CAMILLE CLAUDEL: A Life

Until now, the 19th-century French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864– 1943) may have been best known for her much-romanticized relationship with sculptor Auguste Rodin, who has been erroneously portrayed as abandoning the fragile Claudel to a nervous breakdown. But this first fully researched biography of Claudel abolishes the myths attached to her life and asserts the brilliance of her art. Drawing upon ample unpublished material, including family photographs, private letters, and medical records, Odile Ayral-Clause reveals the truth about Claudel's affair with Rodin and about her confinement and death in a mental asylum. Using Claudel's own words, she describes the crushing reproofs and prejudices the sculptor confronted — from her family, from society, from the male-dominated art world. For art historians and feminists, such issues are as relevant today as they were in fin-de-siècle Paris. Read more