Rodin

This past weekend, there was a bit of shopping, sport and sulking (due to excessive sport watching) on the Saturday, and on Sunday, Matt and I went over to the Royal Academy of Art, off Piccadilly Road and checked out the exhibition on Rodin.

Lovely weather- crisp and sun-shiny. The 'Virgin Mother' statue by Damien Hirst had been replaced by Rodin's 'Gates of Hell', but we walked straight past it to check out the exhibition.

It was pretty awesome. First room started with two bronze statues- After his first statue was first cast, it seemed that people at that time accused Rodin of cheating- by covering his models with plastercasts, instead of modeling them in clay/wax first! So, he deliberately made his second statue larger than life, to stem all the gossip. Funny that. I'd be inclined to believe the rumours, they looked so lifelike.

The rest of the exhibition covered sketches he'd made of works, little models of the statues in different positions and poses, past commissions that he'd done, studies of his real life models, busts he'd made-in bronze, plaster and marble- it became quite fashionable and de rigueur for members of London's artistic and moneyed society to have a bust created by the great French master.

We saw a few variations of 'The Kiss' and 'The Thinker', in various sizes. Funny how they'd originally came about as characters for Rodin's work, the Gates of Hell- The Kiss was based on the story of Paulo and Francesca, in Dante's 'Inferno' and the Thinker was meant to represent Dante, himself, overlooking the gates of Hell. Rodin ended up singling them out and then enlarging them as pieces in their own right.

It was amazing- the exhibition culminated in a final statue of The Thinker, set right in the middle of an octagonal room... And after going through the different rooms displaying works in progress, and variations of different pieces, you end up with much more appreciation of the talent and hard work that went into these works of art.

After all that, we went out and had a look at the display of The Gates of Hell, taking it all in, and trying to find the characters we'd so recently met.

If you're interested, you can read more about Rodin and The Gates of Hell,

here.

Anyway, after Rodin, we went over to Covent Garden to do a bit of shopping- all right, I shopped while Matt read the paper, but we have now joined the ranks of annoying couples that match their clothes. All my fault- I'd gotten Matt a black Carhart hoodie and liked it so much that I went and got myself the exact same one. But while Matt doesn't care that we look like Arnold and Danny in Twins, I'm now thinking feverishly of when I'd next be out, in casual clothes without him, so as to get maximum wear out of my new jacket! (well, the other option was for me to get it in camouflage, and I didn't think it would be of much use in blending into the urban jungle...)

We then came home, Naomi came over for dinner, which was a Greek roast with mutton from the Borough Market (where else?) and roasted for 2.5 hours in a slow oven in a tray half filled with wine and stock. Yum. While we were waiting for the mutton to cook, we popped over to Village East (bar/cafe) for a couple of glasses of wine.

Great weekend, all in all..