Friday, Aug. 31, 2001 | 8:37 a.m.
According to the Las Vegas Art Museum, more than 10,000 visitors have paid $5 each to view "Rodin's Obsession: The Gates of Hell, Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collection," a collection of glittering bronze statues on display through Sept. 16.
But one person who never examined the statues is the artist himself -- Auguste Rodin.
While Rodin authorized the French government to complete his original plaster molds after his death in 1917, some critics argue that the posthumous pieces are fakes.
"Dead people don't make art," said Gary Arseneau, a Florida artist and gallery owner who has made it his mission to expose what he regards as a dubious practice. "Rodin has put out more work after his death than when he was alive."
The image of Rodin's signature on bronze pieces made more than half a century after his death constitutes a lie, Arseneau said. And museums that host exhibits that include casts crafted after Rodin's death are perpetuating that lie, he insists.
Arseneau intends to expose the practice by bringing it to the public's attention. He has sent hundreds of e-mails and typewritten letters detailing his argument to journalists and museum board members in each city that has hosted the Cantor collection.
"They (the Cantors) are not bringing Rodin to the masses," Arseneau said of the sculptures in the LVAM exhibit. "They (the sculptures) are fakes. But they are not saying they are fake."
The museum and the Cantor Foundation don't hide the fact that many of the bronzes in the show were cast long after Rodin died, said Marianne Lorenz, executive director of the LVAM.
The museum labels each sculpture with the date of cast and provides a video presentation of the Cantors casting Rodin's plaster molds in bronze -- some for the first time ever -- in 1977.
Lorenz said that by definition a bronze is a reproduction because it is the product of an original. Rodin's bronzes therefore are original reproductions of his plaster molds.
"Rodin's plaster molds are the originals and anything done, by him or otherwise, from those molds is a Rodin," Lorenz said.
Replication was not an issue for the artist, Lorenz said. In fact Rodin sold the rights to reproduce one of his sensual masterpieces, "The Kiss," so he could afford to continue to create other sculptures.
Because bronze was so expensive Rodin was not able to cast many of his hundreds of plaster molds during his lifetime, Lorenz said.
One of Rodin's most ambitious endeavors that was never completed was the towering "Gates of Hell" (1880), inspired by Dante's "Inferno." A tattered copy of Dante's philosophical tale of heaven and hell was reportedly always with Rodin.
Although the museum for which the piece was commissioned was never built, Rodin continued to work on the molds of tortured faces and twisted bodies of men and women that were to decorate the arched sculpture.
The plaster molds were never cast in bronze during Rodin's lifetime, which is a major point of debate about what constitutes an original piece by the artist.
Rodin willed the rights to his plaster molds so that his work, and legacy, would not be lost, Lorenz said.
"He was obsessed with the sculpture," Lorenz said. "It became his life's work."
Rodin himself created pieces inspired by other artists' masterpieces.
"The idea of what is original is an interesting intellectual concept," Lorenz said. "Rodin's 'Hand of God' is a replication by Rodin from Michelangelo's 'Creation (of Adam)' " at the Sistine Chapel.
A cast of Rodin's bronze "Hand of God" (1898) is what caught the eye of B. Gerald Cantor in 1945 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Cantor, then 29, was so touched by the sculpture that he saved his earnings for 18 months to buy a smaller version of the outstretched, masculine hand.
During his lifetime Cantor collected 750 Rodin pieces, many of which he later had cast using Rodin's methods.
More than 450 pieces from Cantor's collection were donated to 70 museums around the world so the public could experience Rodin's artistic vision, according to the Cantor Foundation in Beverly Hills, Calif.
But Arseneau argues that the public is being fooled.
"We rely on museums to protect our cultural heritage and set standards of disclosure," Arseneau said. "When these individuals, such as the Cantors, bring in these reproductions (to museums), our cultural institutions become gift shops, theme parks. What makes these casts different than the (replicas) in the gift shop?"
That's a good question -- and a tricky one, said Marta Teegen, manager of governance, advocacy and special projects for the College Art Association, a nonprofit membership organization in New York that represents art historians, visual artists and museum professionals.
"If (Rodin) has given the (French government) permission to continue to use his molds then it would be authentic, if in fact they follow the process equivalent to the artist's (process) when he was alive," Teegen said.
The CAA has guidelines that address the question of posthumous validity. The guidelines state that posthumous casts are generally "entitled to be considered as 'originals' and authentic," according to current U.S. Customs Service regulations.
If the artist's casts from original plasters are made as the artist himself would have cast them, then, as Teegen quotes from the CAA guidelines, "should they be rejected as morally undesirable?" The guidelines go on to state that, "These are philosophical questions that cannot here be resolved."
But scholars and art enthusiasts continue to bump heads over the issue.
The Musee Rodin, which is responsible for overseeing Rodin's casts, is diligent about the creation of the casts from the original plaster molds, said John Tancock, senior vice president of Sotheby's who specializes in impressionist and modern paintings and sculpture.
"You have to get away from focusing on the fact that they are posthumous," Tancock said. "It's universally accepted that (Rodin's bronzes) are authentic provided they are cast under certain conditions."
And they are, said Mary Levkoff, curator of European culture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
"Under French law, these are authorized casts," Levkoff said. "It's true the museum does profit from these bronzes, and I can see where a question might arise, but I don't see it as problematic."
Bernard Barryte, chief curator of the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., said he finds the issue "an interesting problem."
"I'm not on the fence or off the fence about this issue," Barryte said.
The practice of casting by the Musee Rodin is not underhanded, Barryte said, adding that the casts are Rodin's artistic intention.
"Any faintly clever person can figure out that this was posthumously made and you look at it through those eyes," he said. "But you are looking at the artist's ideas and that has real merit and validity."
Will the debate ever end?
"It will go on forever," Barryte said. "You are going to have purists and there are so many interests involved. It's a wonderful philosophical question, though."
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