Magic Transistor

Jean Limet. Monument to The Burghers of Calais. 1904.

Auguste Rodin. Le Infant Prodigue, In the S..., Two Women, Standing Embracing Couple, Femme Nue, Rock, Skeleton and Skull. 1856-1901.

Victor Pannelier. Clay Model of Eustache de Saint Pierre. 1886.

Edward Steichen. Mask of Hanako. 1913. 

Kahlil Gibran. Illustrations for The Prophet, The Summit from Sand and Foam, Sketches for Jesus the Son of Man. 1923-25. 

Artist, poet, novelist, and philosopher, Gibran Khalil Gibran emigrated from Lebanon to the United States in 1895. Gibran was introduced to the work of William Blake by the master Auguste Rodiń in his studio in Paris, and clearly both the visual art and writing of Blake had a profound impact on him. 

In 1923 Khalil Gibran wrote his most known work “The Prophet”, 26 essay-style prose poems delivered as sermons by a fictional wise man in a faraway time and place. The critics were not overly impressed, but the rest of the world was, and today “The Prophet” has been translated in 40 languages, and made Gibran the 3rd best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.

Edward Gooch. Auguste Rodin. 1900. 

Rodin in the garden of his villa at Meudon, near Paris. Behind him is the original plaster statue of 'The Creation of Man'.

Gertrude Käsebier, Auguste Rodin

Edward Steichen. Balzac Toward the Light, Midnight. 1908.

Even before Steichen first met Auguste Rodin, he was enthralled by the sculptor and, specifically, by his monument to the French writer Honoré de Balzac. The Milwaukee newspapers had covered Rodin's exhibition of the plaster at the 1898 Salon and its rejection by the writers' society that had commissioned it...Steichen moved back to Paris in 1907 in hopes of resuscitating his idled painting career. There, he rekindled his friendship with Rodin, and in autumn 1908 Rodin invited him to photograph his monumental sculpture of Balzac, whose brooding hulk of a figure had remained covered in the studio since 1900. (It would, in fact, remain uncast during his lifetime.) Rodin moved the plaster to the terrace and suggested that Steichen photograph it by moonlight, which he did, using exposures ranging from fifteen minutes to an hour. The resulting prints convey all the commanding presence Rodin had envisioned: "You will make the world understand my Balzac with your pictures." --Met