What Camille Claudel Brings to Modern Women
The image of the intellectual woman can be different from men, and that’s okay
The very first time I saw a work of art made by Camille Claudel up close, I was teaching Modern Art History classes for art undergraduate students. The theme was mainly about the great French artist Auguste Rodin, the sculptor behind Le Penseur (The Thinker). However, I thought dividing his already established space with a lesser-known (and female) artist would bring a necessary dose of criticism to young, promising art students.
As many people know, Claudel had a terrible life. She was ignored by her teacher and lover, Rodin. She was locked into a psychiatric hospital by the request of her envious brother, a playwright that probably felt diminished by his sister’s artistic talent. Her incarceration was made at a time when anything, and I mean anything, could be used against women to prove them crazy and isolate them from society. Claudel spent the rest of her life switching between psychiatric institutions.
As a matter of fact, one of Claudel’s work that can be compared to The Thinker, at least in its immediate and most shallow meaning. La Profonde Pensée ou Intimité (The Profound Thought or Intimacy), from 1898, depicts a woman kneeling in front of a fireplace. Her hands are leaning on the marble, her head is down. The figure wears an almost transparent dress and is bare feet.
It would be unfair to compare the work with that of Rodin, but unfortunately, it is the best argument that I have at this moment.
The Thinker (originally a poetic representation of the poet Dante Alighieri) is known by its extreme expressivity and body manner to show how surrendering to profound thinking can work. Meaning that one does not think only with their mind, but also with their whole body. Rodin is not only presenting a focused thinker; instead, he is lashing out at an entire history of thought that presupposes that humans are their minds (I think, therefore I am, said René Descartes) simply carried by a machine, that is our bodies.
The amazing paradox of The Thinker is that, despite its name, it cannot be more bodily, corporeal, that it is.
Claudel’s thinker can carry the same symbolism, although we see a female figure in a very different situation. Rodin’s man is posed in what can be considered an “intellectual position” — sitting, chin on hand, doing nothing besides focusing on his own profound thoughts. He is probably the image of a man of letters, a philosopher or mathematician, by the style of the Ancient Greek great thinkers and modern geniuses, that was so common in 1700s and 1800s art — like the curved William Blake’s Newton (1795).
Claudel’s woman, on the other hand, is not alone above a rock processing her ultimate thoughts, but she is in a domestic scene — and this is explicitly posed by the fireplace. Her body language is quite different.
Besides thinking, she could be doing anything on the domestic sphere (what we contemporaries would call women’s typical multitasking at home). Is she in the kitchen, or maybe the living room? Is she the owner of the house, a bourgeoisie woman, or a maid? What is she lamenting for? I think we should let our imagination wander. In my spectator view, it’s almost impossible to get away from the Cinderella image: the poor working woman covered in ashes, but whose dreams might come true.
What Camille Claudel brings to modern women
Specialists in art, mainly in modern art, could argue that La Profonde Pensée does not have the same powerful expression or geniality of Le Pensé. That would be fair enough; nonetheless, not always the genius of an artist is the best way to analyse her or his work. In this case, the power of the female thinker seems to be in another realm.
Claudel’s thinker looks like an ironic comment on the man made by Rodin. If the master’s intention was to express a universal aspect of thought and, by consequence, of knowledge (the thinker is not necessarily a man… or is it?), the pupil can show us the reality is quite different.
The main place for the production of knowledge is a man’s world. But that doesn’t mean that women can’t think, or do profound thinking. It just means that the legitimized thinking, the one from universities, research institutes, political places of decision, is dominated by the male figure of “the intellectual”.
And if you think this is a nineteenth-century problem, well, think twice.
Many women can relate, in their own personal experiences. Haven’t we all been considered, at least once, less smart, capable, intelligent than our male colleagues, even when we surpass them in any of these categories? (I am looking at you, Mrs. Elizabeth Warren!)
I have my own share of being considered less smart than men in my professional life. I worked on a research institution and, as a young professional in a young company, I was requested to do all sorts of things besides my main tasks. That seemed ok, why complain?
But, a few months after, I got a male coworker, who was much younger and less experienced than me. He was only requested to do his job — like his intellectual tasks and production were protected at any cost. I continued to work in a loop of “the girl who does everything” until I finally got out of the company, weakened and frustrated.
However, in many moments of my life, I also had gender-biased ideas of intelligence. I usually preferred to read male authors, I was a fan of male professors during college, I tended to choose male politicians because I thought they looked more competent for their jobs. I also share my own guilt on being misogynistic against women’s intellectual capability. It just changed a few years ago, when I got connected to feminist theory and activism.
The American Psychologist Journal published research last year that confirms what we women feel in our everyday lives: even if the working space is becoming more equal, men are still considered more capable to be in charge of “smart” jobs than women. Gender stereotypes may be positively changing, but the idea that men are smarter, unfortunately, is indeed challenging to overcome.
Women created another image of intellectuality
Camille Claudel taught me to look critically at gender-biased ideas of smartness, intellectual capability. In the first layer, La Profonde Pensée seems like an ironic response to the great and serious intellectual of The Thinker.
In a second layer, on the other hand, the artist seems to claim that there is no closed idea of what the intellectual behavior looks like. Our society can recall the male philosopher, naked, thinking, sitting on a rock with the hand under his chin. Or a white, grey-haired CEO or College Professor wearing marine suits. Nonetheless, women suggest other images of what intellectual thinking can look like.
Claudel proposed an introspected, almost depressed woman with her head down, absorbed in the domestic scene. But we can suggest other images. Intellectual women can be a sage old woman with a scarf tied to her head and generations of popular knowledge flowing through her veins. Intellectual women who keep family shit together, the house tidy, and still works their Ph.D. thesis after the kids go to sleep.
The image of the intellectual woman can be different from men, and that’s ok.
The image of the intellectual woman can be different from men, and that’s okay. I think it’s valuable to remember it when imposter syndrome hits hard on us.
Women have different expectations about being smart. We just need to understand and struggle for it. Goddess knows what would happen if Camille Claudel had this opportunity in her days.
