ESCAPES.RODIN AND BALZAC IN DRESSINGGOWNS

Conceived around a singular object – the Study of a dressing gown for Balzac produced by Auguste Rodin in 1897 as part of the commission for a monument to Balzac – this work brings together couture and sculpture. The book focuses on this unique object, which combines the myth of the writer draped in his dressing gown with the archaeology that Rodin conducted when he set out to find Balzac's tailor to have him remake one of the writer's costumes. The plaster ghost that emerged from this research ultimately led to the Balzac, which was immediately rejected by the monument's sponsors. This work shows the artist at work, his doubts and his discoveries. He returns to the place of the Study of a Dressing Gown in Rodin's creative process and analyses more precisely how it allows the artist to free himself from a major concern: in fact, if the sculptor first seeks to rediscover Balzac's body as it was, he quickly comes up against the refusal of the Société des gens de lettres for whom a fat, short and stocky Balzac (although close to the truth) is unimaginable. This book thus aims to make us think about the values and prescriptions that public statuary carries, and, at a time when statues are being toppled, about the necessary broadening of the representation of bodies and identities in contemporary public spaces.