Programme 1: Distortion

The Art Works

Title: The Kiss
Artist: Auguste Rodin
Medium: Marble
Date: 1901–4

A man and a woman, more than life-size, are depicted in a delicate embrace. The appearance of the figures is realistic, and Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) has carefully distinguished between the muscular forms of the man and the smoother, more rounded shapes of the woman. Although the sculpture looks highly finished the rock on which they sit shows large chisel marks, created at the early stages of carving the sculpture, while the hair has far smaller chisel marks. Not only does this differentiate between the textures of skin, hair and rock, but it also gives evidence of the way the sculpture was made. The basic form would have been blocked out with large chisels, and the details refined with smaller ones. The surfaces of the flesh were then polished smooth. The fact that we can still see the process by which the sculpture was made is one of the distinguishing features of modern art.

Title: Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Artist: Umberto Boccioni
Medium: Bronze
Date: 1913 (cast 1972)

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) was a member of the Futurist movement, a group of Italian artists who declared themselves in favour of everything new and forward-looking. For them this included the machine, industry, speed and noise – even to the extent of championing war. In this sculpture Boccioni attempts to show the energy of a powerful man striding through a modern city, depicting the eddies of wind which swirl around him as he moves.

Title: The Three Dancers
Artist: Pablo Picasso
Medium: Oil on canvas
Date: 1925

The Three Dancers of the title hold hands in a circular, interlocking dance, the energy of which is implied by their distorted shapes and varied postures. Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) had abandoned cubism, turning to a neo-classical style of painting. By 1925 when this work was painted he had started to pick and choose from different styles as it suited him, with patterns representing wallpaper or clothing, and lines and areas of colour defining the convoluted forms in different ways.

The painting is partly autobiographical as all three figures are representations of the artist’s friends. On the right is Ramon Pichot, who died while Picasso was at work on this painting. On the far left is Pichot’s wife Germaine, and in the centre is Carlo Casagemas, who had committed suicide many years before after having been rejected by Germaine. Behind them is an open window, possibly a reference to the passage from this life to the next.