Rodin has pronounced Rilke's essay the supreme interpretation of his work. A few years ago the sculptor expressed to the translators the wish that some day the book might be placed before the English-speaking public. The appreciation was published originally as one of a series of Art Monographs under the editorship of the late Richard Muther. To estimate and interpret the work of an artist is to be creatively just to him. For this reason there are fewer critics than there are artists, and criticism with but few exceptions is almost invariably negligible and futile.

Biografi om den franske billedhugger, der levede 1840-1917

This definitive monograph from the Musée Rodin in Paris on the pioneering artist who paved the way for modern sculpture is now available in an affordable compact format. Revered today as the greatest sculptor of all time, whose expressive style prefigured that of the modernist movement and abstract sculpture, Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) stirred up much controversy during his lifetime, and his sculptures often met with hostility and incomprehension from his peers. This monograph traces the life and work of the artist, from his youth and early poverty-stricken years of apprenticeship to his most celebrated works—The Kiss, The Thinker, The Gates of Hell—which have become veritable icons; and from his passionate and tumultuous relationship with Camille Claudel to his extraordinary studio, working methods, and sources of inspiration, and his final years marked by war and illness. Written by experts from the Musée Rodin in Paris, this richly illustrated volume includes drawings, watercolors, engravings, and archival documents, as well as specially commissioned photographs of Rodin’s sculptures, completed by a chronology, bibliography, and history of the Musée Rodin—housed in the artist’s former studio in the Hôtel Biron. Providing insight into the many facets of his creative genius, this new compact edition of the Musée Rodin’s definitive reference on the artist and his oeuvre coincides with museum’s reopening in September 2015.

In an intimate talk with his protégé, the sculptor offers candid, wide-ranging comments on the meaning of art; other famed artists; the relation of sculpture to poetry, painting, and music; more. 76 illustrations.

We Called It A War is Sargent Shriver’s first-hand account of leading President Johnson’s War on Poverty. Written on the cusp of the 1970s, the manuscript was recently rediscovered among Shriver’s personal papers and subsequently edited by long-time friend and law partner, David Birenbaum. The book recounts Shriver’s role in translating President Johnson’s audacious pledge to end poverty into a working set of social programs that continue to uplift and empower communities across the United States today. In leading this effort, Shriver was tasked with drafting the requisite legislation, ushering it through a skeptical Congress, creating the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), and recruiting the talented anti-poverty warriors who would take the OEO from concept to implementation. Shriver’s words reveal a public administrator skilled at creating major social policy; a global citizen driven by his Catholic faith and commitment to social justice; a principled pragmatist who successfully executed grand ideas; a social entrepreneur whose skeptical approach to bureaucracy enabled him to liberate the creative energies of the diverse individuals who collaborated with him; and a politician who earned the trust and respect of his adversaries. Shriver’s anti-poverty efforts continues to resonate. Virtually all of the War on Poverty programs, many of them conceived personally by Shriver, continue to deliver tangible, consequential benefits to millions of people in all stages of life. These programs include Head start, Community Action, Legal Services, Job Corps, Americorps VISTA, Foster Grandparents, Upward Bound, and Neighborhood Health Services. Fifty years on, Shriver’s words remind us that to achieve equal opportunity and justice for all of our sisters and brothers, we must again create an environment that nurtures bold ideas and empowers decisive, community-based action.

Winner of the 2016 Marfield Prize In 1902, Rainer Maria Rilke—then a struggling poet in Germany—went to Paris to research and write a short book about the sculptor Auguste Rodin. The two were almost polar opposites: Rilke in his twenties, delicate and unknown; Rodin in his sixties, carnal and revered. Yet they fell into an instantaneous friendship. Transporting readers to early twentieth-century Paris, Rachel Corbett’s You Must Change Your Life is a vibrant portrait of Rilke and Rodin and their circle, revealing how deeply Rodin’s ideas about art and creativity influenced Rilke’s classic Letters to a Young Poet.

Master sculptor Auguste Rodin’s illuminating writings on cathedrals in France are especially relevant and significant following the recent fire at Notre Dame. In this volume, the writer and Rodin scholar Rachel Corbett selects excerpts from the famous sculptor’s book Cathedrals of France, first published in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I. Cathedrals were central to the way Rodin thought about his art: he saw them as visual metaphors for the human figure, among the finest examples of craftsmanship known to modern man, and as a model for how to live and work—slowly, brick by brick. Here, Corbett takes the fire at Notre Dame and the concerns over its restoration as an entry point in an exploration of Rodin's cathedrals. Rodin adamantly opposed restoration, as he felt it often did more damage than the original injury. (Many of the cathedrals that Rodin looks at in his texts were, in fact, bombed during the war.) But while he rails against various restoration efforts as evidence that “we are letting our cathedrals die,” the book, with its tenderly rendered sketches and written portraits, is itself an attempt to preserve these cathedrals. The selection of texts in this volume is a reminder—as is the tragedy of Notre Dame—of why we ought to appreciate these feats of architecture, whether or not they are still standing today.

August Rodin was one of the foremost sculptors of the modern age, influencing every sculptor who came after him. This handsome book by Catherine Lampert offers new insights into the creative processes of this great French artist.