Rodin's The Walking Man (Courtesy the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts)
When Auguste Rodin's impressionistic sculpture The Walking Man was completed in 1878, critics sniped about its unclassical bearing and the figure's lack of a head. Rodin shot back, "A man doesn't walk around on his head."
Mitchell Merling, head of European art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, says, "Rodin wasn't a scholar, but he was a quipster. He was a philosopher. A philosopher in stone."
The VMFA's "Rodin: Evolution of a Genius," opening Nov. 21, features 200 sculptures, sketches by Eugene Druet, who worked with Rodin. $15. 340-1400 or vmfa.museum.
