Age of bronze (detail)
When first exhibited critics, who need labels to survive, referred to the image as a suicide or vanquished warrior. This convinced Rodin to designate the positive connotation of an awakening consciousness as a more appropriate "label" with which to send the sculpture to the Paris Salon of the same year. Rodin's poetically allusive title The Age of Bronze thus hinted that the figure might suggest the dawn of human metallurgic skill. Later he admitted that it represented a "[slow] awakening...from a deep dream."
Age of bronze (detail)
When first exhibited critics, who need labels to survive, referred to the image as a suicide or vanquished warrior. This convinced Rodin to designate the positive connotation of an awakening consciousness as a more appropriate "label" with which to send the sculpture to the Paris Salon of the same year. Rodin's poetically allusive title The Age of Bronze thus hinted that the figure might suggest the dawn of human metallurgic skill. Later he admitted that it represented a "[slow] awakening...from a deep dream."