Rodin on Art and Artists

love of Art and Beauty.”

But how many of our contemporaries feel the necessity of taste in house or furnishing?

“But today, mankind believes itself able to do without Art. It does not wish to meditate, to contemplate, to dream; it wishes to enjoy physically. The heights and the depths of truth are indifferent to it; it is content to satisfy its bodily appetites. Mankind today is brutish—it is not the stuff of which artists are made.

though it is true that she has also made real improvements in all that ministers to our daily wants. But it is no longer a question of spirit, of thought, of dreams. Art is dead.

“Today, artists and those who

ve artists seem like fossils. Imagine a megatherium or a diplodocus stalking the streets of Paris! There you have the impression that we must make upon our contemporaries. Ours is an epoch of engineers and of manufacturers, not one of artists.
“The search in modern life is for utility; the endeavor is to improve existence materially. Every day, science invents new processes