Camille Claudel met Rodin when she was only 15 years old. Even before they met, Camille, who was very different from other girls from her childhood, was not dealing with dolls, but with stone, earth, clay, and at the age of 13 she was making busts and sculptures of her family members. Everyone who saw these sculptures saw the surprising connection and similarity with Rodin's style, which angered Camille.

When Camille settled in Paris, Rodin came to her workshop at the Colarossi Academy, where few girls were accepted, and saw the statue of her brother Paul that Camille had made. He persuaded Camille to work in his own workshop where only men worked. A very important period had begun for both of them, but it would be irreversible and deeply hurtful, even tragic, only for Camille.

The love of two passionate artists was bound to leave its mark, but in such cases it was often the women who paid the heavy price...

Camilla was only 19 years old, but she was hardworking, passionate, creative, successful and very impressive. She worked in Rodin's studio during the day and in her own studio at night. Rodin fell in love with Camille with great passion even though he was 43 years old. They were to spend 15 years together, full of passion, fights, violence, anger and break-ups.

Auguste Rodin, who said "A good portrait is equivalent to a life story", argued that he made sculpture by throwing away the excess stone, while Camille stated that she gave the clay a soul.

For Rodin, love was sculpture and he looked at the world from here. Every part of nature, including human beings, everything animate or inanimate, had to come to life with stone or marble. Just as the hands were part of the whole and reflected the whole, every being represented nature for him. Rodin's work became his love and his loves were only a part of his work. All the women he fell in love with were his models. In other words, nothing could get in the way of his love for his own art, he could only live in love within his art.

Whereas Rodin could not even work in the studio without Camille, whom he thought was a demonic goddess. "You open my horizons," he said, taking all the sparkle of his ideas from Camille, yet he put his passion for his work before everything else, saying "we find beauty only in our work, we are nothing without it".

He helped Camille to understand light and taught her to visualize clouds and the cathedral beyond the imagination of light. When they lived in the chateau of Islette, they traveled to all the churches and cathedrals in the area, studying gothic art and the shadows of light for days. But they worked very successfully together. In fact, people could not distinguish whether it was Camille or Rodin who created many of their works, and which sketches were turned into art by whose hand. At first, Camille would create the first sketches and Rodin would work on and finish them. After a while, Rodin started to use Camille's arms and legs, leaving them as they were and not changing anything anymore. He made it look like a master's respect for his student. Together they made a sculpture of a woman out of a rock. Rodin was now listening to Camille's advice and taking her opinion. Nevertheless, Camille, who remained in Rodin's shadow, whose name was always mentioned together with Rodin, who was spoken of as Rodin's lover rather than his art, was very angry with all this and Rodin's strange relationship with Rose, which Rodin could not break away from, and went to England and started working there. She wanted to escape from this passionate relationship, but also to express her art and liberate herself.

Rodin waited for her without doing anything, he couldn't do anything, he couldn't work. He wrote to Camille every day, but he never received an answer. Camille, whom he called the symbol of joy, had become the symbol of his doubts. He began to envy her, he wanted to stop time and get lost in her vortex.

When Camille came back after a while, she asked Rodin to write down his new promises, item by item, since she had no faith in him after he constantly broke his promises. Among them was that he would leave Rose and marry her. However, only one of these promises was fulfilled, Rodin did not fulfill any other promise.

They had done Dante's "Gate of Hell" together and even Camille had a great influence and help. Even though this work could not have been created without him, no matter what Camille did, her name would not be mentioned without Rodin...

Camille left Rodin for the last time, who never kept his word, who couldn't even leave Rose. Moreover, she had always remained in his shadow, always been called by his name...

But this separation would hurt Camille more than she had hoped. Moreover, after a while, she would become obsessed with Rodin, her anger mixed with longing, passion and love for him. Her mental health would begin to deteriorate, and one night she would even break and smash all the sculptures in her studio. In fact, it was not only the sculptures that they broke, but the passion and love she felt for Rodin while making them...

With the help of his family and Rodin, he was locked up in an asylum and kept there for 30 years until he died. Worst of all, he was not even allowed to hold a piece of clay, let alone make a single sculpture there...

Rodin not only removed Camille from his sight, but also pacified this giant-souled rival, who had soaked his mind, soul and body in love and poured his love into clay and sculpture...

Camille would always know this and never forget it.

Throughout his life, although there were many women, only two women were different from all the others for Rodin. Rose Beuret, who stayed by his side throughout his life, became Mrs. Rodin only after 50 years and married Rodin only 15 days before her death, and came into his life while modeling for him. Rodin even had a son with her, and despite all the women and Camille, Rose stayed by Rodin's side until his death. Today, Rodin and Rose lie side by side under the "Thinking Man" sculpture in the Rodin Museum. While Rodin's works, and it is not clear which of them belong only to him, are on display at the Rodin Museum in Paris, Camille Claudel's works are waiting in the basement of the same museum, in the part of the museum that does not see daylight...

Mukaddes Pekin Başdil

Researcher-Author

Source: Denizli Haber