"Rodin's Carved Sculpture. " Since no anecdotal detail identified the lovers, the public called it The Kiss, an abstract title that expressed its universal character very well. Half a century later, The Kiss was causing controversy in Britain once again. Rodin’s marble sculpture The Kiss 1900–4, currently on show at Tate Modern, is one of three versions that exists. The Kiss was a huge success when it was exhibited in Paris in 1877 and Rodin captured an intimate moment with both sensuality and romance. Exh. Harrach Palace, Kunsthistorisches Museum • Lawton, Frederick. After Auguste Rodin, …. The work was an immediate success and was reproduced in marble and bronze in varying sizes. The Kiss is one of Auguste Rodin's most famous works and it is one which propelled the artist to immediate fame around the world. 1881-carved 1907, Orpheus and Eurydice, Modeled probably before 1887-carved 1893, Other works from The Kiss at the Rodin Museum, Main Droite Feminine, doigts semi replies, annulaire leve, Danaide, petit modèle, version type III, Conceived in 1885-cast between 1930 and 1940, Le Penseur (The Thinker), Petit Modèle, Conceived in 1881, 1882, cast by Alexis Rudier between 1920, 1930, Balzac, étude C (buste), 3ème version, petit modèle, 1918-1927, Étude pour le Secret (Study for the Secret), 1910, Portrait of Evelyn Beatrice Longman, 1904, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Rodin Museum, Administered by Philadelphia Museum of Art. According to the original 13th Century story, Francesca and Paolo fell for one another as they sat reading tales of courtly love. One was for Carl Jacobsen for a museum in Copenhagen and the other was for the art collector Edward Perry Warren.Today Perry Warren's copy resides in the Tate Gallery, London while the original The Kiss is in the Musee Rodin in Paris, France. The Kiss isn’t nearly as provocative. Two years later, it was returned to Warren and hidden by hay bales, to protect it from shells. Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a French sculptor who has long been hailed as a modern-day Michelangelo. For details on purchasing a full sized hand carved marble copy of The Kiss,     Contact us. Today it remains one of the most renowned and admired pieces of sculpture in the world.The Kiss depicts a moment from Dante's Divine Comedy in which two lovers, Paolo and Francesca, kiss for the first time.Composition: The intertwined figures ensure that this piece is aesthetically pleasing from all angles. Discover and collect art from Auguste Rodin’s iconic The Kiss series and more. The artist certainly creates this and by making a sculpture which is visually stimulating from 360 degrees, his dedication and skill is obvious. “Perhaps it seemed a very arrogant thing for me to be doing.” One irate visitor to the Tate even whipped out a pair of shears and chopped off Parker’s string before the guards could intervene. In 1898, though, Rodin decided to exhibit it at the annual Salon, alongside his monolithic statue of the writer Honoré de Balzac, which the art historian and Rodin scholar Catherine Lampert describes as the artist’s “most radical work”. Le Baiser (The Kiss), 3rd Reduction, First modelled in 1886. In the fourth level of the 'Inferno' Dante comes across Francesca De Rimini and her brother-in-law, Paolo Malatesta who had an affair in 13th century Italy. VAM HMSO, London, 1975 • Kausch, Michael. The contrast between the smooth skin of the lovers and the rough marble of the rock they are sitting on adds further sensual elements to this piece.Mood Elicited: The passion and romance of The Kiss is undeniable; the figures are so involved in one another that their faces are barely visible. cat. Rodin noted that he chose to keep the figures nude so that nothing could interfere with the raw emotion that he wanted the viewer to feel immediately.As with many of Rodin's sculptures The Kiss is designed to be viewed from every angle and Rodin wanted the piece to be believable and real. As a theme, he chose Dante’s Inferno. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., 1981: 85-87Web Sources: • http://www.musee-rodin.fr/welcome.htm. During the First World War, Warren loaned it to Lewes Town Hall: “It was installed in the Assembly Room,” says Lampert, “which was a recreation space for troops billeted in the town. Joined the collections of the Musée du Luxembourg in 1901; transferred to the Musée Rodin in 1919. Eventually, long after Warren’s death in 1928, it entered the collection of the Tate, in 1953. “His imagination was fired by immediate proximity to the men and women who posed for him,” Lampert explains, “and his modelling in clay of their bodies, turned 360, is still breath-taking and unsurpassed.” Moreover, she continues, “He was one of the first artists to be curious about the sexual experience of women.”, Rodin’s curiosity about female sexuality is apparent in more explicit works of art at the Musée Rodin, such as Iris, Messenger of the Gods (Credit: Gian Berto Vanni/Corbis), To a degree, this is evident in The Kiss, in which the woman reciprocates the active sexual desire of the man. 'Dante's Divine Comedy: The two lovers depicted in The Kiss are Paolo and Francesca, two people who lived in the 13th century and were immortalized in poetry by Dante. The eroticism in the sculpture made it controversial, especially when a bronze version of The Kiss was sent for display at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. So the string stood in for the complications of relationships.”, Not everybody was enamoured with Parker’s idea. Rodin's method of making large sculptures was to employ assistant sculptors to copy a smaller model he himself had made from a material which was easier to work with …