This presentation by Odile Ayral-Clause on Camille Claudel is taking place as an introduction to the Getty exhibition that will be up through July 21st.

Odile Ayral-Clause was a professor of French at Cal Poly for 35 years, but art history was her second love.  She decided to write Camille Claudel's biography to counteract the nonsense written in France on the life of this artist.  This biography was published by Abrams in 2002, then in France by Hachette in 2008. 

Camille Claudel was a gifted nineteenth-century French sculptor who worked with Auguste Rodin, became his lover, and then left him to gain recognition for herself in the art world. With a strong sense of independence and a firm belief in her own considerable talent, Claudel created some extraordinary works of art and challenged the social and artistic limitations imposed upon the women of her time. Eventually, however, she crumbled beneath the combined weight of social reproof, deprivation, and art-world prejudices.

The nineteenth century was extremely misogynistic, but this aspect had been overlooked by French critics.  Claudel had had a relationship with Rodin, so critics blamed Rodin for the problems Claudel had endured.  Instead, Ayral-Clause returned Claudel to the milieu in which she had lived, and described her constant struggle against the art world, society and her own family.  Claudel's works are outstanding, but her life was a tragic one, and it did not need to be.

Little known in the United States at the time Ayral-Clause wrote her book, Claudel received much attention in 2005 when an exhibition Claudel and Rodin took place first in Quebec then in Detroit.  However the present exhibition at the Getty is the first important solo exhibition of this artist in this country.