sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

Her two portraits in 1884 : full face, she’s looking off with a superior air. In profile, she appears
stubborn and determined. In 1886 (Carjat) and 1889 (Cesar), she puts on an appearance of pride.
2.1.2. Taken by familiars.
The photo taken on the balcony (1886) is the only one where she seems animated, with an air of
experiencing something. The same year, she appears on the same place, holding a tambourine in
front of her suggestively swollen belly. Seven years later, she’s wearing her brother’s tricorn hat. In
1906, she’s absorbed in a book, seated and in profile hair.
She is sitting with her arms crossed with Florence Jeans (1886) and friends. Then to the last photo
at Montdevergues (1929) she seems overwhelmed by fate with a slumped right shoulder. A second
one, taken at the same time, reveals her slightly comforted by the friendly hand that Jessie Lipscomb
had laid on her thigh.
We have to note that there is no photo showing her near Rodin, one of the loves of her life.
2.1.3. The artist during or following work:
At work in “Rodin’s studio” (1889), CC is a young attentive girl, her hair tied simply behind. She is
working on the statue that will become Sakountala, Vertumn and Pomona, then Niobide Wounded.
Knife held in her right hand, her index finger touches the flesh of the statue. Her left hand rests on its
plaster hip as if on a real body.
On the Isle of Wight (1886), she is seen hard at work on the Bust of Mr. Back. Bent over, with her
index finger extended, she is in a raised position behind the model; then kneeling to work on the
profile.
In the photo accompanying the 1903 article (Gabrielle Reval), she is hammering at the mass and
at the burin. She does not wear a protective smock. Her attractive dress suggests that she is posing
for an illustration.
Work done, she poses in profile behind Perseus and the Gorgon (1899). Contemplative and fiercelooking,
she displays a similarity with Medusa.
Her way of working: No photo clarifies the observations of art critics: CC observes the world
through preliminary drawings. “Coming on an unforeseen movement of a subject, more striking than
usual, she takes out her notebook and, as if it were a snapshot, she sets down on paper the outline
she has glimpsed ...In her magic fingers, she had the secret of life” (Mathias Morhardt). She fervently
proceeds to “smoothing out,” abrasion (after shaping and hammering): "It’s with watery eyes and
convulsive rauqulements (sic) that I am I finishing the hair of Vertumnus and Pomona" (Letter to
Gustave Geffroy, 1905). She knows the vexations of breakages with her Bavardes (1896).
3. The sculptures of C.C represent a free discourse which the forms inscribe in the material. Their
creative support speaks as much ‐ and even more ‐ than a mouth. Her work, which repeats or
contradicts itself, represents an autobiography by example and by image, as much as by the choice of
themes; by their titles as much as by the period of creation: "My great desire, my ideal is to put into
the forms that I draw out of the clay an idea! in the material an idea! The idea is not enough for me, I
want to dress it in purple and to crown it with gold." For the rest, she asserts firmly her own creative
autonomy: "I draw my works out of myself alone, having rather too many ideas than not enough"
(1899). A similar capacity is born of a personality in permanent quest: "There is always something
absent which torments me." Such a joining of herself (artist) in her own work is a significant fact for
Rodin: "If the soul of an artist appears in any fragment at all of a masterpiece, if we believe that
artist's job calls for more manual skill than intelligence, it is enough to look at a good bust to be freed
of this error. Such a work equals a biography.”