The Voice - The Official Linda Eder Newsletter

Camille was born on December 8, 1864 in Fere-en-Tardenois, a small town in the Champagne region of France. Her parents lost their first child, a two-week-old boy. Camille's birth was followed by her sister's (Louise) in 1866 and her brother's (Paul) in 1868.
Her father's occupation forced the family to move on a regular basis; however, the Claudels spent their summers in Villeneuve-sur-Fere in a house that her mother (Louise) eventually inherited. Louise's father owned substantial property in the Champagne region of France, which she alone inherited after her brother's death in 1866.
In Villeneuve-sur-Fere, Camille discovered her hidden treasure- thick, red clay. She saw that clay could be molded into fascinating shapes, which when baked, would remain permanent. Camille's curiosity quickly led to serious creations, and she enlisted her brother and sister as assistants, giving them the tasks of finding clay, preparing the plaster and also acting as models.

The bust of Paul Claudel at age 16
In spite of their numerous squabbles, Camille and Paul Claudel were very close. They were both creative individuals. Paul became a famous poet and playwright whose work shows the influence of Roman Catholic Mysteries. When he was 18 years old, he converted to Roman Catholicism. Paul also became a French Diplomat, and spent the years between 1893 and 1934 mostly outside France, as an Ambassador.
Camille and her mother contrasted sharply in both appearance and personality. These differences would cause conflict throughout their lives. Her mother, Louise-Athanaise Cerveaux, belonged to the well-established French bourgeoisie.
Louise-Athanaise Cerveaux (Camille's mother) was raised only by her father, Dr. Athanase Cerveaux, after her mother's early death. Sadly, growing up without a mother's love shaped Camille's mother into a rigid woman, who was unable to express feelings of tenderness. Paul Claudel once said, "Our mother never kissed us." Camille's mother identified more with her younger daughter, Louise, a rather conventional young woman and unfortunately, she never understood her more gifted children, Paul and Camille.
Camille was much closer to her father, Louis Claudel. Like Camille, Louis was imaginative, quick-tempered and possessed a sarcastic sense of humor. Considered French middle class, he was educated in a Jesuit school and owned an extensive classical library. He understood and supported his children and would become a crucial force behind their artistic achievements. Until his death in 1913, he remained Camille's greatest supporter.
By the time she was 12 years old, Camille already stood out among her schoolmates in the Catholic school she attended in the town of Epernay. Her art teacher, Mere St. Joseph, would proudly show her pupil's drawings (most of which were portrait heads) to the other girls.
Camille enriched her artistic education with literature and old engravings and knew at an early age it would be best to use anatomical models, from which to create her sculptures, including Greek characters such as Oedipus and Antigone.
At 13 years old, Camille created a sculpture of David and Goliath, which portrayed unique muscle tone. It was this sculpture that attracted the attention of the sculptor, Alfred Boucher, who like Camille, had first started to sculpt as a child. He was impressed with what he saw, and he gave her the much-needed guidance that she had yet to receive.
Camille also benefited from the instruction of Monsieur Colin, an outstanding teacher that the Claudel's hired for their children's education. Under his guidance, Camille was able to go beyond the standard education usually given to women.
Although Camille progressed rapidly under the supervision of her two mentors, Boucher and Colin, she faced an important limitation in her town. Schools in many provincial towns only offered women the tools to earn a living either in manufacturing or in teaching. Women were not typically encouraged to become artists, and they were certainly not allowed to use nude models.
Through her passionate pleadings, Camille finally convinced her father that Paris was where she would have the best opportunity for serious art study. In 1881 at the age of 17, she moved to Paris with her mother and brother and began studying at the Academie Colarossi. (At that time it was inconceivable for a woman of the French bourgeoisie to live alone in Paris.) The Academie Colarossi taught more modeling, was cheaper to attend, and most importantly, it gave women the same opportunities as men.
Unfortunately, Camille's father could not pick up and move to Paris because of his job so the Claudel family was split up. When Camille arrived in Paris, the city was vibrant, industrious and bustling with artistic activities. Creativity was at its height. It was during this period that Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi created his Statue of Liberty. The head was completed for the Universal Exhibition of 1878. The finished statue was sent to the United States in 1885 and dedicated in New York a year later.
Paris offered a variety of private schools and studios, where women had the opportunity for serious art study, including access to nude models. In the nineteenth century, the naked body was the standard of all art. It was thought that if an artist could proficiently paint or sculpt the nude, then they could do anything.
Camille was visually striking. In her brother's words, "She had a superb forehead over two magnificent

Bartholdi's sculpture of the Statue of Liberty

eyes of a dark blue that we rarely see outside of novels… this large mouth, more proud than sensual, this powerful mass of chestnut hair, the true chestnut called auburn by English, and which fell down her back. An impressive air of courage, directness, superiority, gaiety. One who was endowed with much." What Paul Claudel failed to mention was that Camille had a small physical imperfection, a slight limp, which according to a friend, may have contributed to Camille's drive to look for perfection in her art.
Camille first met Auguste Rodin in 1882 when he came to visit the stud io at which she was sculpting.
Her mentor, Alfred Boucher, won the Grand Prix du Salon in 1881 and a year later he left Paris for Florence. Before his departure, he asked his friend Rodin to take his place in guiding his protégées. With Boucher gone, Rodin became the patron of the studio. He regularly came to the studio and guided the group of beginning artists. Like Boucher, Rodin did not charge for his services even though he was struggling financially.
Camille quickly became Rodin's most trusted assistant. A journalist who frequented the studio observed, "He consults her about everything. He deliberates each decision with her, and it is only after they are in agreement that he definitely proceeds." Rodin trusted her with modeling the hands and feet of many of his figures.

Picture of Rodin
In 1864, Rodin met his life-long companion, Rose Beuret, who had been his female model. She was a simple, uneducated woman who devoted her life to him. He did not want to marry her, and he made sure that she did not meet any of his intellectual and artist friends. They had a son named Auguste. Rodin never paid much attention to him and refused to legally accept paternity.
The romance between Camille and Rodin was and still is a mystery. At the beginning Camille still lived with her parents and Rodin was with his longtime companion Rose Beuret. The romantic relationship between Rodin and Claudel was never officially acknowledged. In 1936, Rodin's biographer, Judith Cladel, did not to mention Camille's name. Instead, she referred to her as "une grande passion" or "la belle artiste."
No one knows exactly when Camille and Rodin became lovers, but by 1886 their relationship was at least a year old. Not surprisingly, she inspired some of the masterpieces Rodin produced during these happy years.
Rodin, who never took Rose anywhere, did not have the same reservations about being seen with the attractive and gifted Camille. He introduced Camille to his friends and to anyone who might be helpful to her career. Camille realized that distancing herself from Rodin would be necessary to be accepted as an artist in her own right. Regardless, she could not deny that he was immensely supportive of her work.
Camille's affair with Rodin was a catastrophe for her brother, Paul Claudel, who took it as a complete betrayal. He loved his impossible sister but felt a profound hatred for Rodin. The same can be said of the reactions of Camille's mother and sister, both of whom dreaded the possibility of scandal.
The break-up of the Claudel-Rodin relationship began in early 1892 when she moved out of the old mansion that they shared. Every night, Rodin still returned to the house he shared with Rose Beuret. Camille's dream of two great artists inspired by the same vision and creating side by side had turned into the daily humiliation of having to share her lover with another woman. Camille asked Rodin to leave Rose, but he wouldn't.
It was probably during this period that tensions between Camille and Rodin were exacerbated by an unwanted pregnancy. A 1939 letter from Paul Claudel to his friend, Marie Romain-Rolland, confirmed Camille had had an abortion.
In 1893, Rodin left Paris and moved to the country with Rose. The break-up with Camille was complete. Rodin was 53 years old and Camille was 29.
Camille was deeply wounded and vulnerable when she walked out of Rodin's studio, but she was also determined to make a name for herself and to find her own distinctive voice. She worked tirelessly and the ten years following her break-up with Rodin were the most prolific of her career.
Around 1905, Camille stopped sculpting altogether, as her creative powers crumbled under the weight of financial hardship and seclusion. During this time, her mental state was also deteriorating.
In September, 1909, Paul Claudel, after visiting his sister's studio wrote in his journal: "In Paris, Camille mad. Wallpaper ripped in long strips, the only armchair broken and torn, horrible filth. Camille huge, with a dirty face, speaking ceaselessly in a monotonous and metallic voice." Camille had reached the point where to others it seemed that she could not function on her own.
As Camille grew more paranoid, her family decided to have her committed. In 1913, she was committed to the Montdevergues insane asylum. On orders from her mother, she was isolated and deprived of all visits from the outside world. While nothing in her behavior called for the decision to be cut off from the outside world, her isolation was enforced to prevent a scandal. The scandal happened anyway when Charles Thierry (Camille's cousin) alerted a local newspaper of her plight, and the news reached the Paris newspapers about a month later.
Camille spent the next 30 years of her life in the insane asylum until her death on October 19, 1943.
The most visible characteristic of Camille was defiance. She defied the prejudiced society in which she lived in almost every step she took: her choice of a career in sculpture, her entrance into a previously all-male studio and a liaison with the master of the studio, and her determination to sculpt the nude with as much freedom as her male counterparts. Sculptors worked in dust and dirt, spending countless hours doing manual labor. For women it was just as dirty and probably harder, since women who wished to dress like men had to be issued a special permission by the Prefect of Police. With the hems of their long bustled dresses sweeping the floors, they climbed up ladders and carried heavy material.
During her lifetime, Camille created 260 to 280 cast pieces in clay, plaster, marble, or bronze. Since the early 1980's, some 250 casts have been produced, and more are expected in the future. The large number of posthumous casts will soon surpass her lifetime production. In spite of her financial troubles, Camille Claudel routinely cast her pieces in bronze. All her important works were cast during her lifetime, so that posthumous casting was not necessary for their preservation.

Camille's sculpture L'Implorante
In 1984, Camille's popularity grew instantaneously and quickly spread to other European countries, as well as to Asia and Japan, after her sculptures were revealed in the Musee Rodin.
In 1988, a female baker facing a financial emergency decided to sell one of her possessions, a bronze sculpture of a woman on her knees with her hands stretched toward a missing god. A deceitful antique dealer told her that it was only a copy of L'Implorante by Camille Claudel and he gave her $8,000. Two weeks later the same piece sold for $290,000 at an auction in Rambouillet. She took her case to court and won.
As a woman of the nineteenth century, Camille Claudel came up against the social and artistic limitations imposed upon her. She struggled endlessly to be accepted as a sculptor in her own right, without any gender qualifications and restrictions. This is probably why she always returned to sculpting large works, even though she had created small-scale masterpieces. She knew that only large works were viewed as worthy of a great sculptor while miniature sculpture was often branded as decorative or feminine.

REFERENCES:

CAMILLE CLAUDEL A LIFE
Author: Odile Ayral-Clause
Published in 2002 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pclaudel.htm
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~loui/camille.html
http://www.angelfire.com/goth/poe/camilleclaudel_index.html

IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS
Image #1: Jeune File a la Gerbe, 1887, age 23
Image #2: Persee et la Gorgone, 1902, age 28
Image #3: Clotho, 1893, age 29
Image #4: The Prayer, 1889, age 25
Image #5: The Waltz, 1891-1893, age 27-29

GABRIEL BARRE

DIRECTING A MASTERPIECE

This summer's production of CAMILLE CLAUDEL at the Goodspeed is in the capable hands of the fabulous director and actor, Gabriel Barre. He brings a wealth of experience with him to this production. His credits are mind-boggling!

As a director, Mr. Barre has many credits to his name. He directed the Off-Broadway production of THE WILD PARTY by Andrew Lippa at the Manhattan Theatre Club. This musical was nominated for numerous awards, including five Outer Critics Circle Awards and 13 Drama Desk Awards. Included in the nominations for both was Best Direction of a Musical. Mr. Barre won the Calloway Award for Best Direction for THE WILD PARTY. Other Off-Broadway credits include: SUMMER OF '42 at the Variety Arts Theatre, HONKY TONK HIGHWAY at Don't Tell Mama (winner of a MAC Award and Bistro Award for Best Review), STARS IN YOUR EYES at the Cherry Lane Theatre and JOHN & JEN at the Lamb's Theatre.

His regional credits include the recently critically acclaimed production of PERICLES at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, STAND BY YOUR MAN (a new musical about Tammy Wynette, which played at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville) and TEMPLE (a musical about the life of Temple Granden ) with the Seattle Repertory. He is also on the Advisory Board of the Cape Cod Theatre Project and has directed numerous plays there during the past three years, including John Cariani's ALMOST, MAINE.

At the Goodspeed Opera House, he directed the revivals of SWEENEY TODD (winner of four Connecticut Critics Circle Awards, including Best Musical and Best Direction of a Musical), FINIAN'S RAINBOW (nominated for five Connecticut Critics Circle Awards), the new musical, HOUDINI, which he remounted at the Marriott-Lincolnshire Theatre in Chicago, and recently the revival of KING OF HEARTS, as well as many other new musicals including FANNY HILL and DORIAN. Mr. Barre also directed the national tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein's CINDERELLA starring Eartha Kitt, which ran for three years.

Besides CAMILLE CLAUDEL, Mr. Barre is currently working on a number of projects including an adaptation of THE GONDOLIERS for the Roundabout Theatre, an international version of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, the new musical SKIN OF OUR TEETH by Kander and Ebb with a book by Joe Stein, and the new rock musical, MASK (based on the movie), by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil and Anna Hamilton-Phelan.

As an actor, Mr. Barre was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance in STARMITES (recently released on CD) and won a Bistro Award as an original cast member in FOREVER PLAID. Other performing credits include-Broadway: RAGTIME (workshop), AIN'T BROADWAY GRAND, RAGS, ANNA KARENINA, BARNUM (first national tour); Off-Broadway: RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, THE PETRIFIED PRINCE at the Public Theatre, JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS, for which he also did the musical staging, as well as numerous productions at the Roundabout Theatre, Mirror Repertory Company, Lamb's Theatre, Playwright's Horizons, Jewish Repertory Theatre, INTAR, York Theatre and LaMama E.T.C.

His television and film credits include: The Gurneyman, Luggage of the Gods, Girl 6, Quiz Show, The Road to Wellville, Stardust Memories, Fame, Kate & Allie, Nickelodeon, Summer of Sam and the recent Broadway Workshop program for PBS.

Before he headed to Connecticut to begin rehearsals for CAMILLE CLAUDEL, Mr. Barre took the time to answer some of our questions about his work on CAMILLE.

VOICE: Would you please give the fans some insight into how you came to work on CAMILLE CLAUDEL. When and where did you meet Frank Wildhorn and have you worked together before?

GB: This is the first project I've done with Frank and Nan, but I hope it's not the last. It's been fruitful and exciting, and I enjoy working with them both very much. I believe they each had become familiar with my work through the Manhattan Theatre Club production of THE WILD PARTY, which I directed. About a year and a half ago, the three of us and Linda all met and talked about CAMILLE, the person and the show, and began work soon after.

VOICE: What have you enjoyed about your work on the show so far? Have you found anything to be particularly rewarding and/or challenging?

GB: The creative process of putting together an original musical is complex and involved. It is also rewarding and even fun, especially when a team works closely and the communication is good. It is a constant routine of writing and rewriting that never really ends…once you make friends with that, it's just a matter of holding on and never taking your eye off the target. One of the most challenging and exciting aspects of working on this particular piece is the exploration of how to theatrically interpret the artwork (the sculptures of Camille Claudel and Rodin) throughout the show and use the art as clues as to what was really going on in the passionate relationship between these two extraordinary artists.

VOICE: In a creative sense, do you find it more of a challenge to direct a musical based on a real person as opposed to fiction, or doesn't it matter?

GB: Yes, I think biographies are particularly challenging and present numerous additional pitfalls. The trick is not to rely on the fact that this person was real or famous to provide interest or a perspective on the piece. You still have to know why you're writing it and what you want to say. You have to ask, "Is the story interesting and compelling on its own?" Sometimes you can't rely simply on the facts of the person's life to hold the audience's attention. They won't.

VOICE: How did you prepare for directing CAMILLE CLAUDEL?

GB: We have all prepared by reading a lot about both Camille and Rodin and the period (1883 to1913). We have studied the artwork itself and taken field trips to see it in person. We have done readings of the show, recorded demos of the songs and experimented with the movement and style of the piece all in preparation for rehearsals, which begin on July 22nd.

VOICE: We know you've done a lot of work at the Goodspeed. Is there something about the theatre that keeps you coming back?

GB: I love working at the Goodspeed...the people are great... it's a beautiful spot in New England (I was born in Vermont so it reminds me of home)...and the support for new work is complete and enthusiastic. The first show I ever directed about ten years ago came from their placing their trust in me and giving me a chance to direct a brand new show after having worked there as an actor a number of times. It is always a pleasure to go to work there and those experiences have left me feeling particularly proud of our profession and grateful for the opportunities with which I have been blessed.

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Thanks, Mr. Barre, for taking the time to answer our questions. See you at the Goodspeed!