Adam, taille originale dit aussi "Grand modèle"

Conceived in 1880, Auguste Rodin’s Adam, Grand modèle is a striking rendering of the Biblical figure, captured in the very moment of his creation. In Genesis, God models Adam out of dust, breathing life into him to transform an earthy soil statuette into a living being. By choosing Adam as his subject Rodin powerfully explored the idea of form and physicality, the creation of the figurative out of elemental materials. Rodin’s Adam is in the very process of coming into being; the ball of his right foot rolls off a stone or mound, as if he is emerging from the earth, pulling away and rising into existence. His left cheek and temple are tightly pressed against his bare shoulder, as if he is still morphing into his final form, his figure evolving. Adam’s left arm sweeps across his body so that his extended fingers delicately linger on his right knee, as his torso and back twist, deepening the movement. His supple muscles are pulled taut by his contorted pose, and Rodin masterfully sculpts the undulations of flesh between his skeletal structure and musculature—the peaks and troughs of his anatomy—so the smooth expanses of bronze take on a topographical quality, his body like a landscape, resembling the earth from which he was made.
Rodin had launched himself out of obscurity in the late 1870s with his first full size bronze figure intended for the Salon, L’age d’Airain, an astoundingly naturalistic male nude sculpture that he had begun as a tribute to the suffering of the French following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Like its successor, Adam, L’age d’Airain embodies the stirring of consciousness—a state of beginning and becoming. Yet, while L’age d’Airain maintains the openness of Classical Greek sculpture through its square and frontal pose, Adam’s twisted and angular stance takes inspiration from the Renaissance master Michelangelo.
Rodin had set out for Italy in the winter of 1874, and while visiting Rome and Florence it was Michelangelo’s work in particular that filled him with awe and admiration. This influence on Adam has long been remarked upon, and Antoinette Le Normand-Romain draws specific points of comparison between features of Michelangelo’s works and Adam. Le Normand-Romain mentions the echo of Michelangelo’s Christ, from his Pietà in the Museo del Duomo in Florence, in the position of Adam’s left arm, as well as the marked similarity of his extended right index finger in the present sculpture to The Creation of Adam fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In fact, La création de l'homme was the title Rodin exhibited the plaster original of Adam under at the Paris Salon of 1881. Rodin’s Adam derives inspiration from Michelangelo’s style more generally too; through Adam’s dynamic pose, Rodin’s remarkable understanding of human anatomy conveys his ability to invoke the emotive and expressive potential of movement. Michelangelo had demonstrated this evocative power of posture and stance through his sculptural series, “Slaves,” where the torsion of the body relayed an unmistakable sense of tension and anguish. Adam has even been referred to in criticism as “the Slave”—so called for its affinity to Michelangelo’s works of that name.
When the artist returned from Italy, he had set about making a figural sculpture on the theme of Adam in 1876, but he abandoned the work before it was completed. It was not until circa 1880 that he returned to the motif, prompted by his commission to design a monumental portal for a proposed museum of decorative arts. The sculptor chose Dante’s Inferno as his subject for his doorway, La porte de l’Enfer. Adam was originally designed to be a freestanding figure to flank the doors, with Eve as his pendant on the opposite side. Rodin’s Adam and Eve represent different sections of the Biblical narrative, Adam embodies the creation of humankind, while Eve, with her bowed and arms moving to cover herself, is a rendering of the moment after the Fall, experiencing shame for the first time. Yet both figures, along with another of Rodin’s most celebrated works, Le Penseur, which was also initially conceived to be part of the artist’s La porte de l’Enfer, explore the very principle of humanity, what it means to exist and to be alive.