Head of the Tragic Muse (Tête de la Muse tragique)

This remarkable bust was originally created for Rodin’s Monument to Victor Hugo, as part of an allegorical female figure speaking passionately to the author. A number of critics decried it as an unfinished deformity. Others felt her shifting, fluid features effectively symbolized the processes of consciousness, creativity, or genius. As one critic remarked, Rodin’s tragic muse certainly broke with tradition, being “at a droll remove from the licked prettiness of the customary nymph.’’

What remains startling today is the degree to which Rodin abandoned lifelike representation in this work. It had instead become about the emotional impact—divorced from facial or narrative legibility—conveyed by the artist’s visible manipulation of the material.