This is another post about another exhibition at the magnificent Brooklyn Museum. Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin. In this exhibition, Rachel Kneebone sets up eight of her porcelain sculptures and sets them beside fifteen of Rodin’s bronze sculpture. The exhibition highlights Rodin’s and Kneebone’s interest in the “representation of mourning, ecstasy, death, vitality in figurative sculpture.” That is quoted from the Brooklyn Museum’s page.
The exhibition is fascinating. The juxtaposition of Kneebone’s pristine figures with Rodin’s dark figures is striking in contrast. Yet at the same time, they are so similar in representation. Kneebone creates large sculptures by assembling small ones together. Her sculptures combine recognizable human body parts with chilling mutations.
Here are a few of my favorite photos of the exhibition. If you would like to see more, you can just look through my album on Flickr: click here to see more.
I chose specifically to show more of Kneebone’s works than Rodin’s because (1) I didn’t take that many pictures of Rodin’s works, (2) the ones I did take didn’t come out that nicely, and (3) you’ve probably seen tons of Rodin before, but rarely ever Kneebone.
My absolute favorite piece in the whole exhibition was Kneebone’s masterpiece, The Descent, inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, just as Rodin’s masterpiece, The Gates of Hell, was inspired. I was not allowed to photograph this one piece, so here’s a photo from the Brooklyn Museum’s Flickr.
It’s amazing, isn’t it?
