Rodin in his time: Biographical materials saved from the Web

Aristide Maillol (1861-1944)

Maillol Museum: http://www.museemaillol.com/

Text published in: Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p. 465.

French sculptor, painter, lithographer, wood-engraver and tapestry designer. Born at Banyuls (Pyrenés-Orientales). Went to Paris in 1881 to become a painter; entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Gérôme and Cabanel 1885. Met Bourdelle and Gauguin.

Inspired by medieval tapestry, set up a tapestry studio in 1893 at Banyuls. Began to make sculpture in 1895, but did not decide to devote himself to sculpture until serious eyestrain made him give up tapestry in 1900. Friendship with the Nabis Denis, Vuillard, Bonnard, Roussel. 

La Méditerranée, 1905, lime stone. Oskar Reinhart Collection 'Am Römerholz'

His first sculptures were carved wooden statuettes, but from 1900 he mainly modelled figures to be cast in bronze. First one-man exhibition at the Galerie Vollard, Paris, 1902. Settled in 1903 at Marly-le-Roi on the outskirts of Paris, but continued to spend winters in the South. After years of poverty, achieved recognition in 1905 when his first large statue 'The Mediterranean' was acclaimed at the Salon d'Automne. Subsequently received a number of commissions for monuments, including war memorials for Céret and Banyuls and monuments to Blanqui, Cézanne and Debussy.  Noted for his classical and monumental treatment of the female figure. Made woodcut illustrations for Virgil's Eclogues 1910-12 (published 1925) and several other books.  Spent his last years from 1939 at Banyuls, where he died.

Aristide Maillol: biography

Text source: http://msms.essortment.com/aristidemaillol_rvii.htm

Of all the greats in modern sculpture, e.g., Rodin, Giacometti, Picasso, Brancusi, Moore, Manship, there is one figure whose subtle and heroic work left a profound mark on perhaps all sculptors of the early 20th Century. Aristide Maillol is not a household name by any means, yet his work can be viewed in practically every great art museum in the world. In the US, one can view the Frenchman’s art on the sculpture terraces of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and at almost every important art destination in between. 

What is it about Maillol’s work that prompts museums to pay over a million dollars for one of his prized, large sculptures? Moreover, why is his name virtually unknown by the general public? The answer to the paradox lies in the dichotomy inherent in the artworks themselves. His works are heroic, yet subdued; masterful, yet crude, classical, yet primitive, elevated, yet humble; obvious, yet profound; harmonious, yet disturbing. Such contrasts as these can only be portrayed in the work of a great artist. 

Beginning his art career at the end of the 19th Century, Maillol determined to join the ranks of the avant garde, first as a decorative artist studying under Alexandre Cabanel (whose voluptuous Birth of Venus hangs famously in the Met in New York), then as a sculptor in the circle of artists who were to contribute to a new chapter in Art History. He was a member of the Nabis (the Hebrew word for “prophet”) artists, who were followers of Gauguin and whose names included Bonnard, Denis, and Vuillard. Maillol participated in the Nabis aesthetic, which strove for pure form and moved away from symbolism and verism. 

Maillol’s greatest contribution during this period was his single-handed revival of the lost art of tapestry. As an exclusively decorative art, tapestry showed him the way to form for form’s sake, which would become the anthem of early 20th Century art. All the while, when viewing the paintings and tapestries of Maillol, one can sense a desire to draw out a singular, central form -- the female nude. At a time when women were still being girdled and covered from head to toe and obliged to serve submissive roles, the idea of strong and robust nude women in art was revolutionary. Whether Maillol intended to create a stir or not, he found in the female nude a passion that would consume him the rest of his long, prolific life. 

From a somewhat tentative, Nabi-esque beginning emerged a rekindling of a brilliant classicism, unmatched since the Greek Empire, that would speak to modern times from an ancient source. Balance, harmony, solidity, centeredness, permanence, monumentality and mass became Maillol’s aesthetic and distinguished him from the stormy, tormented work of his great contemporary Auguste Rodin and the enchanting verisimilitude of Carpeaux before him.

Maillol’s splendid new classicism would be made manifest in what would end up a mere handful of works compared to the oeuvres of prolific artists like Rodin and Picasso. Yet of these few works a high percentage can be considered great achievements in sculpture. Take his masterpiece La Méditerranée of 1902-05 -- it is a voluminous nude woman wearing a classically bunned hair style and sitting as though confined in a symmetrical triangle when viewed from the side. She sits in thought, one arm propping her upright at the back while the other arm rests its elbow on her bent knee while supporting her downcast head, which is also the apex of the triangle. Such a pose in nature would not be comfortable, let alone restful, by any means. However Maillol with his genius for balance and harmony of mass, has this impossible, even clumsy creature come off as serenity, grace, and introspection epitomized. So powerful is the effect, that a phenomenally tangible new space is formed by the sculpture’s presence: she is not in your space, you are in her space of solitude and peace. 

A similar sculpture with a very different mood is Night (1907-09). Here sits what could be the very same woman from Méditerranée only this time she is more in the form of a box, both knees bent upward and both arms folded upon them while her head falls on top of this self-imprisoned architecture of limbs. Her face is invisible as it peers straight down, through her arms and between her legs, as though into a dark well. Night is perhaps the most modern of Maillol’s oeuvre. It is at once Classical as an ancient Greek work, Romantic as in Rodin’s The Thinker, Expressionistic like the work (particularly German) that would emerge during the Great Wars, and Abstract as Constantin Brancusi and Henry Moore were to expound the possibilities of. Maillol’s first public commission was the Monument to Cézanne (1912-25). This supreme, flying couch of a woman left its mark on 20th Century giants like Picasso (in his classical period which featured giant-limbed, small-headed goddesses no less) and Moore (whose signature style features a bench-like, classically reposed, abstract woman). Monument would be a mother to Maillol’s late period masterpieces like The Mountain (1937), Air (1938), and The River (1938-43). 

Although undocumented, the clear influence of the great American Deco sculptor Paul Manship is evident in these late works, which each bear characteristics of Manship’s most public of masterpieces: Prometheus in Rockefeller Plaza. Of these, The River is an enigma that will forever leave the book open on Maillol. A reclined, yet animated goddess of a woman is frozen in a kind of mysterious half-exstacy half-torment. At once a Medusa and a languid beauty, this work was based on the idea of a fallen stabbing victim to symbolize the abolition of war. In the end, these polar initiatives become a sublime commingling in art the likes of which the world had not seen since the ancient Laocoon Group of Greece. 

Why Maillol is not more widely known is perhaps a testament to how thoroughly his work has filled a void we today take for granted. A void where the simple, classical abstraction of the human form can communicate epic poems from a place of immortal stillness. Our contemporary frenzy today can no more comprehend a Maillol than the patient growth of a tree. Maillol is a sage that awaits the next chosen. 

Author's name omitted by request.

Biografie

Text source: http://www.rasscass.com/templ/te_bio.php?PID=868&RID=1
Photo left: Paul Senn, in "Sculpture in the Light of Photography", Benteli Verlag, 1997, Bern.

Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol wurde am 25. Dezember 1861 in Banyuls-sur-Mer geboren. Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol zog im Jahr 1882 nach Paris. Dort ließ er sich in den Jahren von 1882 bis 1886 an der École des Beaux-Arts sowie an der Akademie bei Alexandre Cabanel und Jean Léon Gérôme unterrichten. Seine künstlerische Laufbahn begann er unter dem Einfluss von Paul Gauguin, des französischen Symbolisten Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes und der französischen Nabis-Bewegung in der Malerei. Seine durch Linearität geprägten Bilder aus dieser Zeit wirken flächig und dekorativ. 

Danach wandet er sich den Techniken der Keramik und der Webkunst zu. Erst 1895 gestaltete Maillol Skulpturen. Er wandte sich dieser Technik aufgrund eines Augenleidens zu. Die Kenntisse über die Gestaltung von Plastiken aus Holz und Ton brachte er sich selbst bei. So machte er sich im Jahr 1900 an die Arbeiten zu seiner ersten großen Skulptur mit dem Titel „Das Mittelmeer“, die er 1905 im Salon präsentierte und damit sein öffentliches Debüt als Bildhauer abgab. 

Den Stil, den er an dieser Arbeit realisierte, trägt die Merkmale des Einfachen und Klassischen der Statuenform. Die Skulptur zeigt nur das Wesentliche an Ausgestaltung, das der Künstler einheitlich dem Vorbild der Natur nachformte. 

In dieser Formgestaltung des Wesentlichen äußert er die gleiche Kunstsprache wie Auguste Rodin, die sowohl als kreativ wie auch als natürlich zu bezeichnen ist. Auf den Bildhauer Rodin und seine Werke gehen elementare Anregungen zurück, die Maillol in sich aufnahm und für zu einem individuellen Stil in seinem plastischen Werk verwertete. In dieser kreatürlichen Ausdrucksform entstanden weitere Werke wie „La Nuit“ (1909), „Pomone“ (1910), „Vénus, les Nymphes de la prairie“ (1930 bis 1937), „L’Action enchaînée, la Montagne“ (1937) oder „Rivière“ (1938 bis 1943). Ihnen allen gemeinsam ist die nach innen gerichtete Aussage ohne äußere Leidenschaft oder Bewegung. 

Seit 1902 entwickelte er Stein- und Bronzefiguren in oft monumentaler Ausgestaltung. Geschlossenheit, Harmonie und Ruhe sind drei wesentliche Stilmerkmale in der Kunst von Maillol, die damit auch im Gegensatz zu Rodins Werkschaffen stehen, der sich der Offenheit und Expressivität zuwandte. Durch eine Reise nach Griechenland im Jahr 1908 und die Studien der Skulpturen von Olympia konnte sich Aristide Maillol von dem treffenden Ausdruck seiner plastischen Werke selbst überzeugen. 

Die weiblichen Statuen realisierte der Künstler als kompakte Körper mit üppig sinnlichen Merkmalen. Sie schließen nicht nur an Gauguins Frauenfiguren oder Auguste Renoirs Aktwerke an, sondern waren von großer Wirkung auf die nachfolgende deutsche und europäische Bildhauerkunst. Ein Beispiel davon geben Werke des deutschen Bildhauers Wilhelm Lehmbruck. 

Maillol, Torse de l'Action Enchainée
1905, bronze, 1905, 119 x 68.5 x 52 cm
Image: Pinacoteca, Brazil

"This work, Torse de l'Action Enchainée, commemorates Auguste Blanqui (1805-81) who was a revolutionary in the Paris Commune. Thrown into prison many times, he dedicated his life to the world revolution, and this sculpture is exceptional among Maillol's works for capturing that sense of action.
Maillol represents Blanqui's fighting spirit as a rising female full length figure with her hands tied behind her back. This is the 'torso' version of the work: its dynamic muscular action contrasts with the smoothness of the glossy brown surface and suggests Blanqui's internal strength." 
Text source:  http://www.city.kitakyushu.jp
/~k5200020/e/artist/maillol_a1.html

Aristide Maillol schuf auch öffentliche Denkmäler, die er mit der gleichen „inneren“ Ausdruckskraft modellierte. Sie wirken nach außen durch ihre Simplizität. Besonders durch das Fehlen von dekorativen Elemente wurden die Kunstwerke nur schwer angemessen rezipiert. 
Die Gemeinde von Aix-en-Provance wies ein Maillol-Denkmal von Paul Cézanne zurück. 

Zu seinem Schaffenswerk gehören auch Buchillustrationen so zum Beispiel Vergils „Eklogen“ oder Ovids „Ars amandi“ sowie Grafiken und Holzschnitte. Aristide Joseph Bonaventure Maillol starb am 24. September 1944 in Perpignan. 

1964 und 1965 wurden 18 Hauptwerke von Aristide Maillol im Jardin du Carrousell aufgestellt. Im Pariser Maillol-Museum sind seine Modelle und Originalwerke untergebracht. 1961 wurde im Musée national d’Art moderne in Paris eine Retrospektive veranstaltet.