H. de Roos - The critique of the toronto exhibition |
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WERE THE MACLAREN FOUNDRY PLASTERS POSTHUMOUSLY PRODUCED? In his Toronto presentation, Gary Arseneau even claimed, it would be these posthumous foundry plasters, produced by the Musée Rodin itself and sent to the Rudier foundry, that decades later appeared on the open market, were collected by the Gruppo Mondiale and finally displayed as "original Rodin works" in the Toronto Museum – an incestuous circuit of art production after the artist´s death, so to say: (…) So the "conservation" of these posthumous "plaster" reproductions might return their surfaces to those subjectively and posthumously reproduced by the "Musée Rodin" and not by Monsieur Rodin because he´s still dead. (…) The Musée Rodin acknowledges that they posthumously reproduce plaster reproductions from Auguste Rodin’s original plasters to send to the foundries. The thirty-seven of the forty-eight plasters in the MacLaren Art Centre exhibition checklist are listed as "foundry cast" and/or "studio or foundry cast." If this did not sway you that these “plasters” are posthumous fakes, the counterfeit "A. Rodin" signature applied should leave you with no doubt. [From: Gary Arseneau, Deception – Are these really Rodins? p. 26/27] This opinion seems to be in accordance with Antoinette Romain´s statement, as already quoted: Romain says only posthumous plasters were signed - these
date from the 1950s, and could have been made from moulds taken from other
plasters. But while Romain did not indicate of what nature these
"other plasters" might be, Arseneau presents it as a fact they
were made by the Musée Rodin.
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