'The Making of Rodin' at Tate Modern

The big exhibition at the newly re-opened Tate Modern is all about Rodin, particularly his work in plaster. The Musee Rodin in Paris has loaned a lot of works to help show Rodin's process of making sculptures. There are sketches (often in watercolour), small models of much larger sculptures, many versions of body parts to practice getting hands, for example, just right, and even nude plaster statues to get the stance of a model just right before adding the clothes. There are some fascinating pieces here. It's not the biggest exhibition but is well worth seeing.

The first exhibit is 'The Age of Bronze' in a room of it's own. A willowy young man cast in bronze. It's a gorgeous statue but it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the exhibition and I suspect it's there to say 'this is what Rodin was capable of doing', with it's smooth, elegant lines and surfaces before moving on to the rougher plaster 'sketches'.

The next room is big and has a load of works on a central display to walk round in the one-way route so you get a chance to see the front and back of the statues. 'The Thinker' is, of course, the first thing you see, but I think my favourites were the 'sketches' of figures Rodin produced to try out his ideas. There's a rather portly 'Balzac' and a few studies for a naked 'St John the Baptist'. There was also a lovely small statue (small? maybe three feet tall?) of one of the figures in 'The Burghers of Calais', naked here even though he wears a full-body robe in the actual finished work. This was Rodin working out what the stance should look like and it's quite clear when you look at both the study and the finished work which character he was working on. It just wouldn't occur to me to do a naked study to work out how a clothed figure should look. I was most impressed.

Moving along and there is 'The Burghers of Calais' standing on the floor rather than raised up so a lot easier to see the details. There's a bronze cast of this statue outside Parliament so I'm familiar with it but it was fascinating to see this original version and walk round it peering at the details. The Burghers were six leaders of Calais in 1346-47 who surrendered to King Edward III to get him to spare the city. They expected to be executed but were spared. It's a great work and I wandered around it several times looking at the details. Look at those legs, the feet and hands, the way the clothes fall ... it suddenly all made sense why he would model the naked bodies before adding the clothes.

There are, of course, many more works to see at the exhibition but these are my highlights. The exhibition only opened a couple of weeks ago so there's plenty of time to see it yet and it's well worth a viewing.

'The Kiss' is also on display but outside the exhibition and it's great to be able to walk all the way round the work. They're definitely into a full-on snog.

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.

'Rodin and Dance' at the Courtauld Gallery

This afternoon we risked the pre-Christmas Sunday crowds to see the current exhibition at the Courtauld, 'Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement'. It's a joint exhibition with the Rodin Museum in Paris and is the first time Rodin's small models of dancers have been assembled since his death.

The exhibition is small, the usual two rooms at the Courtauld, but is worth seeing particularly since you can then wander round the excellent standing collection from the 1200s to the mid 1900s or thereabouts. Starting with the exhibition on the second floor you work your way back in time as you descend, from 20th century paintings on the top floor down through the centuries to the medieval and early Renaissance works on the ground floor. It's quite an exciting journey given the vast range of works on display.

On entering the exhibition, by the time I saw the third drawing (the Cambodian dancer to the right) I wished this exhibition had been on over the summer before I did my short course in drawing movement at the City Lit - on reaching this third drawing I felt I had already learned so much about how to draw movement. From this drawing in pencil and watercolour you can clearly see the dancer is dancing but the background also indicates movement. It's not just the dancer that is moving, it's the whole sketch moving and gyrating in time to some unheard music.

Just seeing this sketch gave me an insight into drawing movement that made me want to start my summer course again with those huge sheets of paper and charcoal and ink. This dancer is drawn on paper about A4 size but is incredibly powerful when you look on it in it's richness, far richer and more vibrant than this image.

There were a series of drawing of a nude woman in various poses, some more explicit than others, of the acrobat Aldo Moreno in extreme and exaggerated poses. There were a few drawings of men, including of Nijinsky who posed for Rodin when the Ballet Russe was in Paris, but the majority of drawings - and the small statues - were of women.

I particularly liked the series of drawings, some more and less finished and rough - of the woman holding her leg behind her. Some drawings expressed this in a few rough lines and others had blurred lines to emphasis shape and contour, give the figure more volume. They are all terribly expressive and a couple looked as if he'd caught the model as she let go of her foot, almost about to topple to the floor on losing her balance. I'm probably reading oo much into these drawings but I was very impressed with the drawings and wished there were more.

As well as the drawings there are some bronzes of dancers and the glass cabinet full of the small statues of dancers. It's a small exhibition but is fascinating. The exhibition is open until 22 January so there's still plenty of time to see it.