Body talk: YBA Sarah Lucas meets modern master Auguste Rodin

A battle of the gaze is on at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, pitting an old dead French man against a punky British woman.
The artists in question are Auguste Rodin, the modern master known for his sensuous, eroticised studies of the female form, and Sarah Lucas, the subversive YBA feminist, known for her androgynous pantyhose sculptures and performances with eggs.
‘In considering Rodin’s legacy as a quintessentially male artist who radically redefined the conception of the human figure in art, I wanted to introduce a contemporary female perspective that was equally profound in how it challenges conventions of representation – especially in relation to the female body,’ says curator Claudia Schmuckli of the exhibition ‘Sarah Lucas: Good Muse’, one of two major commissions organised by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco around Rodin’s work this year
Installation view of ‘Sarah Lucas: Good Muse’ at the Legion of Honor Museum.
It's a confrontation that brings new resonances to light, Lucas’ sardonic humour on sexuality and skin challenging Rodin’s beatified vision of women. One example is a new work by Lucas, Jubilee (2017), a 7ft-high pair of concrete-cast high-heeled boots, which faces Rodin's Gates of Hell of 100 years ago, a juxtaposition that is undoubtedly tongue-in-cheek but also aligns their differing takes on the oldest themes in art history: sex and death.
Elsewhere, if you needed proof that men and women see the latter differently, Lucas’ friends Margot, Pauline and Michele, remodelled in plaster, and her Titti Doris (2017) and Washing Machine Fried Eggs (2016) use classical fertility tropes and domestic items to reinvent the cliché female muse as a more complicated, gritty and disenchanted creature, sexual and sexualised.
‘By tapping into our complex and often anxious relationship to the naked body, especially when considered in relation to the desires of others, Lucas’ work on the one hand draws out the erotic undercurrent in Rodin’s work, often just barely veiled by biblical and mythological subject matter,’ Schmuckli explains. ‘On the other hand, it disarms the male gaze – traditionally oscillating between idolisation and objectification – which has dominated the representation of women and their bodies for centuries. Rodin, being a man of his age, being no exception.’
This is Lucas’ first museum exhibition in the US, and it marks a century since Rodin's death. While Lucas’ work might be relatively unknown to local audiences, Schmuckli is confident her messages won't be lost. ‘I am sure it will be a discovery for many, but these days Americans are certainly no strangers to the absurd and the abject.’
Installation view of ‘Sarah Lucas: Good Muse’ at the Legion of Honor Museum.
Left, Sarah Lucas at work. Right, Jubilee, 2017, by Sarah Lucas.
The artist is known, among other things, for her androgynous pantyhose sculptures.
Lucas draws out the erotic undertones of Rodin’s work.
Installation view of ‘Sarah Lucas: Good Muse’ at the Legion of Honor Museum.
Installation view of ‘Sarah Lucas: Good Muse’ at the Legion of Honor Museum.
INFORMATION
‘Sarah Lucas: Good Muse’ is on view until 17 September. For more information, visit the Legion of Honor Museum website
ADDRESS
Legion of Honor Museum
Lincoln Park
100 34th Avenue
San Francisco CA 94121
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Charlotte Jansen is a journalist and the author of two books on photography, Girl on Girl (2017) and Photography Now (2021). She is commissioning editor at Elephant magazine and has written on contemporary art and culture for The Guardian, the Financial Times, ELLE, the British Journal of Photography, Frieze and Artsy. Jansen is also presenter of Dior Talks podcast series, The Female Gaze.
-
The inimitable Norman Foster: our guide to the visionary architect, shaping the future
Norman Foster has shaped today's London and global architecture like no other in his field; explore his work through our ultimate guide to this most impactful contemporary architect
-
Van Cleef & Arpels’ new high jewellery collection has come into bloom
The jewellery house reworks classic codes in the ‘Fleurs d’Hawaï’ collection, launched at Dumfries House, Scotland
-
Canal is a new west London restaurant with a suntrap terrace
At Canal, the new restaurant at Mason & Fifth’s Westbourne Park hotel, expect modern European breakfast, lunch and dinner from the team behind Crispin and Bistro Freddie
-
Mystic, feminine and erotic: the power of Penny Slinger’s bodies as landscape
Artist Penny Slinger continues her exploration of the sacred, surreal feminine in a Santa Monica exhibition, ‘Meeting at the Horizon’
-
What is recycling good for, asks Mika Rottenberg at Hauser & Wirth Menorca
US-based artist Mika Rottenberg rethinks the possibilities of rubbish in a colourful exhibition, spanning films, drawings and eerily anthropomorphic lamps
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been up to this week
This week saw the Wallpaper* team jet-setting to Jordan and New York; those of us left in London had to make do with being transported via the power of music at rooftop bars, live sets and hologram performances
-
Photographer Geordie Wood takes a leap of faith with first film, Divers
Geordie Wood delved into the world of professional diving in Fort Lauderdale for his first film
-
New book celebrates 100 years of New York City landmarks where LGBTQ+ history took place
Marc Zinaman’s ‘Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places’ is a vital tribute to queer culture
-
San Francisco’s controversial monument, the Vaillancourt Fountain, could be facing demolition
The brutalist fountain is conspicuously absent from renders showing a redeveloped Embarcadero Plaza and people are unhappy about it, including the structure’s 95-year-old designer
-
See the fruits of Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely's creative and romantic union at Hauser & Wirth Somerset
An intimate exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Somerset explores three decades of a creative partnership
-
A major Takashi Murakami exhibition sees the world in kaleidoscopic colour
The Cleveland Art Museum presents 'Takashi Murakami 'Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow', exploring outrage and escapist fantasy