Exhibition Lecture

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

Registration is required at THIS LINK.

Accounts of visits to Auguste Rodin’s studio around the turn of the twentieth century frequently mention a small Egyptian sculpture of a sparrowhawk from his collection. Holding this little object in his hands, Rodin would show the visitor how, with twists and turns of his fingertips, he could make the bird appear to fly. This lecture explores how Rodin created the same tactile, intimate viewing experience with his sculptures of dancers, including his Nijinsky (1912). Designed to be held in the hand rather than fixed on a base, this sculpture instantiates an encounter with the viewer’s body that is both mobile and sexualized, in deliberate homage to Vaslav Nijinsky’s scandalous 1912 ballet Afternoon of a Faun.

Juliet Bellow is Associate Professor of Art History at American University. An expert in modern art and ballet history, she is the author of Rodin’s Dancers: Art and Performance in Belle Époque Paris (Yale University Press, 2025) and Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde (Routledge, 2013). 

This lecture is given in conjunction with ISAW's exhibition Rodin's Egypt. This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue were made possible by generous support from the Leon Levy Foundation.

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