severely …show more content…
This sculpture essentially exemplifies many of the characteristics of Claudel’s art style. It depicts a sensual human figure as the subject, and a lively one at that. She (the subject) is shown to be performing an unconcerned and unrestrained dance, seeming to almost be caught mid-movement, rather than static and still as one would expect from a sculpture. One could even think that the statue may actually move. It holds its own presence that seems to speak to the

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