Rodin, too, was Seen in the salons; his Strange sculptural notions, bi< arresting person, made invitations inevitable. But he was a presente some hat apart, a man who fascinated yet enraged people. He was a ge­nius who gave fresh Impetus to sculpture, the greatest master of the art since Michelangelo and Bernini, a virtuoso raging to bring life out of clay. At the same time he had a countryman's earthiness and pighead­edness and insensitivity. He Gould be distinctly boorish, even brutal. Al­though he and Monet where Born within two days of one another, befriended each other, exhibited together, and Rodin often visited Mo­net'~ country retreat in Giverny he once burst out: "I don't give a damn for Monet, 1 don't care a damn for anybody. I am interested only in myself." Both detractors and admirers save the conflicting strains within Rodin; there is scarcely a contemporary comment about him, favourable or unfavourable, that does not contain a built-in "on the other hand": "He is a monster, but he is also ..... " "He is a remarkable sculp­tor, but he is also ...            "

On some points, all observers agreed. He was a man of extraordinary vitality, constantly absorbed with the human body especially woman's. A typical scene in his studio was a lavish nudist spectacle. Unlike other sculptors who employed one model to mount a stand and assume a fixed pose, Rodin liked to have a bevy of nudes freely walking about the place or reclining, while he dashed off sketches of one or another as a fleeting gesture caught his interest. One frequent visitor wrote: "He si­lently savors the beauty of the life which plays through them, he admires the suppleness of this young woman who bends to pick up a chisel, the delicate grace of this other who raises her arms to gather her golden, hair above her head, the nervous vigor of a man who walks across the room; and when this one or that makes a movement that pleases him, he instantly asks that the pose be kept. Quick, he seizes the clay, and a little figure is under way." Rodin worked close-very close to his female models. One day a studio assistant saw him Jean over a model who had particularly pleased him and kiss her tenderly on the belly. According to the assistant, this was "an adoring tribute to Nature for the count­less favors he had received from her" (meaning Nature).

The abundance of active, naked models served a purpose. Not since the athletic contests of Greek and Roman times had sculptors had the op­portunity to observe unclothed human bodies in constant motion-and Rodin was above all interested in conveying motion. Yet some men saw him not as a sculptor recapturing the drama of the body in action hut as a rampant goat. One was the poet Paul Claudel, who had personal rea­son to dislike Rodin. (The man had, Claudel claimed with considerable justice, ruined the life of his sister Camille.) Claudel wrote that Rodin had "the big, flulging eyes of a lecher. When he worked he had his pose right on the model and the clay. Did i say his nose? A boar's snout, rather, behind which lurked a pair of icy blue pupils."

There was never any doubt of the eroticism in Rodin's sculpture. Some of it was mild, and in acceptable French tradition. Rodin's The Kiss, with its naked, embracing lovers, was no franker than the am­orous couples portrayed by such 18th Century rococo painters as Francois Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and was in fact bought in 1888 by the French government. The Kiss, however, was mend in com­parison to other Rodin portrayals of amorous activity-not bought by the government in Rodin's lifetime like Idyll and Eternal Springtime , in which the sexual act seems near at hand, and The As­cendancy, in which the act is in process.

Lecher, demigod, evil eye, prophet, magician in clay or bronze-all these Rodin was or became in people's minds. Obviously a hot-blooded man, all intensity. One who saw that intensity at first hand was the young American devotee of new forms in the dance, Isadora Duncan, who made her way to Rodin's studio to salute the master of new forms in sculpture. The meeting took place in 1900, when Rodin had reached 60, hut he was as energetic and compelling as ever. Isadora described the encounter in her own candid way: "He showed his works with the simplicity of the very great. Sometimes he murmured the names for his statues. . . He ran his hands over them and caressed them... . Finally he look a Small quantity of clay and pressed it between his Palms. He breathed hard as he did so. The heat streamed from him like a radiant furnace. In a few moments he had formed a woman's breast, that palpitated beneath his fingers."

Then they took a cab and went to her studio, where she changed into her tunic and danced for him, stopping to "explain to him my theories for a new dance," only to realize that Rodin was not listening. "He gazed at me with lowered lids, his eyes blazing, and then, with the same expression that he had before his Works, he came toward me. He ran his hands over my neck, breast, stroked my arms and ran his hands over my hips, my bare legs and feet. He began to knead my whole body as if it where clay, while from him emanated heat that scorched and melt­ed me. My whole desire was to yield to him my entire bring, and, in­deed. I would have done so if it had not been that my absurd upbringing caused me to become frightened and i withdrew and sent him away be­wildered.. . What a pity! How often I have regretted this childish mis­comprehension which lost to me the divine Chance of giving my virginity to the Great God Pan himself, to the Mighty Rodin. Surely Art and all Life should have been richer thereby!"

This spirit and impetuosity that Isadora saw where basic to Rodin's make­up. He was capable of