Moulding life: Marble and clay become vivid human emotions In a career that bridged the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Auguste Rodin(1840 1917) was at once deeply inspired by artistic heritage and a rebel against its idealized forms. With a commitment to naturalism, he sought to render not only the realities of human flesh but all therawness of human feeling and experience, exploring the physical postures and expressions of contemplation, joy, love, lust, loss, shame, anguish, or turmoil.Rodin's works are distinguished by thisfidelity to nature and physicality. He rendered his subjects as he found and saw them: old and wrinkled or young and voluptuous, and pushed the textural possibilities of clay, wax, plaster, bronze, and marble to record the particularities ofbody surface and form.The results were oftendeeply sensual, beguiling the viewer with smoothcontours, silkiness, and poses that expressly revealed genitalia. The tender and titillatingThe Kissis one of Rodin's most famous works, as well as the broodingThe Thinker(1880).Produced in collaboration with the Musee Rodin, this book introduces Rodin and the evocative intensity and influence of his work, at adefining moment for emerging modernismand as a leading inspiration for 20th century artists from Maillol to Brancusi, Moore to Matisse. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN s Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions "