Gendered Creativity: The Tragic Case of Camille Claudel

Now mostly regarded as the lover of Auguste Rodin or the sister of famous poet Paul Claudel, Camille Claudel is known to the people who are aware of her true identity as one of the greatest sculptors of late-nineteenth century France. However, she is widely regarded as the former because of the tragic circumstances of the final decades of her life.

But first, some context into the era in which Claudel lived.

As the fin-de-siècle approached in France, many cultural changes occurred rapidly. The government started to take a path towards democratization and capitalism, which allowed for more groups of people to pursue an education or start small businesses; not just the bourgeois. As department stores became more prominent, aesthetic indicators between classes began to decrease as bourgeois-style clothing became affordable for the lower classes. As consumerism grew, individualism abated. 

With new opportunities for seemingly every group of people, women artists became more prominent like never before in France, as did a movement of artists that were opposed to these vast cultural changes taking place: the Symbolists.

The Symbolist movement breed from a felt shared need to not only establish a superior form of art, but to distinguish themselves from a culture that they believed was corrupt and deteriorating. The Symbolists desired to portray art in the most truthful of ways; using more abstract lines and brash colors to depict their subjects. By capturing their subjects with less definitive brushstrokes, they believed that they were portraying the true essence of the figure(s) or landscape. Mere suggestion took precedence over content. 

As scientific method took prominence in the public eye, the Symbolists gravitated towards spiritualism in their practices. The idea of the mad genius arose within their community and was revered. They believed that the truest creative forced themselves away from society, being totally devoted to their art. With little social interaction, the purest artist would lose the concept of the self and become one with the consciousness of the universe and, in turn, his art. The art that he created did not come from himself, but his ability to lose himself into the universal consciousness, acting as a mediator between the canvas and something beyond human understanding. 

As the study of mental illness became more respected, scientific critics of the Symbolist movement considered Symbolists to be degenerates and even considered them a danger to society. This only lit more fuel under the fire of Symbolists as they began to idolize the mad genius archetype more and more.

These artists had the intuition of what art to create, which was typically considered a feminine attribute. As the movement progressed, male artists believed that traditional male traits were far too limiting, so stereotypically feminine traits were added to their persona, including those oriented towards spiritual divinity, hypersensitivity, and the “inspired by nature” trope associated with women in artworks. The androgyne was exalted during this period, and considered the purest of forms.

As female artists grew in prominence, they were by no means respected or even accepted into the male Symbolist community. As feminine attributes were venerated, male Symbolists quickly became threatened by the mere concept of women artists. Amongst these considered most threatening was Camille Claudel.

From a young age Claudel exhibited signs of having a raw talent of creating art. Her father supported her talents (very rare for the time) and was introduced into artistic circles in young adulthood. Her sculptures were remarkably expressive and oozed with psychological undertones.

Camille Claudel, La Vague (The Wave), 1897-1898, Musée Rodin

La Vague (The Wave) is a notable example of her genius. In this sculpture, three nude Western women are crouched below a grand wave. Although they are aware of the impending doom of the wave, they are both prepared for the wave and conveying their lack of interest in the wave by their frolicking movements. They are both prepared for the immensity of the wave and completely consumed by their own actions, unperturbed.

In this sculpture, Claudel perhaps creates a commentary on what it is like to be a modern French woman in a period of growth, yet people still try to hold women in their domestic place. In more plausible readings of the sculpture, although the wave is threatening these nude women, they have agency and attempt to have control over their impending doom. Thus, Claudel is portraying these women as having some control over their destinies, whereas in similar artworks created by men, the women are completely at the will of the wave conveying that Western women have little control over their own fate. As is obvious, Claudel thought of women having their own authority and autonomy even in a cynical view of the world.

Her sculptures were so innovative that critics were confused by the own standards that they had created for male and female artists, as Claudel did not fit any kind of binary considered to be true at the time. As they didn’t know what category to place her in, prominent critics referred to her as a masculinist woman artist, because no woman could possibly hold as much talent as her male contemporaries, but they had to find some way to display her ingenuity and mastery over her artworks.

As she grew in her career, she met fellow sculptor, Auguste Rodin and they quickly became intertwined. Over the following ten years, they equally treated each other as muses for their artworks; both creating remarkable artworks during this time period. However, for Claudel, her most genius artworks were created after they parted ways in the mid-1890s. 

Claudel’s on-and-off relationship was tumultuous to say the least. They equally had passion for one another and created instability for the other party. Unfortunately for Claudel, her passions for Rodin would lead to her downfall. 

Although some of her arguably most celebrated artwork was created after their separation, critics could not view these artworks as independent from her heartbreak over her severance from Rodin, and considered all of these artworks to be inspired by her time with Rodin. After her relationship with Rodin, Claudel became undisguisable in her paranoia towards her ex-lover. This paranoia was justified due to the fact that Rodin sold multiple of the artworks that Claudel and he collaborated on under only his name, and on potentially more than one occasion stole one of her sculptures and sold it as his own.

Unfortunately for Claudel, it is not surprising to discover that the concept of hysteria was created by scientists during this time to no doubt try to silence women trying to gain some autonomy over their lives. In around 1905, about ten-plus years after her separation from Rodin, her brother sent her away to an insane asylum claiming hysteria had overcome Camille. Despite Camille begging her brother to reprieve her from the institution and doctors indicating that she did not need to be in such a place, she spent her last thirty years of life in such institutions. She even passed away in one of these places. As Paul was an artist in his own right, a poet, one can only wonder if he was so jealous of his sister’s talent and was baffled that a woman could be more successful than him that he wanted to find a way to get rid of her.

Nevertheless, it is infuriating that Claudel had such a fate, at a time when male artists were revered and considered to be a genius for having mental instabilities, women were condemned for having similar personality traits. It just goes to show how threatened male artists were of their female counterparts.

As Claudel was arguably one of the most innovative sculptors of the time, even more so than Rodin who is still admired by the masses today, it is tragic knowing that as her art was only improving and becoming more ingenious prior to her imprisonment, the world at-large has only lost the opportunity of all of the magnificent artworks she could have created during the final thirty years of her life. We can only imagine what those artworks would have been like.