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Camille Claudel: A Life
 
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Camille Claudel: A Life [Illustrated] (Hardcover)

by Odile Ayral-Clause (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 280 pages
  • Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.; illustrated edition edition (13 May 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0810940779
  • ISBN-13: 978-0810940772
  • Product Dimensions: 24 x 18.1 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 821,636 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #98 in  Books > Biography > Artists, Architects & Photographers > Sculptors

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Product Description

Product Description

Camille Claudel (1864-1943) was a gifted 19th-century French sculptor who worked for Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), became his lover, and eventually left him to gain recognition for herself in the art world. After she crumbled under the combined weight of social reproof, deprivations, and art world prejudices, her family had her committed to an asylum, where she died 30 years later. Although Claudel's life has been romanticized in print and on film, a fully researched biography has never been written until this one. The book draws upon much unpublished material, including letters and photographs that confirm the brilliance of her sculpture, clarify her relationship with Rodin (who did not exploit her, but, in fact, supported her work throughout his life), and reveal the true story of her confinement in a mental institution. Claudel's fascinating life touches many aspects of women's issues: creativity, struggle for recognition, conflict with social values, and art world inequities. Illustrated with personal family photographs, this is an intimate and moving tribute to an artist whose life and work have, until now, been misinterpreted and undervalued.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Victim? Genius? Feminist Heroine?, 10 Jun 2002
By Mr. David R. Watson (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Over the last twenty years or so there has been much said and written about Camille Claudel. Attempts have been made to paint her as victim (of her passions, of men in general, and of the sculptor and her lover Auguste Rodin in particular), as proto-feminist heroine fighting against a male dominated culture, as neglected genius. In many respects she is all of these things. Ayral-Clause has written a largely successful book, attempting to put some critical distance between Claudel and the uses she has been put to in the service of particular agendas.

The author convincingly unpicks the most excessive attacks on Rodin, providing plenty of evidence that he continued to support and canvas on her behalf long after they had split and whilst he was being accused by her of appalling treachery. If Rodin comes across less badly than one might have expected, Camille's family and her celebrated brother, the poet and playwright Paul, come over as the real villains, prepared to see her condemned to live thirty years in an asylum rather than have their name sullied. Paul Claudel appears deeply hypocritical and self serving, writing eulogies regarding his sister's art yet failing to even visit her for several years during her incarceration. The way in which her family used archaic French laws to effectively cut her off from her friends and society is quite repelent and draws one closest to the equivocal figure of Camille, for here she truly was the victim.

It is to the author's credit that she presents Camille to us an ambiguous figure, determined to succeed in a male dominated field against overwhelming odds, battling against misogynist inequities when they impacted upon her, yet largely indifferent to questions of female emancipation in any broader context (even failing even to support societies of women artists). Despite her own wilful and individualistic personality she was politically conservative and anti-Semitic - violently opposing the Dreyfussards for instance.

For a time Camille Claudel was seen as something of a feminist saint. This book goes someway to presenting a more complex image of Camille, part victim, part monstrous ego herself. The last years of her life do however play out as powerful tragedy. The book attempts little in the way of appraisal of Claudel's work and the illustrations do not give sufficient information to help in this regard. Probably fair enough as this is a biography not a work of art criticism.

In the last analysis Ayral-Clause's book presents a portrait of sickeningly patriarchal society concerned more with decorum and propriety than any humane values, and one woman's doomed attempts to plough her own furrow within it. One wonders in the end whether Camille was finally a victim of her own willingness to accept the male myth of the isolated creative genius. Perhaps if she had embraced radical political ideas as willingly as she attempted a radical lifestyle she might have succeeded further than she did.

This book is a fine work of biography and a worthy contribution to our understanding of the artist and the milieu in which she attempted to work.

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