Evasions

Conceived around a singular object – the Study of a dressing gown for Balzac made by Auguste Rodin in 1897 as part of the commission for a monument to Balzac – this work brings together couture and sculpture. The book looks at on this singular object, which hybridizes the myth of the writer draped in his robe of room for the archaeology that Rodin leads when he undertakes to go and find the Balzac's tailor to have one of the writer's costumes remade for him. plaster ghost that is born from this research will ultimately lead to Balzac, immediately refused by the sponsors of the monument. This work shows the artist at work, his doubts and his discoveries. He returns to the place of The Study of the Dressing Gown in Rodin's Creative Process and analyzes more precisely how it allows the artist to extricate himself from a major concern: in fact, if the sculptor first seeks to find the Balzac's body as it was, he quickly encountered the refusal of the Society literary people for whom a big, short and stocky Balzac (although close to the truth) is unthinkable. Marine Kisiel undertakes to probe the thickness of an era, its projects and its contradictions when it undertakes celebrating great men without wanting to see them as they really were. This book thus aims to make us think about what public statuary carries values ​​and prescriptions, and, at a time when statues are being torn down, necessary broadening of the representation of bodies and identities in contemporary public space. The book will be published on the occasion of the exhibition dedicated to the Dressing Gown which will be held at the Rodin Museum from October 14, 2024 to March 2, 2025, and of which Marine Kisiel is the curator.