H. de Roos - The critique of the toronto exhibition |
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THE DEFINITIONS SUPPLIED BY THE R.O.M. EXHIBITION (1) Having received William Moore´s letter to the Globe only by 23 October 2001 and the "Notes on Authentication" by Dr Schaff only by 31 October, I arrived in Toronto still puzzled and sceptical. But at the R.O.M., the exhibition text panels provided a clarity that I found so difficult to obtain as an invited Symposium speaker, based in Munich. This is one of the text panels the visitor encounters in the first exhibition room: The majority of these works are “foundry plasters” which provide the first step in the process of translating his work from plaster to bronze. Their existence can be traced back to the Rudier foundry in Paris where they originated, and they have been well researched and documented, passing through an known number of owners before being presented here. Types of plaster casts: Studio cast: A plaster cast created within Rodin´s studio to stand as a record of an original clay model in a particular version. Presentation cast: Rodin was well-known for presenting works in plaster to friends and supporters and presentation casts, generally inscribed by the artist, exist as a record of these relationships. Unique cast: A one-of-a-kind plaster cast generally created from an assemblage of existing works in Rodin´s studio. The composition of an unique cast may have been created by the artist himself or put together after his death based on available research. Foundry cast: a plaster cast made from a studio cast and provided to a foundry for the purpose of translating a plaster composition into bronze. To avoid the risk of damage, the foundry would make multiple copies of the foundry cast which they would then use to cast the work in bronze. These multiple copies are also called foundry casts. Note: Sometimes it is impossible to definitively state whether a plaster is either one type of cast or another as a plaster may exhibit features characteristic of more than one type of cast. The bronze castings from the collection of the MacLaren Art Centre presented as part of this exhibition have not been recognized by the Musée Rodin, which is the legal heir to Rodin´s work. The MacLaren bronzes are used to illustrate the results of casting this group of plasters into bronze, and exist only for the purpose of education.
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