Camille Claudel: a passionate and vibrant artist

Reading a post over at SU with its references to late 19th century sculpture and Rodin made me think of Camille Claudel.

Victorian women were emotionally, socially, physically and politically constricted. If they painted it was meant to be a past time, dainty landscapes certainly not passionate bold experimental art. Camille Claudel (1864-1943) defied the Victorian woman role model she was very transgressive for her time.

Over time her work has been forgotten and her status was reduced to mistress/muse of Rodin (the excellent film Camille Claudel (1988) rehabilitated her work). Her neo-classical influenced style sculptures were eclipsed by Rodin and her work languished in the shadows at the Musee Rodin. And it is only recently her influence has been recognised in the work of Rodin.

 

Compare Rodin’s The Kiss (1887) to Claudel’s understated Sakuntala (1888) both marble (though Claudel’s marble version of Sakuntala came about in 1905). The Kiss is a piece of erotic and bold scuplture (you used to be able to view it at the Tate Britain though now moved to the Tate in Liverpool).

Claudel’s projects passion yet tenderness. The poignancy of Prince Dushyanta collapsing to his knees when he is confronted with his true love Sakuntala. The same with L’Age Mur (The Age of Maturity) produced in 1894 that represents her personal and emotional turmoil she experienced with Rodin and his commitment to his wife, Rose Beuret.

It tragic, intimate and soulful piece which encapsulates her relationship with Rodin. Her examples of her fine beautifully carved work include The Implorer (1899), The Waltz (1891-1893) and The Flute Player (1904).

 

Her work deserves equal praise as it is modern, the narrative flows, passionate, bold, stark and has veracity. Unfortunately, because Claudel wouldn’t follow the respectable lifestyle of a Victorian her brother, writer Paul Claudel, got her sectioned under the French mental health act in 1913, she was kept in the asylum until her death.

Even doctors said she wasn’t “mad” but her family refused to acknowledge that diagnosis and her brother forbade his mother and sister to visit her.

Pilgrim State

I wrote this review for Labour Briefing.

Review of the book Pilgrim State – Jacqueline Walker

Jacqueline Walker has written a powerful yet poignant autobiographical account of her early life during the late 50s until the mid-60s both in Jamaica and later London. It also includes a historical and political look of what it was like for a black girl growing up in London. This memoir also encompasses the life of Jacqueline’s mother, Dorothy. We get to see, simultaneously, a young Jacqueline’s relationship with her mother but also in the presence her own relationship with her daughter, Eleanor.

 

We see the oppression, injustices and obstacles faced by Dorothy and the book opens with her stay at the psychiatric hospital, Pilgrim State in New York during early 1950s. I must admit reading the transcripts of her time in that hospital made me angry as she is rendered powerless and voiceless, the scenes are harrowing. Dorothy when a young woman had hopes and dreams of being in the States, and studying at college. Childbirth and the breakdown of her marriage contributed to her breakdown. Later on, Dorothy has Jacqueline (she has a different father to Teddy) and Teddy.

 

She had another child, Pearl, who ends up staying with the father, who Dorothy fought to keep. I found the scenes later in the book where Dorothy and Pearl finally meet after many years very sad and felt Pearl’s frustrations and sense of abandonment. Much of Jacqueline’s early life is without her mum as Dorothy has taken Jacqueline and Teddy to Jamaica where she lives with their great grand-mother.

 

Dorothy is working to save up money so she can have a better life for her children. By the late 1950s, Jacqueline, Teddy and later a younger brother, Roy, come to live in London. We see these changes and upheavals in Jacqueline’s child like understandings and perceptions of the world around her. Once in London the reader is reminded of the appalling racism and ignorance black people like Dorothy experienced and faced. That is truly haunting, reading the notices Dorothy and her children are confronted with when they are looking for accommodation, “no coloureds”.  

 

We also see the political awareness of Dorothy and explaining the history of the slave trade to Jacqueline and the brutal experiences of her involvement in the civil rights movement in the States (where she met Jacqueline’s father) and Malcolm X.

 

Jacqueline and her brothers in their upheavals are put into care when Dorothy leaves them alone. Again, similar to when Dorothy leaves Jacqueline in Jamaica, the loss felt is palpable and immeasurable. When Dorothy comes up against agents of the state, they are patronising and blinded by racism. When Dorothy sees Social Services, hoping to get support, she treated with disdain and detachment when all she wants is, understandably, support. A common theme throughout the book is various agents of the state describe Dorothy and Jacqueline as “suspicious of authority figures”. Well, who can blame them! I could understand Dorothy’s loneliness and isolation of being in a cold and unwelcoming country like Britain.

 

Things worsen for the children when Dorothy becomes experiences asthma. But what is illustrated was the bravery of Jacqueline though much of her time she keeps her emotions covered up though bubbling beneath the surface, a way of protecting herself. And she later discusses this with her daughter Eleanor who she tells she loves the way she has no problem of showing her feelings.

 

The book left with a mixture of feelings from sadness, tender, happiness and yet also a sense of optimism. Also, mother and daughter relationships can both be loving yet stressful. At times, complicated and contradictory but at the same time capturing the warmth, protection, and tenderness between them all.

 

Jacqueline starts this book understanding and finding out her own mother’s journey, I think it comes together with her coming to terms with her own life and Dorothy’s life.