Rodin at the British Museum

Sometimes it must be really odd to be the British Museum. You've been around for so long and so many people have visited you that some must have gone on to become famous. So it is with Rodin who visited the Museum in 1881 and fell in love with the Parthenon sculptures and friezes and they went on to influence so much of his subsequent work. Fast forward 130-odd years and the British Museum puts on an exhibition of Rodin's work alongside some of the marvels from the Parthenon. I wonder, would he have been proud or embarrassed?

The first sculpture you see is 'The Age of Bronze', a statue of a naked young man that I first saw a version of in Berlin. This is the statue that caused Rodin to be accused of making the cast from a living body rather that a sculpture, because it's so realistic. The play of light over the muscles and toned body is really quite astonishing and it's a perfect start to the exhibition.

The sign in front of the sculpture shows a photo of the actual model and two statues that probably influenced Rodin at the time. The model was a Belgian called Auguste Neyt and I wonder what he felt about the statue and what his family thinks today. I hope they're proud of it and him since it really is a beautiful work to see. If that was my great-grandfather I'd be proud! Look at the beauty he bequeathed to the world long after he grew old and died.

An exhibition of Rodin's work wouldn't be complete without a version of 'The Kiss' and 'The Thinker', his two mega-hits. I've never been up close to 'The Thinker' before - in the garden of the Musee Rodin in Paris the statue is up high on a plinth amid the hedges - he looks good but you can't really examine him. On a close inspection at the British Museum the thing I really noticed was the size of his feet. They're big and solid and gnarled and don't look like the feet of a thinker to me. This thinker's been out and about and trod in some marble quaries over the years. It looks like a really uncomfortable pose but he's been holding it for over 100 years so I suppose it's not too uncomfortable.

The big feet seem to be a theme across his work, with out-size, muscular feet being a trademark across the works on show. Time again there are big feet. My favourite was the legs and feet of 'The Walker', one of the last works in the exhibition. Big, muscular legs balanced above big feet and, while most impressive, clearly aren't the legs and feet of a walker. Walkers tend to be skinny - muscular but skinny - and that's definitely not the form of this statue. Those legs and feet are so solid, you can feel them pressing into the earth, moving forward and dragging you along.  I wish I could draw legs like that.

It's good that we also get to see some of the works that helped to inspire Rodin. Normally the Parthenon statues and friezes are exhibited quite high up to reflect how you'd see them at the Parthenon but the exhibition shows them much lower, at eye height. I particularly liked this frieze of horsemen with the man in the middle clearly checking his messages on his mobile phone. Those ancient Greeks were way ahead of their time, obviously. It really makes you wonder how humanity was so stupid to have lost that technology for over 2,000 years - just think what we'd have by now if technology had continued to develop?

I went to the exhibition late in the afternoon when it wasn't too busy but I can well imagine that it's not good for seeing the works around a busy lunchtime. The exhibits are nicely spaced out (apart from around the Thinker for some odd  reason) and the British Museum is encouraging people to go along and draw some of the works, with folding stools available if you want them. After I'd been round the exhibition I went back to the start again and did a quick sketch of 'The Age of Bronze' and here it is. This is a really good exhibition and well worth the cost of a ticket. Thanks British Museum.