title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 13 December 2011, an independent arbitrator cleared the way for Rio Tinto, which had owned 49% of Ivanhoe Mines (now known as Turquoise Hill Resources), to take it over: he said the $16-billion Canadian group's "poison pill" defence was not valid. Ivanhoe had developed Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, one of the world's largest-known copper deposits. On 28 January 2012, Rio Tinto gained control of Ivanhoe Mines and removed the management.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In October 2013, Rio Tinto agreed to sell its majority stake in Australia's third-largest coal mine to Glencore and Sumitomo for a little over US$1 billion, as part of the firm's plans to focus on larger operations. Less than a year later, Rio Tinto rejected two merger proposals from Glencore, proffered in July and August 2014; the merger of Glencore and Rio Tinto would have created the world's largest mining company.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In May 2015, Rio Tinto announced plans to sell some of its aluminium assets as part of a possible $1 billion deal, two years after a similar but failed attempt.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In September 2020, it was announced that the company's Chief Executive Jean-Sébastien Jacques, along with two executives, will resign because of Rio Tinto's role in destroying two ancient rock shelters in the Pilbara region of Australia. The company's Chief Financial Officer, Jakob Stausholm became the new Chief Executive on 1 January 2021.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In March 2022, Rio Tinto completed the acquisition of Rincon Mining's lithium project in Argentina for $825 million, following approval by Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The company has operations on six continents, but is mainly concentrated in Australia and Canada, and owns its mining operations through a complex web of wholly and partly owned subsidiaries.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: These operating groups are supported by separate divisions providing exploration and function support.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto is structured as a dual-listed company, with listings on both the London Stock Exchange (symbol: RIO), under the name "Rio Tinto Plc", and the Australian Securities Exchange (symbol: RIO) in Sydney, under the name "Rio Tinto Limited". The dual-listed company structure grants shareholders of the two companies the same proportional economic interests and ownership rights in the consolidated Rio Tinto, in such a way as to be equivalent to all shareholders of the two companies actually being shareholders in a single, unified entity. This structure was implemented to avoid adverse tax consequences and regulatory burdens. To eliminate currency exchange issues, the company's accounts are kept, and dividends paid, in United States dollars.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto is one of the largest companies listed on either exchange. As such, it is included in the widely quoted indices for each market: the FTSE 100 Index of the London Stock Exchange, and the S&P/ASX 200 index of the Australian Securities Exchange. LSE-listed shares in Rio Tinto plc can also be traded indirectly on the New York Stock Exchange via an American Depositary Receipt. As of 4 March 2009, Rio Tinto was the fourth-largest publicly listed mining company in the world, with a market capitalisation around $134 billion. As of mid-February 2009, shareholders were geographically distributed 42% in the United Kingdom, 18% in North America, 16% in Australia, 14% in Asia and 10% in continental Europe.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 8 November 2007, rival mining company BHP Billiton announced it was seeking to purchase Rio Tinto Group in an all-share deal. This offer was rejected by the board of Rio Tinto as "significantly undervalu[ing]" the company. Another attempt by BHP Billiton for a hostile takeover, valuing Rio Tinto at $147 billion, was rejected on the same grounds. Meanwhile, the Chinese government-owned resources group Chinalco and the US aluminium producer Alcoa purchased 12% of Rio Tinto's London-listed shares in a move that would block or severely complicate BHP Billiton's plans to buy the company. BHP Billiton's bid was withdrawn on 25 November 2008, with the BHP citing market instability from the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 1 February 2009, Rio Tinto management announced that they were in talks to receive a substantial equity infusion from Chinalco, a major Chinese state-controlled mining enterprise, in exchange for ownership interest in certain assets and bonds. Chinalco was already a major shareholder, having bought up 9% of the company in a surprise move in early 2008; its ownership stake had risen to 9.8% by 2014, making it Rio Tinto's biggest investor. The proposed investment structure reportedly involves $12.3 billion for the purchase of ownership interests of Rio Tinto assets in its iron ore, copper and aluminium operations, plus $7.2 billion for convertible bonds. The transaction would bring Chinalco's ownership of the company to roughly 18.5%. The deal is still pending approval from regulators in the United States and China, and has not yet been approved by shareholders, although regulatory approval has been received from Germany and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission. The largest barrier to completing the investment may come from Rio Tinto's shareholders; support for the deal by shareholders was never overwhelming and has reportedly declined in 2009, as other financing options (such as a more traditional bond issuance) are beginning to appear more realistic as a viable alternative funding source. A shareholder vote on the proposed deal was expected in the third quarter of 2009.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto is believed to have pursued this combined asset and convertible bond sale to raise cash to satisfy its debt obligations, which required payments of $9.0 billion in October 2009 and $10.5 billion by the end of 2010. The company has also noted China's increasing appetite for commodities, and the potential for increased opportunities to exploit these market trends, as a key factor in recommending the transaction to its shareholders.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In March 2010, it was announced that Chinalco would invest $1.3 billion for a 44.65% stake in Rio Tinto's iron ore project in Simandou, Guinea. Rio Tinto retained 50.35% ownership at Simandou.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In November 2011, Rio joined with Chinalco to explore for copper resources in China's complex landscape, by setting up a new company, CRTX, 51% owned by Chinalco and 49% by Rio Tinto.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Under the company's dual-listed company structure, management powers of the Rio Tinto are consolidated in a single senior management group led by a board of directors and executive committee. The board of directors has both executive and non-executive members, while the executive committee is composed of the heads of major operational groups.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto engages professional lobbyists to represent its interests in various jurisdictions. In South Australia, the company in represented by DPG Advisory Solutions.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto's main business is the production of raw materials including copper, iron ore, bauxite, diamonds, uranium and industrial minerals including titanium dioxide, salt, gypsum and borates. Rio Tinto also performs processing on some of these materials, with plants dedicated to processing bauxite into alumina and aluminium, and smelting iron ore into iron. The company also produces other metals and minerals as by-products from the processing of its main resources, including gold, silver, molybdenum, sulphuric acid, nickel, potash, lead and zinc. Rio Tinto controls gross assets of $81 billion in value across the globe, with main concentrations in Australia (35%), Canada (34%), Europe (13%) and the United States (11%), and smaller holdings in South America (3%), Africa (3%) and Indonesia (1%).


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto Iron Ore (RTIO) comprises an integrated iron ore operations in the Pilbara, Western Australia. The Pilbara iron ore operations include 16 iron ore mines, four independent port terminals, a 1,700-kilometre rail network and related infrastructure.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Copper was one of Rio Tinto's main products from its earliest days operating at the Rio Tinto complex of mines in Spain. Since that time, the company has divested itself from its original Spanish mines, and grown its copper-mining capacity through acquisitions of major copper resources around the world. The copper group's main active mining interests are Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia, Kennecott Utah Copper in the United States, and Minera Escondida in Chile. Most of these mines are joint ventures with other major mining companies, with Rio Tinto's ownership ranging from 30% to 80%; only Kennecott is wholly owned. Operations typically include mining of ore through to production of 99.99% purified copper, including extraction of economically valuable by-products. Together, Rio Tinto's share of copper production at its mines totalled nearly 700,000 tonnes, making the company the fourth-largest copper producer in the world.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto Copper continues to seek new opportunities for expansion, with major exploration activities at the Resolution Copper project in the United States, Winu in Australia, and Oyu Tolgoi underground mine in Mongolia. In addition, the company is seeking to become a major producer of nickel, with exploration projects currently underway in the United States and Indonesia.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Although not the primary focus of Rio Tinto Copper's operations, several economically valuable by-products are produced during the refining of copper ore into purified copper. Gold, silver, molybdenum and sulphuric acid are all removed from copper ore during processing. Due to the scale of Rio Tinto's copper mining and processing facilities, the company is also a leading producer of these materials, which drive substantial revenues to the company.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Sales of copper generated 8% of the company's 2008 revenues, and copper and by-product operations accounted for 16% of underlying earnings.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto exclusively provided the metal to produce the 4,700 gold, silver and bronze medals at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This was the second time Rio Tinto had done so for Olympic medals, having previously provided the metals for the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics. Together, Rio Tinto's share of copper production at its mines totalled nearly 700,000 tonnes, making the company the fourth-largest copper producer in the world.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto also owns the naming rights to Rio Tinto Stadium located in nearby Sandy, Utah, and the home of the Major League Soccer team, Real Salt Lake.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto consolidated its aluminium-related businesses into its aluminium product group (originally named "Rio Tinto Alcan"), formed in late 2007, when Rio Tinto purchased the Canadian company Alcan for $38.1 billion. Combined with Rio Tinto's existing aluminium-related assets, the new aluminium division vaulted to the world number-one producer of bauxite, alumina and aluminium. Aluminium division kept key leadership from Alcan, and the company's headquarters remain in Montreal.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto divides its Aluminium operations into three main areas—bauxite, alumina and primary metal. The Bauxite and Alumina unit mines raw bauxite from locations in Australia, Brazil and Africa. The unit then refines the bauxite into alumina at refineries located in Australia, Brazil, Canada and France. The Primary Metal business unit's operations consist of smelting aluminium from alumina, with smelters located in 11 countries around the world. The Primary Metal group also operates several power plants to support the energy-intensive smelting process.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The aluminium division has interests in seven bauxite mines and deposits, six alumina refineries and six speciality alumina plants, 26 aluminium smelters, 13 power plants and 120 facilities for the manufacture of speciality products. The acquisition of Alcan operations in 2007 substantially increased Rio Tinto's asset base, revenues and profits: in 2008, 41% of company revenues and 10% of underlying earnings were attributable to the aluminium division.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto Energy is a business group of Rio Tinto dedicated to the mining and sale of uranium. Rio Tinto's uranium operations are located at two mines: the Ranger Uranium Mine of Energy Resources of Australia and the Rössing Uranium Mine in Namibia. The company is the third-largest producer of uranium in the world. According to Rio Tinto's website, the company institutes strict controls and contractual limitations on uranium exports, limiting uses to peaceful, nonexplosive uses only. Such controls are intended to limit use of the company's uranium production to use as fuel for nuclear power plants only, and not for use in the production of nuclear weapons. Rio Tinto Energy was responsible for 12% of revenues and 18% of underlying earnings in 2008.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto Diamonds operates three diamond mines: the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia (100% ownership), the Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories of Canada (60% ownership), and the Murowa Diamond Mine located in Zimbabwe (78% ownership). Together, these three mines produce 20% of the world's annual production of rough diamonds, making Rio Tinto the world's third-largest producer of mined diamonds.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The diamond business unit's most advanced exploration project is the Falcon Project in Saskatchewan, Canada, where Rio Tinto owns 60% of the project in a joint venture with Star Diamond Corp. Rio Tinto Diamonds generated 1% of revenues and earnings for Rio Tinto in 2008.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto Minerals is a diverse business group with mining and processing interest in borates, salt and gypsum. Rio Tinto Borax, with operations in California, supplies nearly one-third of the world's annual demand for refined borates. The Minerals group is also majority owner of Dampier Salt, which produces over 9 million tonnes of salt and 1.5 million tonnes of gypsum annually from its three facilities in north-west Australia. Rio Tinto Minerals accounted for 6% of company revenues, and contributed 3% to earnings in 2008.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 31 January 2010, the management of U.S. Borax locked out its hourly workforce, replacing the workers with nonunion workers and managers from other Rio Tinto operations. The 560 International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 30 members immediately began a fireside vigil that garnered national and international labour attention. ILWU filed several unfair labour practices against the company, including an illegal lock-out claim.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Titanium dioxide is mined at three locations in Canada, South Africa and Madagascar, and refined at QIT-Fer et Titane's Canadian facilities.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: A media report in October 2013 revealed that the corporation plans to establish a fully automated railroad system for the transportation of iron ore across the Australian outback by 2015, thereby replacing the corporation's train drivers. The United Kingdom-based transport historian Christian Wolmar stated at the same time that the train drivers are most likely the highest-paid members of the occupation in the world at that time. As part of an overall strategy to increase profit margins, the corporation is spending US$518 million on the project.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto is a global leader in the development of autonomous technologies for use in the mining sector. As of 2018, Rio Tinto's fleet of 80 autonomous Komatsu vehicles had moved over 1 billion tonnes of ore and waste material in Western Australia's Pilbara region.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Furthermore, in late 2017 Rio Tinto announced funding for their Koodaideri Mine in Western Australia, which Rio Tinto had dubbed their "intelligent mine."


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto's revenues and earnings have grown substantially in 2003–2010, with one of the largest increases attributable to the company's acquisition of Alcan in 2007. Although operating margin is significantly impacted by the market prices of the various commodities it produces, Rio Tinto has remained profitable over its recent history and consistently generated positive cash flows from operations.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The United Steelworkers of America has claimed that mine workers at Kennecott Copper Mine worked for eight months without stopping during a labor dispute about how these workers were treated. This dispute ended with a settlement including a six-year labor agreement, only for Rio Tinto to lay off over 120 workers just two days later. Tom Johnson, a spokesperson from United Steelworkers of America said, “Rio Tinto does not make an effort to use technologies that are more sustainable. They do not discuss with local communities their environmental impact. They operate in secret with governments and with groups that are friendly to them.”


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The metals for the medals for the 2012 London Olympic games were supplied from the Bingham canyon Mine located in Utah and the Oyu Tolgoi Mine in Mongolia, which caused uproar among many activist groups, especially in Utah due to their concern about the impact to the local cities. One person particularly bothered by this decision was the Commissioner of the London Games, Meredith Alexander, who quit her position and led a coalition of human rights and environmental groups during the “Greenwashed Gold Campaign”.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In 2000, Rio Tinto faced a federal lawsuit on behalf of Papua New Guinea due to the harm the company’s mining operations at the Panguna Mine had to the environment for decades. Local communities filed this suit claiming that the local Kawerong-Jaba river delta was used as a dumping site for “more than one billion tons of mine waste”. According to the lawsuit, the citizens are claiming that the mining giant used harmful chemicals and bulldozers to destroy the environment and specifically the rainforest and used their waterways as a dumping site for the chemicals and runoff caused by their mining operations. These citizens believe that Rio Tinto was targeting them due to their race and culture and was even paying what they referred to as “slave wages” to the company’s black workers.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Durings the first years of the company's operation in Spain, the company practiced open-air pyrite calcination in blast furnaces. The toxic fumes released by this process had a negative impact on the farmland and the local agriculturists, the company's workers and some local anarchists came together to protest against this practice. On February 4, 1888, several thousand rank and file—agriculturalists, anarchists, and mineworkers—marched to the Rio Tinto town hall ("ayuntamiento") to deliver their petitions to the mayor. While the mayor spoke with the crowd's representatives, the Huelva military governor and civil guards watched over the protest. The military governor's attempts to disperse the crowd only incensed it further. The civil guards, under perceived threat of mob violence, fired on the crowd, killing at least 13 and injuring 35.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto's status as a mainly British-owned company, located in Spain and producing pyrites—an important material for military applications—created a complicated set of circumstances for the company's operation in the 1930s and 1940s. During the Spanish Civil War, the region in which Rio Tinto's mines were located came under the control of General Franco's Nationalists in 1936. However, Franco increasingly intervened in the company's operations, at times requisitioning pyrite supplies for use by Spain and its Axis allies Germany and Italy, forcing price controls on the company's production, restricting exports, and threatening nationalisation of the mines. Although company management (and indirectly, the British government) managed to counteract some of these efforts by Franco, much of the mine's pyrite production was channelled to Axis powers before and during World War II. Nonetheless, Franco's meddling caused the mine's production and profitability to fall precipitously during and after the war, leading the company to ultimately exit from its Spanish operations in 1954.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In 2015, Rio Tinto was criticised by the Guinean government for the many mining delays at the local Simandou mine. Cece Noramou, government official said the government was "running out of patience". President Alpha Conde himself said that "there have been people at Simandou for 15 years, 20 years, and they've never produced a ton of iron". Even before 2015, the Guinean government had expressed their displeasure and dissatisfaction with Rio Tinto; in 2008, the Guinean government annulled half of the company's Simandou rights and gave them to BSGR, a French–Israeli-owned mining company.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In late 2016, Rio Tinto agreed to sell its stake in the Simandou iron ore mine to Chinalco and exit the deal. The deal was negotiated after the company's case against Vale and BSGR was dismissed at US District Court.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In 2022, Rio Tinto released a report that described a work culture of bullying, harassment and racism at the global mining giant, including twenty one complaints by women of actual or attempted rape or sexual assault in the past five years. Elizabeth Broderick, who surveyed more than 10,000 of Rio Tinto’s 45,000 employees, released an independent report, which found that systemic bullying, sexism and racism were common. According to the report, these harmful behaviours were often tolerated or normalised. "Harmful behaviour by serial perpetrators is often an open secret," Elizabeth Broderick said. On the whole, about 28% of women and 7% of men had experienced sexual harassment at Rio. But this rate rose to 41% for female workers at Fifo sites. Most women who responded had experienced “everyday sexism”. Near half of the workforce reported being bullied, and described the resultant loss of confidence, declining performance, anxiety and depression. According to Broderick, LGBTIQ+ employees had experienced "elevated rates of bullying, sexual harassment and racism”. A "culture of silence" had kept workers from reporting unacceptable behaviour. People who worked in a country they weren't born in had experienced high rates of racism, while almost 40% of men who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander had endured racism in Australia.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The Australian Human Rights Commission found that, from 2015 and 2020, approximately three in four women had experienced at least some form of sexual harassment while in the mining industry, in part due to a gender imbalance.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: It has been widely reported that more can be done to improve the mental health of fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) workers in the mining industry. In the Pilbara region of Western Australia, it is reported that the state is experiencing high levels of suicide and people dealing with mental health issues. As a major contributor to FIFO and residential employment in the region, they have recognised mental health as an area that requires a strategy of the prevention and early intervention. To assist staff, the company provides numerous resources to assist in maintaining a healthful mind. In 2017, Healthier Workplace WA provided the Iron Ore product group Gold recognition for their work in this field.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In May 2020, to expand the Brockman 4 mine, Rio Tinto demolished an Australian Aboriginal sacred site in Juukan Gorge, Western Australia, which had evidence of 46,000 years of continual human occupation, and was considered the only inland prehistoric site in Australia to show signs of continual human occupation through the last Ice Age. The company later revealed it had three alternative options to preserve the site, but chose to destroy it without informing the traditional owners of the alternatives. Permission to destroy the site had been given in 2013 under the state "Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972", which, however, has been under review since 2018. The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura peoples, who are the local land custodians, had fought the decision. The destruction brought widespread criticism.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 31 May, Rio Tinto apologised for the distress caused. According to 35 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and human rights organisations, Rio Tinto's qualified apology is "far from an adequate response to an incident of this magnitude".


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 9 June, Reconciliation Australia revoked its endorsement of Rio Tinto as partner in reconciliation action plans, defining the behaviour of the corporation a "breathtaking breach of a respectful relationship"" which was "devastating for the Traditional Owners and robbed the world of a uniquely valuable cultural heritage site". Also on 9 July, The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) and the World Benchmarking Alliance (WBA) condemned "the destruction of invaluable cultural heritage at Juukan Gorge", adding that this "incident is a severe adverse impact on cultural rights that has engendered extreme concern and outrage among the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura traditional owners of the site as well as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and their allies". The CHRB and WBA also called "on Rio Tinto to take appropriate action to carry out an independent investigation of the incident, involving affected stakeholders, to provide effective remedy and to prevent similar impacts in the future, in Australia and elsewhere". The statement was attached to the company's listing in the 2019 Benchmark Report.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 4 August, in its submission to a parliamentary inquiry looking at the destruction of the sacred rock caves, the company said it "missed opportunities" to alter its mine plan. A dig in 2014 and a final report on the archaeological excavations in 2018 underlined the cultural and historical significance of the caves. Rio Tinto said it did not "clearly communicate" its plan for destroying the sacred site to the native land owners. Although no executives were fired, on 24 August the company announced that three senior executives would lose a combined £3.8 million ($5 million) from their expected bonus payments.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: On 11 September 2020, it was announced that, as a result of the destruction at Juukan Gorge, CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques and two other Rio Tinto executives would step down. The National Native Title Council (NNTC) welcomed the move, but said that there should be an independent review into the company's procedures and culture to ensure that such an incident could never happen again. Rio Tinto admitted their error, issued an apology via media and on their website, and also committed to building relationships with the traditional owners as well as getting Indigenous people into leadership roles in the company. One analysis of what went wrong in Rio Tinto to allow the destruction to occur suggested that processes failed at several levels, but mainly due to its "segmented organisational structure", a poor reporting structure, and Indigenous relations not being properly represented at a high enough level.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: During 2021, a series of mass protests broke out in Serbia against the construction of a lithium mine in Western Serbia by the Rio Tinto corporation. Protesters blocked major roads and bridges in Belgrade and other major cities. In the town of Šabac, there was an incident when a member of the ruling party attacked the protesters with an excavator, and then the protesters were beaten by an armed group of hooligans. The Jadar lithium project is driven by a "significant" supply gap for lithium, as demand for the metal used in electric vehicles (EV) and green technologies continues to soar, particularly in North America and Europe. The project would make Serbia the biggest producer of lithium globally, and provide raw materials to more than 1 million electric cars.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: As of 11 December 2021, protests are still ongoing with demands to stop and permanently prohibit any mining-related activity in Jadar region. An activist from Ekološki Ustanak (Environmental Uprising), one of the prominent organizers of the protests, told to the local media that "protests will be continued until the basic demand is met, which is the expulsion of Rio Tinto from Serbia and the adoption of a law banning lithium exploitation in Serbia".


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In December 2021, Rio Tinto said it was considering the concerns of residents in western Serbia after Loznica's municipal assembly scrapped a plan to allocate land for a lithium project.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto has been widely criticised by environmental groups and at least one national government for the environmental impacts of its mining activities. The most high-level environmental criticism to date has come from the government of Norway, which divested itself from Rio Tinto shares and banned further investment due to environmental concerns. Claims of severe environmental damages related to Rio Tinto's engagement in the Grasberg mine in Indonesia led the Government Pension Fund of Norway to exclude Rio Tinto from its investment portfolio. The fund, which is said to be the world's second-largest pension fund, sold shares in the company valued at (US$855 million) to avoid contributing to environmental damages caused by the company.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto disputes the claims of environmental damage at the Grasberg mine, and states that the company has long maintained an excellent record on environmental issues.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: After the former Panguna copper and gold mine in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which was abandoned by Rio Tinto in 1989, caused flooding, pollution of water wells and river poisoning, residents of the region filed a request for investigation with the Australian government in September 2020.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: As part of a rider of the National Defense Authorization Act, the United States agreed in 2014 to hand over Oak Flat in Arizona to a joint venture of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton to build the Resolution Copper mine. The proposal has faced significant backlash from environmentalists and the Apache tribe, arguing that the project, if it goes forward, would collapse a region wide around Oak Flat into a sinkhole deep, destroying sacred and ecologically sensitive land. The project would also deplete and contaminate Arizona's already limited groundwater supply. U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva has introduced on four occasions a proposal for the land transfer to be halted, most recently in March 2021 after the Joe Biden administration paused the land transfer.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: According to The Guardian, Rio Tinto is one of the top 100 industrial greenhouse gas producers in the world, accounting for 0.75 percent of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions between 1988 and 2015. In 2016, Rio Tinto estimated to have produced 32 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in its own climate change report.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In March 2018, Rio Tinto was urged by institutional investors to set new rules requiring the company to adhere to the goals of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 Celsius, including detailed plans to reduce scope 1 to 3 emissions. Rio Tinto's top executives rejected the resolution, arguing that the company had made a lot of progress in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and that appropriate plans were in place to deal with climate change.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio also argued that scope 3 emissions, those of its customers, were beyond the firm's control. Nevertheless, the corporation in September 2019 signed a partnership with Chinese steelmaker China Baowu Steel Group to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from steel making, in an attempt to tackle the scope 3 issue.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In 2021, Rio unveiled plans to spend $7.5 billion in direct capital expenditure on efforts to decarbonise, announcing new targets of cutting Scope 1 and 2 emissions (from their 2018 baseline) by 15% before 2025 and by 50% by 2030 and scope 3 emissions by 30% before 2030. This is to be achieved through 5GW of wind and solar projects for the Boyne Island and Tomago smelters and 1GW for Pilbara mining, full electrification of the Pilbara system including all trucks, mobile equipment and rail operations, replacing gas, and investments into green steel and aluminium, joining fellow iron ore giants Fortescue Metals and BHP in the effort to transition to renewable powered operations.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto reported Total CO2e emissions (Direct + Indirect) for the twelve months ending 31 December 2020 at 31,500 Kt (+100/+0.3% y-o-y).


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Academic observers have also expressed concern regarding Rio Tinto's operations in Papua New Guinea, which they allege were one catalyst of the Bougainville separatist crisis. The British antipoverty charity War on Want has also criticised Rio Tinto for its complicity in the serious human rights violations which have occurred near the mines it operates in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto was also accused of planning and funding the murder of RTI activist Shehla Masood in Bhopal, India. Apparently, she was protesting illegal diamond mining done by Rio Tinto in connivance with government officers. The case was, however, solved and no connection to Rio Tinto was established, though popular opinion still perceives them as the possible culprit.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto is not, however, universally condemned for its ethical behaviour. The company has won an award for ethical behaviour, the Worldaware Award for Sustainable Development in 1993. The award, although given by an independent committee, is sponsored by another multinational corporation (in this case, the sponsor was Tate and Lyle). Rio Tinto has, in turn, sponsored its own WorldAware award, the Rio Tinto Award for Long-term Commitment. The British charity Worldaware ceased to exist in March 2005. These awards, awarded to extractive industries which make some environmental commitments to deflect the more general criticisms of their operations, are referred to by corporate watchdog groups as "greenwashing".


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In 2009, Chinese authorities began investigating allegations against Rio Tinto. These included bribing executives from 16 of China's biggest steel mill companies to get hold of secret information. On 29 March 2010 four Rio Tinto employees including Australian citizen Stern Hu were found guilty of these charges and of accepting millions of dollars in bribes. They were ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, and sentenced to 7 to 14 years in jail.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto has been embroiled in a number of corruption allegations over its acquisition of stakes in the Simandou iron ore mine in Guinea. The allegations center around the payment of a $10.5 million bribe to , a French banking consultant who was a friend and adviser of President Alpha Condé.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto launched an internal probe into the matter run by an independent law firm, and on 9 November 2016 announced it would report the findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Serious Fraud Office (United Kingdom), the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, and the U.S. Justice Department. Rio Tinto also declared they would cooperate with all related investigations and fired two top executives in connection with the matter, one of whom was head of energy and minerals, Alan Davies, who led the Simandou operation in 2011. He was suspended after the investigators discovered suspicious emails discussing contractual payments from that year. Davies claimed that there were no grounds for the termination of his employment.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The President of Guinea Alpha Condé denied having any knowledge of the illegal transactions, but recordings obtained by France24 prove otherwise.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Sam Walsh, the retiring CEO of the company, had 80% of his pay withheld while the investigation continue.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Also in early November 2016, Former mining minister of Guinea, Mahmoud Thiam, revealed that the head of Rio Tinto's operation in Guinea offered him a bribe in 2010 to win back control of the Simandou mine, and that his offer was supported by senior members of the company.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: Rio Tinto is currently facing at least 4 class action suits in the US demanding damages over the corruption allegations in Guinea. The suit states that Rio Tinto made "materially false and misleading statements" that "deceived" investors.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: In July 2017 the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) announced the launch of a fraud and corruption investigation into the company's business practices in Guinea. Following the news of the investigation Rio Tinto shares in the US dropped by 1.4%. The Australian Federal Police is also investigating the allegations. Rio Tinto has announced it would cooperate fully. After the SFO investigation announcement, and amid a search for a new CEO, Rio Director John Varley was forced to resign from his role in the company.


title: Rio Tinto (corporation)

text: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating a $3 billion impairment charge against Rio Tinto regarding a coal deal they made in Mozambique. Rio acquired Riversdale Mining Ltd., an Australian coal mining company with significant interests in Mozambique, in 2011 for $2.9 billion in an all-cash deal. Two years later they wrote down the value of the assets by $3 billion. Following the impairment charge, which included an additional $11 billion in asset write-downs, chief executive officer of Rio Tinto, Tom Albanese stepped down from his post and left the company. Rio later sold the assets for $50 million.


title: Performing arts

text: The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a range of disciplines which are performed in front of a live audience, including theatre, music, and dance.


title: Performing arts

text: Theatre, music, dance, object manipulation, and other kinds of performances are present in all human cultures. The history of music and dance date to pre-historic times whereas circus skills date to at least Ancient Egypt. Many performing arts are performed professionally. Performance can be in purpose-built buildings, such as theatres and opera houses, on open air stages at festivals, on stages in tents such as circuses or on the street.


title: Performing arts

text: Live performances before an audience are a form of entertainment. The development of audio and video recording has allowed for private consumption of the performing arts. The performing arts often aims to express one's emotions and feelings.


title: Performing arts

text: Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers. Examples of these include actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, circus artists, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting, choreography and stagecraft. Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, stage lighting, and sound.


title: Performing arts

text: Performing arts may include dance, music, opera, theatre and musical theatre, magic, illusion, mime, spoken word, puppetry, circus arts, professional wrestling and performance art.


title: Performing arts

text: There is also a specialized form of fine art, in which the artists "perform" their work live to an audience. This is called performance art. Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the modern dance era.


title: Performing arts

text: Theatre is the branch of performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience, using a combination of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound, and spectacle. Any one or more of these elements is considered performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style of plays, theater takes such forms as plays, musicals, opera, ballet, illusion, mime, classical Indian dance, kabuki, mummers' plays, improvisational theatre, comedy, pantomime, and non-conventional or contemporary forms like postmodern theatre, postdramatic theatre, or performance art.


title: Performing arts

text: In the context of performing arts, dance generally refers to human movement, typically rhythmic and to music, used as a form of audience entertainment in a performance setting. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic, and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet.


title: Performing arts

text: There is one another modern form of dance that emerged in 19th- 20th century with the name of free dance style. This form of dance was structured to create a harmonious personality which included features such as physical and spiritual freedom. Isadora Duncan was the first female dancer who argued about "woman of future" and developed novel vector of choreography using Nietzsche's idea of "supreme mind in free mind".


title: Performing arts

text: Dance is a powerful impulse, but the art of dance is that impulse channeled by skillful performers into something that becomes intensely expressive and that may delight spectators who feel no wish to dance themselves. These two concepts of the art of dance—dance as a powerful impulse and dance as a skillfully choreographed art practiced largely by a professional few—are the two most important connecting ideas running through any consideration of the subject. In dance, the connection between the two concepts is stronger than in some other arts, and neither can exist without the other.


title: Performing arts

text: Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who practices this art is called a choreographer.


title: Performing arts

text: Music is an art form which combines pitch, rhythm, and dynamic to create sound. It can be performed using a variety of instruments and styles and is divided into genres such as folk, jazz, hip hop, pop, and rock, etc. As an art form, music can occur in live or recorded formats, and can be planned or improvised.


title: Performing arts

text: As music is a protean art, it easily coordinates with words for songs as physical movements do in dance. Moreover, it has a capability of shaping human behaviors as it impacts our emotions.


title: Performing arts

text: Starting in the 6th century BC, the Classical period of performing art began in Greece, ushered in by the tragic poets such as Sophocles. These poets wrote plays which, in some cases, incorporated dance (see Euripides). The Hellenistic period began the widespread use of comedy.


title: Performing arts

text: However, by the 6th century AD, Western performing arts had been largely ended as the Dark Ages began. Between the 9th century and 14th century, performing art in the West was limited to religious historical enactments and morality plays, organized by the Church in celebration of holy days and other important events.


title: Performing arts

text: In the 15th century performing arts, along with the arts in general, saw a revival as the Renaissance began in Italy and spread throughout Europe plays, some of which incorporated dance, which were performed and Domenico da Piacenza credited with the first use of the term "ballo" (in "De Arte Saltandi et Choreas Ducendi") instead of "danza" (dance) for his "baletti" or "balli". The term eventually became "Ballet". The first Ballet "per se" is thought to be Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx's Ballet Comique de la Reine (1581).


title: Performing arts

text: By the mid-16th century Commedia Dell'arte became popular in Europe, introducing the use of improvisation. This period also introduced the Elizabethan masque, featuring music, dance and elaborate costumes as well as professional theatrical companies in England. William Shakespeare's plays in the late 16th century developed from this new class of professional performance.


title: Performing arts

text: In 1597, the first opera, Dafne was performed and throughout the 17th century, opera would rapidly become the entertainment of choice for the aristocracy in most of Europe, and eventually for large numbers of people living in cities and towns throughout Europe.


title: Performing arts

text: The introduction of the proscenium arch in Italy during the 17th century established the traditional theatre form that persists to this day. Meanwhile, in England, the Puritans forbade acting, bringing a halt to performing arts that lasted until 1660. After that, women began to appear in both French and English plays. The French introduced a formal dance instruction in the late 17th century.


title: Performing arts

text: During the 18th century, the introduction of the popular opera buffa brought opera to the masses as an accessible form of performance. Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" and "Don Giovanni" are landmarks of the late 18th century opera.


title: Performing arts

text: At the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven and the Romantic movement ushered in a new era that led first to the spectacles of grand opera and then to the musical dramas of Giuseppe Verdi and the "Gesamtkunstwerk" (total work of art) of the operas of Richard Wagner leading directly to the music of the 20th century.


title: Performing arts

text: The 19th century was a period of growth for the performing arts for all social classes, technical advances such as the introduction of gaslight to theatres, burlesque, minstrel dancing, and variety theatre. In ballet, women make great progress in the previously male-dominated art.


title: Performing arts

text: Modern dance began in the late 19th century and early 20th century in response to the restrictions of traditional ballet.


title: Performing arts

text: The arrival of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1909–1929) revolutionized ballet and the performing arts generally throughout the Western world, most importantly through Diaghilev's emphasis on collaboration, which brought choreographers, dancers, set designers/artists, composers and musicians together to revitalize and revolutionize ballet. It is extremely complex.


title: Performing arts

text: Konstantin Stanislavski's "System" revolutionized acting in the early 20th century, and continues to have a major influence on actors of stage and screen to the current day. Both impressionism and modern realism were introduced to the stage during this period.


title: Performing arts

text: With the invention of the motion picture in the late 19th century by Thomas Edison and the growth of the motion picture industry in Hollywood in the early 20th century, film became a dominant performance medium throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.


title: Performing arts

text: Rhythm and blues, a cultural phenomenon of black America, rose to prominence in the early 20th century, influencing a range of later popular music styles internationally.


title: Performing arts

text: In the 1930s Jean Rosenthal introduced what would become modern stage lighting, changing the nature of the stage as the Broadway musical became a phenomenon in the United States.


title: Performing arts

text: Post-World War II performing arts were highlighted by the resurgence of both ballet and opera in the Western world.


title: Performing arts

text: The earliest recorded theatrical event dates back to 2000 BC with the passion plays of Ancient Egypt. The story of the god Osiris was performed annually at festivals throughout the civilization, marking the known beginning of a long relationship between theatre and religion.


title: Performing arts

text: The most popular forms of theater in the medieval Islamic world were puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow plays and marionette productions) and live passion plays known as "ta'ziya", where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history. In particular, Shia Islamic plays revolved around the "shaheed" (martyrdom) of Ali's sons Hasan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Live secular plays were known as "akhraja", recorded in medieval "adab" literature, though they were less common than puppetry and "ta'ziya" theater.


title: Performing arts

text: In Iran there are other forms of theatrical events such as "Naghali" or "Naqqāli" (story telling), "ٰRu-Howzi", "Siah-Bazi", "Parde-Khani", and "Mareke giri". Prior to the twentieth century, storytelling was the most recognized form of entertainment, although today, some forms still remain. One form, "Naghali," was traditionally performed in coffeehouses where the storytellers, or "Naghals (Naqqāls)," only recited sections of a story at a time, thus retaining regular cliental. These stories were based on events of historical or religious importance and many referenced poetries from the Shahnameh. Oftentimes these stories were altered to bond with the atmosphere or mood of the audience.


title: Performing arts

text: Folk theatre and dramatics can be traced to the religious ritualism of the Vedic peoples in the 2nd millennium BC. This folk theatre of the misty past was mixed with dance, food, ritualism, plus a depiction of events from daily life. The last element made it the origin of the classical theatre of later times. Many historians, notably D. D. Kosambi, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Adya Rangacharaya, etc. have referred to the prevalence of ritualism amongst Indo-Aryan tribes in which some members of the tribe acted as if they were wild animals, and some others were the hunters. Those who acted as mammals like goats, buffaloes, reindeer, monkeys, etc. were chased by those playing the role of hunters.


title: Performing arts

text: Bharata Muni (fl. 5th–2nd century BC) was an ancient Indian writer best known for writing the "Natya Shastra of Bharata", a theoretical treatise on Indian performing arts, including theatre, dance, acting, and music, which has been compared to Aristotle's "Poetics". Bharata is often known as the father of Indian theatrical arts. His "Natya Shastra" seems to be the first attempt to develop the technique or rather art, of drama in a systematic manner. The Natya Shastra tells us not only what is to be portrayed in a drama, but how the portrayal is to be done. Drama, as Bharata Muni says, is the imitation of men and their doings ("loka-vritti"). As men and their doings have to be respected on the stage, so drama in Sanskrit is also known by the term "roopaka", which means portrayal.


title: Performing arts

text: The "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata" can be considered the first recognized plays that originated in India. These epics provided the inspiration to the earliest Indian dramatists and they do it even today. Indian dramatists such as Bhāsa in the 2nd century BC wrote plays that were heavily inspired by the "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata".


title: Performing arts

text: Kālidāsa in the 1st century BC, is arguably considered to be ancient India's greatest dramatist. Three famous romantic plays written by Kālidāsa are the "Mālavikāgnimitram" ("Mālavikā and Agnimitra"), "Vikramōrvaśīyam" ("Pertaining to Vikrama and Urvashi"), and "Abhijñānaśākuntala" ("The Recognition of Shakuntala"). The last was inspired by a story in the "Mahabharata" and is the most famous. It was the first to be translated into English and German. In comparison to Bhāsa, who drew heavily from the epics, Kālidāsa can be considered an original playwright.


title: Performing arts

text: The next great Indian dramatist was Bhavabhuti (c. 7th century). He is said to have written the following three plays: "Malati-Madhava", "Mahaviracharita" and "Uttar Ramacharita". Among these three, the last two cover between them, the entire epic of "Ramayana". The powerful Indian emperor Harsha (606–648) is credited with having written three plays: the comedy "Ratnavali", "Priyadarsika", and the Buddhist drama "Nagananda". Many other dramatists followed during the Middle Ages.


title: Performing arts

text: There were many performing art forms in the southern part of India, Kerala is such a state with different such art forms like Koodiyattam, Nangyarkoothu, Kathakali, Chakyar koothu, Thirayattam and there were many prominent artists like Painkulam Raman Chakyar and others.


title: Performing arts

text: There are references to theatrical entertainments in China as early as 1500 BC during the Shang dynasty; they often involved music, clowning and acrobatic displays.


title: Performing arts

text: The Tang dynasty is sometimes known as "The Age of 1000 Entertainments". During this era, Emperor Xuanzong formed an acting school known as the Children of the Pear Garden to produce a form of drama that was primarily musical.


title: Performing arts

text: During the Han Dynasty, shadow puppetry first emerged as a recognized form of theatre in China. There were two distinct forms of shadow puppetry, Cantonese southern and Pekingese northern. The two styles were differentiated by the method of making the puppets and the positioning of the rods on the puppets, as opposed to the type of play performed by the puppets. Both styles generally performed plays depicting great adventure and fantasy, rarely was this very stylized form of theatre used for political propaganda. Cantonese shadow puppets were the larger of the two. They were built using thick leather that created more substantial shadows. Symbolic color was also very prevalent; a black face represented honesty, a red one bravery. The rods used to control Cantonese puppets were attached perpendicular to the puppets' heads. Thus, they were not seen by the audience when the shadow was created. Pekingese puppets were more delicate and smaller. They were created out of thin, translucent leather usually taken from the belly of a donkey. They were painted with vibrant paints, thus they cast a very colorful shadow. The thin rods that controlled their movements were attached to a leather collar at the neck of the puppet. The rods ran parallel to the bodies of the puppet then turned at a ninety-degree angle to connect to the neck. While these rods were visible when the shadow was cast, they laid outside the shadow of the puppet; thus, they did not interfere with the appearance of the figure. The rods attached at the necks to facilitate the use of multiple heads with one body. When the heads were not being used, they were stored in a muslin book or fabric lined box. The heads were always removed at night. This was in keeping with the old superstition that if left intact, the puppets would come to life at night. Some puppeteers went so far as to store the heads in one book and the bodies in another, to further reduce the possibility of reanimating puppets. Shadow puppetry is said to have reached its highest point of artistic development in the 11th century before becoming a tool of the government.


title: Performing arts

text: In the Song dynasty, there were many popular plays involving acrobatics and music. These developed in the Yuan dynasty into a more sophisticated form with a four- or five-act structure. Yuan drama spread across China and diversified into numerous regional forms, the best known of which is Beijing Opera, which is still popular today.


title: Performing arts

text: In Thailand, it has been a tradition from the Middle Ages to stage plays based on plots drawn from Indian epics. In particular, the theatrical version of Thailand's national epic "Ramakien", a version of the Indian "Ramayana", remains popular in Thailand even today.


title: Performing arts

text: In Cambodia, inscriptions dating back to the 6th century AD indicates evidence of dancers at a local temple and using puppetry for religious plays. At the ancient capital Angkor Wat, stories from the Indian epics "Ramayana" and "Mahabharata" have been carved on the walls of temples and palaces. Similar reliefs are found at Borobudur in Indonesia.


title: Performing arts

text: In the Philippines, the famous epic poem Ibong Adarna, originally titled ""Korido at Buhay na Pinagdaanan ng Tatlong Prinsipeng Magkakapatid na anak nina Haring Fernando at Reyna Valeriana sa Kahariang Berbania"" (English: "Corrido and Life Lived by the Three Princes, children of King Fernando and Queen Valeriana in the Kingdom of Berbania") from the 16th century was written by José de la Cruz during the Spanish era. Aside from theatrical performances, different films were produced by different film studios/ television productions. The first produced "Ang Ibong Adarna" film was produced by LVN Pictures, the biggest film studio in the history of the Philippines.


title: Performing arts

text: Florante at Laura is an ""awit"" or a poem consisting of 12-syllable quatrains with the full title ""Pinagdaanang Buhay ni Florante at ni Laura sa Kahariang Albanya"" (English: "The History of Florante and Laura in the Kingdom of Albania") was written by Francisco Balagtas in 1838 during his imprisonment dedicated to his sweetheart Maria Asuncuion Rivera (nicknamed "M.A.R.", referenced to as "Selya"). The poem has a special part entitled "Kay Selya" (English: "For Celia") specially dedicated for Rivera.


title: Performing arts

text: The Philippine's national hero, José Rizal who is also a novelist, created the two famous poems in the Philippines, "Noli Me Tángere" (Latin for "Touch me not", with an acute accent added on the final word in accordance with Spanish orthography) (1887) that describes perceived inequities of the Spanish Catholic friars and the ruling government and "El Filibusterismo" (translations: The filibusterism; The Subversive or The Subversion, as in the Locsín English translation, are also possible translations, also known by its alternative English title The Reign of Greed) (1891). The novel's dark theme departs dramatically from the previous novel's hopeful and romantic atmosphere, signifying Ibarra's resort to solving his country's issues through violent means, after his previous attempt in reforming the country's system made no effect and seemed impossible with the corrupt attitude of the Spaniards toward the Filipinos. These novels were written during the colonization of the Philippines by the Spanish Empire.


title: Performing arts

text: All of these literary pieces were under the curriculum of the K-12 Program for Junior High Schools, Ibong Adarna is under the Grade 7 Curriculum; Florante at Laura (Grade 8); "Noli Me Tángere" (Grade 9); and El Filibusterismo (Grade 10).


title: Performing arts

text: During the 14th century, there were small companies of actors in Japan who performed short, sometimes vulgar comedies. A director of one of these companies, Kan'ami (1333–1384), had a son, Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443), who was considered one of the finest child actors in Japan. When Kan'ami's company performed for Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408), the of Japan, he implored Zeami to have a court education for his arts. After Zeami succeeded his father, he continued to perform and adapt his style into what is today Noh. A mixture of pantomime and vocal acrobatics, the Noh style of theatre has become one of Japan's most refined forms of theatrical performance.


title: Performing arts

text: Japan, after a long period of civil wars and political disarray, was unified and at peace primarily due to Tokugawa Ieyasu (1600–1668). However, alarmed at the increasing numbers of Christians within the country due to the proselytizing efforts of Christian missionaries, he cut off contact from Japan to Europe and China and outlawed Christianity. When peace did come, a flourish of cultural influence and growing merchant class demanded its own entertainment. The first form of theatre to flourish was Ningyō jōruri (commonly referred to as Bunraku). The founder of and main contributor to Ningyō jōruri, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725), turned his form of theatre into a true art form. Ningyō jōruri is a highly stylized form of theatre using puppets, today about the size of a human. The men who control the puppets train their entire lives to become master puppeteers, when they can then operate the puppet's head and right arm and choose to show their faces during the performance. The other puppeteers, controlling the less important limbs of the puppet, cover themselves and their faces in a black suit, to imply their invisibility. The dialogue is handled by a single person, who uses varied tones of voice and speaking manners to simulate different characters. Chikamatsu wrote thousands of plays during his lifetime, most of which are still used today.


title: Performing arts

text: Kabuki began shortly after Bunraku, legend has it by an actress named Okuni, who lived around the end of the 16th century. Most of kabuki's material came from Noh and Bunraku, and its erratic dance-type movements are also an effect of Bunraku. However, kabuki is less formal and more distant than Noh, yet very popular among the Japanese public. Actors are trained in many varied things including dancing, singing, pantomime, and even acrobatics. Kabuki was first performed by young girls, then by young boys, and by the end of the 16th century, kabuki companies consisted of all men. The men who portrayed women on stage were specifically trained to elicit the essence of a woman in their subtle movements and gestures.


title: Performing arts

text: Oftentimes, Melanesian dance exhibits a cultural theme of masculinity where leadership and a unique skill set are important for sharing with the community. These dances demonstrate the soldiery of a man; however they can also represent profitability such as encouraging conflict resolutions or healing. The costumes of impersonating dancers incorporate large masks and unhuman-like characteristics that act to imitate mythical figures. The music can also act as a voice for these magical personas.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 184017 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, and deeply pocketed surface in clay. He is known for such sculptures as "The Thinker", "Monument to Balzac", "The Kiss", "The Burghers of Calais", and "The Gates of Hell".


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Many of Rodin's most notable sculptures were criticized, as they clashed with predominant figurative sculpture traditions in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory. He modeled the human body with naturalism, and his sculptures celebrate individual character and physicality. Although Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, he refused to change his style, and his continued output brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: From the unexpected naturalism of Rodin's first major figure – inspired by his 1875 trip to Italy – to the unconventional memorials whose commissions he later sought, his reputation grew, and Rodin became the preeminent French sculptor of his time. By 1900, he was a world-renowned artist. Wealthy private clients sought Rodin's work after his World's Fair exhibit, and he kept company with a variety of high-profile intellectuals and artists. His student, Camille Claudel, became his associate, lover, and creative rival. Rodin's other students included Antoine Bourdelle, Constantin Brâncuși, and Charles Despiau. He married his lifelong companion, Rose Beuret, in the last year of both their lives. His sculptures suffered a decline in popularity after his death in 1917, but within a few decades his legacy solidified. Rodin remains one of the few sculptors widely known outside the visual arts community.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin was born in 1840 into a working-class family in Paris, the second child of Marie Cheffer and Jean-Baptiste Rodin, who was a police department clerk. He was largely self-educated, and began to draw at age 10. Between ages 14 and 17, he attended the "Petite École", a school specializing in art and mathematics where he studied drawing and painting. His drawing teacher Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran believed in first developing the personality of his students so that they observed with their own eyes and drew from their recollections, and Rodin expressed appreciation for his teacher much later in life. It was at Petite École that he met Jules Dalou and Alphonse Legros.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1857, Rodin submitted a clay model of a companion to the École des Beaux-Arts in an attempt to win entrance; he did not succeed, and two further applications were also denied. Entrance requirements were not particularly high at the "Grande École", so the rejections were considerable setbacks. Rodin's inability to gain entrance may have been due to the judges' Neoclassical tastes, while Rodin had been schooled in light, 18th-century sculpture. He left the "Petite École" in 1857 and earned a living as a craftsman and ornamenter for most of the next two decades, producing decorative objects and architectural embellishments.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin's sister Maria, two years his senior, died of peritonitis in a convent in 1862, and Rodin was anguished with guilt because he had introduced her to an unfaithful suitor. He turned away from art and joined the Catholic order of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. Saint Peter Julian Eymard, founder and head of the congregation, recognized Rodin's talent and sensed his lack of suitability for the order, so he encouraged Rodin to continue with his sculpture. Rodin returned to work as a decorator while taking classes with animal sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye. The teacher's attention to detail and his finely rendered musculature of animals in motion significantly influenced Rodin.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1864, Rodin began to live with a young seamstress named Rose Beuret (born in June 1844), with whom he stayed for the rest of his life, with varying commitment. The couple had a son named Auguste-Eugène Beuret (1866–1934). That year, Rodin offered his first sculpture for exhibition and entered the studio of Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, a successful mass producer of "objets d'art". Rodin worked as Carrier-Belleuse' chief assistant until 1870, designing roof decorations and staircase and doorway embellishments. With the arrival of the Franco-Prussian War, Rodin was called to serve in the French National Guard, but his service was brief due to his near-sightedness. Decorators' work had dwindled because of the war, yet Rodin needed to support his family, as poverty was a continual difficulty for him until about the age of 30. Carrier-Belleuse soon asked him to join him in Belgium, where they worked on ornamentation for the Brussels Stock Exchange.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin planned to stay in Belgium a few months, but he spent the next six years outside of France. It was a pivotal time in his life. He had acquired skill and experience as a craftsman, but no one had yet seen his art, which sat in his workshop since he could not afford castings. His relationship with Carrier-Belleuse had deteriorated, but he found other employment in Brussels, displaying some works at salons, and his companion Rose soon joined him there. Having saved enough money to travel, Rodin visited Italy for two months in 1875, where he was drawn to the work of Donatello and Michelangelo. Their work had a profound effect on his artistic direction. Rodin said, "It is Michelangelo who has freed me from academic sculpture." Returning to Belgium, he began work on "The Age of Bronze", a life-size male figure whose naturalism brought Rodin attention but led to accusations of sculptural cheatingits naturalism and scale was such that critics alleged he had cast the work from a living model. Much of Rodin's later work was explicitly larger or smaller than life, in part to demonstrate the folly of such accusations.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rose Beuret and Rodin returned to Paris in 1877, moving into a small flat on the Left Bank. Misfortune surrounded Rodin: his mother, who had wanted to see her son marry, was dead, and his father was blind and senile, cared for by Rodin's sister-in-law, Aunt Thérèse. Rodin's eleven-year-old son Auguste, possibly developmentally delayed, was also in the ever-helpful Thérèse's care. Rodin had essentially abandoned his son for six years, and would have a very limited relationship with him throughout his life. Father and son joined the couple in their flat, with Rose as caretaker. Charges of fakery surrounding "The Age of Bronze" continued. Rodin increasingly sought soothing female companionship in Paris, and Rose stayed in the background.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin earned his living collaborating with more established sculptors on public commissions, primarily memorials and neo-baroque architectural pieces in the style of Carpeaux. In competitions for commissions he submitted models of Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Lazare Carnot, all to no avail. On his own time, he worked on studies leading to the creation of his next important work, "St. John the Baptist Preaching".


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1880, Carrier-Belleuse – then art director of the Sèvres national porcelain factory – offered Rodin a part-time position as a designer. The offer was in part a gesture of reconciliation, and Rodin accepted. That part of Rodin which appreciated 18th-century tastes was aroused, and he immersed himself in designs for vases and table ornaments that brought the factory renown across Europe.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: The artistic community appreciated his work in this vein, and Rodin was invited to Paris Salons by such friends as writer Léon Cladel. During his early appearances at these social events, Rodin seemed shy; in his later years, as his fame grew, he displayed the loquaciousness and temperament for which he is better known. French statesman Leon Gambetta expressed a desire to meet Rodin, and the sculptor impressed him when they met at a salon. Gambetta spoke of Rodin in turn to several government ministers, likely including , the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Fine Arts, whom Rodin eventually met.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin's relationship with Turquet was rewarding: through him, he won the 1880 commission to create a portal for a planned museum of decorative arts. Rodin dedicated much of the next four decades to his elaborate "Gates of Hell", an unfinished portal for a museum that was never built. Many of the portal's figures became sculptures in themselves, including Rodin's most famous, "The Thinker" and "The Kiss". With the museum commission came a free studio, granting Rodin a new level of artistic freedom. Soon, he stopped working at the porcelain factory; his income came from private commissions.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1883, Rodin agreed to supervise a course for sculptor Alfred Boucher in his absence, where he met the 18-year-old Camille Claudel. The two formed a passionate but stormy relationship and influenced each other artistically. Claudel inspired Rodin as a model for many of his figures, and she was a talented sculptor, assisting him on commissions as well as creating her own works. Her "Bust of Rodin" was displayed to critical acclaim at the 1892 Salon.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Although busy with "The Gates of Hell", Rodin won other commissions. He pursued an opportunity to create a historical monument for the town of Calais. For a monument to French author Honoré de Balzac, Rodin was chosen in 1891. His execution of both sculptures clashed with traditional tastes, and met with varying degrees of disapproval from the organizations that sponsored the commissions. Still, Rodin was gaining support from diverse sources that propelled him toward fame.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1889, the Paris Salon invited Rodin to be a judge on its artistic jury. Though Rodin's career was on the rise, Claudel and Beuret were becoming increasingly impatient with Rodin's "double life". Claudel and Rodin shared an atelier at a small old castle (the Château de l'Islette in the Loire), but Rodin refused to relinquish his ties to Beuret, his loyal companion during the lean years, and mother of his son. During one absence, Rodin wrote to Beuret, "I think of how much you must have loved me to put up with my caprices...I remain, in all tenderness, your Rodin."


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Claudel and Rodin parted in 1898. Claudel suffered an alleged nervous breakdown several years later and was confined to an institution for 30 years by her family, until her death in 1943, despite numerous attempts by doctors to explain to her mother and brother that she was sane.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1864, Rodin submitted his first sculpture for exhibition, "The Man with the Broken Nose", to the Paris Salon. The subject was an elderly neighborhood street porter. The unconventional bronze piece was not a traditional bust, but instead the head was "broken off" at the neck, the nose was flattened and crooked, and the back of the head was absent, having fallen off the clay model in an accident. The work emphasized texture and the emotional state of the subject; it illustrated the "unfinishedness" that would characterize many of Rodin's later sculptures. The Salon rejected the piece.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In Brussels, Rodin created his first full-scale work, "The Age of Bronze", having returned from Italy. Modeled after a Belgian soldier, the figure drew inspiration from Michelangelo's "Dying Slave", which Rodin had observed at the Louvre. Attempting to combine Michelangelo's mastery of the human form with his own sense of human nature, Rodin studied his model from all angles, at rest and in motion; he mounted a ladder for additional perspective, and made clay models, which he studied by candlelight. The result was a life-size, well-proportioned nude figure, posed unconventionally with his right hand atop his head, and his left arm held out at his side, forearm parallel to the body.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1877, the work debuted in Brussels and then was shown at the Paris Salon. The statue's apparent lack of a theme was troubling to critics – commemorating neither mythology nor a noble historical event – and it is not clear whether Rodin intended a theme. He first titled the work "The Vanquished", in which form the left hand held a spear, but he removed the spear because it obstructed the torso from certain angles. After two more intermediary titles, Rodin settled on "The Age of Bronze", suggesting the Bronze Age, and in Rodin's words, "man arising from nature". Later, however, Rodin said that he had had in mind "just a simple piece of sculpture without reference to subject".


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Its mastery of form, light, and shadow made the work look so naturalistic that Rodin was accused of "surmoulage" – having taken a cast from a living model. Rodin vigorously denied the charges, writing to newspapers and having photographs taken of the model to prove how the sculpture differed. He demanded an inquiry and was eventually exonerated by a committee of sculptors. Leaving aside the false charges, the piece polarized critics. It had barely won acceptance for display at the Paris Salon, and criticism likened it to "a statue of a sleepwalker" and called it "an astonishingly accurate copy of a low type". Others rallied to defend the piece and Rodin's integrity. The government minister Turquet admired the piece, and "The Age of Bronze" was purchased by the state for 2,200 francs – what it had cost Rodin to have it cast in bronze.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: A second male nude, "St. John the Baptist Preaching", was completed in 1878. Rodin sought to avoid another charge of "surmoulage" by making the statue larger than life: "St. John" stands almost . While "The Age of Bronze" is statically posed, "St. John" gestures and seems to move toward the viewer. The effect of walking is achieved despite the figure having both feet firmly on the ground – a technical achievement that was lost on most contemporary critics. Rodin chose this contradictory position to, in his words, "display simultaneously...views of an object which in fact can be seen only successively".


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Despite the title, "St. John the Baptist Preaching" did not have an obviously religious theme. The model, an Italian peasant who presented himself at Rodin's studio, possessed an idiosyncratic sense of movement that Rodin felt compelled to capture. Rodin thought of John the Baptist, and carried that association into the title of the work. In 1880, Rodin submitted the sculpture to the Paris Salon. Critics were still mostly dismissive of his work, but the piece finished third in the Salon's sculpture category.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Regardless of the immediate receptions of "St. John" and "The Age of Bronze", Rodin had achieved a new degree of fame. Students sought him at his studio, praising his work and scorning the charges of "surmoulage". The artistic community knew his name.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: A commission to create a portal for Paris' planned Museum of Decorative Arts was awarded to Rodin in 1880. Although the museum was never built, Rodin worked throughout his life on "The Gates of Hell", a monumental sculptural group depicting scenes from Dante's "Inferno" in high relief. Often lacking a clear conception of his major works, Rodin compensated with hard work and a striving for perfection.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: He conceived "The Gates" with the "surmoulage" controversy still in mind: "...I had made the "St. John" to refute [the charges of casting from a model], but it only partially succeeded. To prove completely that I could model from life as well as other sculptors, I determined...to make the sculpture on the door of figures smaller than life." Laws of composition gave way to the "Gates"' disordered and untamed depiction of Hell. The figures and groups in this, Rodin's meditation on the condition of man, are physically and morally isolated in their torment.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: "The Gates of Hell" comprised 186 figures in its final form. Many of Rodin's best-known sculptures started as designs of figures for this composition, such as "The Thinker", "The Three Shades", and "The Kiss", and were only later presented as separate and independent works. Other well-known works derived from "The Gates" are "Ugolino", "Fallen Caryatid Carrying her Stone", "Fugit Amor", "She Who Was Once the Helmet-Maker's Beautiful Wife", "The Falling Man", and "The Prodigal Son".


title: Auguste Rodin

text: "The Thinker" (originally titled "The Poet", after Dante) was to become one of the best-known sculptures in the world. The original was a high bronze piece created between 1879 and 1889, designed for the "Gates"<nowiki>'</nowiki> lintel, from which the figure would gaze down upon Hell. While "The Thinker" most obviously characterizes Dante, aspects of the Biblical Adam, the mythological Prometheus, and Rodin himself have been ascribed to him. Other observers de-emphasize the apparent intellectual theme of "The Thinker", stressing the figure's rough physicality and the emotional tension emanating from it.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: The town of Calais had contemplated a historical monument for decades when Rodin learned of the project. He pursued the commission, interested in the medieval motif and patriotic theme. The mayor of Calais was tempted to hire Rodin on the spot upon visiting his studio, and soon the memorial was approved, with Rodin as its architect. It would commemorate the six townspeople of Calais who offered their lives to save their fellow citizens.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: During the Hundred Years' War, the army of King Edward III besieged Calais, and Edward ordered that the town's population be killed "en masse". He agreed to spare them if six of the principal citizens would come to him prepared to die, bareheaded and barefooted and with ropes around their necks. When they came, he ordered that they be executed, but pardoned them when his queen, Philippa of Hainault, begged him to spare their lives. "The Burghers of Calais" depicts the men as they are leaving for the king's camp, carrying keys to the town's gates and citadel.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin began the project in 1884, inspired by the chronicles of the siege by Jean Froissart. Though the town envisioned an allegorical, heroic piece centered on Eustache de Saint-Pierre, the eldest of the six men, Rodin conceived the sculpture as a study in the varied and complex emotions under which all six men were laboring. One year into the commission, the Calais committee was not impressed with Rodin's progress. Rodin indicated his willingness to end the project rather than change his design to meet the committee's conservative expectations, but Calais said to continue.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: In 1889, "The Burghers of Calais" was first displayed to general acclaim. It is a bronze sculpture weighing , and its figures are tall. The six men portrayed do not display a united, heroic front; rather, each is isolated from his brothers, individually deliberating and struggling with his expected fate. Rodin soon proposed that the monument's high pedestal be eliminated, wanting to move the sculpture to ground level so that viewers could "penetrate to the heart of the subject". At ground level, the figures' positions lead the viewer around the work, and subtly suggest their common movement forward.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: The committee was incensed by the untraditional proposal, but Rodin would not yield. In 1895, Calais succeeded in having "Burghers" displayed in their preferred form: the work was placed in front of a public garden on a high platform, surrounded by a cast-iron railing. Rodin had wanted it located near the town hall, where it would engage the public. Only after damage during the First World War, subsequent storage, and Rodin's death was the sculpture displayed as he had intended. It is one of Rodin's best-known and most acclaimed works.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Commissioned to create a monument to French writer Victor Hugo in 1889, Rodin dealt extensively with the subject of "artist and muse". Like many of Rodin's public commissions, "Monument to Victor Hugo" was met with resistance because it did not fit conventional expectations. Commenting on Rodin's monument to Victor Hugo, "The Times" in 1909 expressed that "there is some show of reason in the complaint that [Rodin's] conceptions are sometimes unsuited to his medium, and that in such cases they overstrain his vast technical powers". The 1897 plaster model was not cast in bronze until 1964.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: The "Société des Gens des Lettres", a Parisian organization of writers, planned a monument to French novelist Honoré de Balzac immediately after his death in 1850. The society commissioned Rodin to create the memorial in 1891, and Rodin spent years developing the concept for his sculpture. Challenged in finding an appropriate representation of Balzac given the author's rotund physique, Rodin produced many studies: portraits, full-length figures in the nude, wearing a frock coat, or in a robe – a replica of which Rodin had requested. The realized sculpture displays Balzac cloaked in the drapery, looking forcefully into the distance with deeply gouged features. Rodin's intent had been to show Balzac at the moment of conceiving a work – to express courage, labor, and struggle.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: When "Monument to Balzac" was exhibited in 1898, the negative reaction was not surprising. The "Société" rejected the work, and the press ran parodies. Criticizing the work, Morey (1918) reflected, "there may come a time, and doubtless will come a time, when it will not seem "outre" to represent a great novelist as a huge comic mask crowning a bathrobe, but even at the present day this statue impresses one as slang." A modern critic, indeed, claims that "Balzac" is one of Rodin's masterpieces.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: The monument had its supporters in Rodin's day; a manifesto defending him was signed by Monet, Debussy, and future Premier Georges Clemenceau, among many others. In the BBC series Civilisation, art historian Kenneth Clark praised the monument as "the greatest piece of sculpture of the 19th Century, perhaps, indeed, the greatest since Michelangelo." Rather than try to convince skeptics of the merit of the monument, Rodin repaid the "Société" his commission and moved the figure to his garden. After this experience, Rodin did not complete another public commission. Only in 1939 was "Monument to Balzac" cast in bronze and placed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse at the intersection with Boulevard Raspail.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: The popularity of Rodin's most famous sculptures tends to obscure his total creative output. A prolific artist, he created thousands of busts, figures, and sculptural fragments over more than five decades. He painted in oils (especially in his thirties) and in watercolors. The Musée Rodin holds 7,000 of his drawings and prints, in chalk and charcoal, and thirteen vigorous drypoints. He also produced a single lithograph.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Portraiture was an important component of Rodin's oeuvre, helping him to win acceptance and financial independence. His first sculpture was a bust of his father in 1860, and he produced at least 56 portraits between 1877 and his death in 1917. Early subjects included fellow sculptor Jules Dalou (1883) and companion Camille Claudel (1884).


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Later, with his reputation established, Rodin made busts of prominent contemporaries such as English politician George Wyndham (1905), Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1906), socialist (and former mistress of the Prince of Wales who became King Edward VII) Countess of Warwick (1908), Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1909), former Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and French statesman Georges Clemenceau (1911).


title: Auguste Rodin

text: His undated drawing "Study of a Woman Nude, Standing, Arms Raised, Hands Crossed Above Head" is one of the works seized in 2012 from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin was a naturalist, less concerned with monumental expression than with character and emotion. Departing with centuries of tradition, he turned away from the idealism of the Greeks, and the decorative beauty of the Baroque and neo-Baroque movements. His sculpture emphasized the individual and the concreteness of flesh, and suggested emotion through detailed, textured surfaces, and the interplay of light and shadow. To a greater degree than his contemporaries, Rodin believed that an individual's character was revealed by his physical features.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin's talent for surface modeling allowed him to let every part of the body speak for the whole. The male's passion in "The Thinker" is suggested by the grip of his toes on the rock, the rigidness of his back, and the differentiation of his hands. Speaking of "The Thinker", Rodin illuminated his aesthetic: "What makes my Thinker think is that he thinks not only with his brain, with his knitted brow, his distended nostrils and compressed lips, but with every muscle of his arms, back, and legs, with his clenched fist and gripping toes."


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Sculptural fragments to Rodin were autonomous works, and he considered them the essence of his artistic statement. His fragments – perhaps lacking arms, legs, or a head – took sculpture further from its traditional role of portraying likenesses, and into a realm where forms existed for their own sake. Notable examples are "The Walking Man", "Meditation without Arms", and "Iris, Messenger of the Gods".


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rodin saw suffering and conflict as hallmarks of modern art. "Nothing, really, is more moving than the maddened beast, dying from unfulfilled desire and asking in vain for grace to quell its passion." Charles Baudelaire echoed those themes, and was among Rodin's favorite poets. Rodin enjoyed music, especially the opera composer Gluck, and wrote a book about French cathedrals. He owned a work by the as-yet-unrecognized Van Gogh, and admired the forgotten El Greco.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Instead of copying traditional academic postures, Rodin preferred his models to move naturally around his studio (despite their nakedness). The sculptor often made quick sketches in clay that were later fine-tuned, cast in plaster, and cast in bronze or carved from marble. Rodin's focus was on the handling of clay.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: George Bernard Shaw sat for a portrait and gave an idea of Rodin's technique: "While he worked, he achieved a number of miracles. At the end of the first fifteen minutes, after having given a simple idea of the human form to the block of clay, he produced by the action of his thumb a bust so living that I would have taken it away with me to relieve the sculptor of any further work."


title: Auguste Rodin

text: He described the evolution of his bust over a month, passing through "all the stages of art's evolution": first, a "Byzantine masterpiece", then "Bernini intermingled", then an elegant Houdon. "The hand of Rodin worked not as the hand of a sculptor works, but as the work of "Elan Vital". The "Hand of God" is his own hand."


title: Auguste Rodin

text: After he completed his work in clay, he employed highly skilled assistants to re-sculpt his compositions at larger sizes (including any of his large-scale monuments such as "The Thinker"), to cast the clay compositions into plaster or bronze, and to carve his marbles. Rodin's major innovation was to capitalize on such multi-staged processes of 19th century sculpture and their reliance on plaster casting.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Since clay deteriorates rapidly if not kept wet or fired into a terra-cotta, sculptors used plaster casts as a means of securing the composition they would make from the fugitive material that is clay. This was common practice amongst Rodin's contemporaries, and sculptors would exhibit plaster casts with the hopes that they would be commissioned to have the works made in a more permanent material. Rodin, however, would have multiple plasters made and treat them as the raw material of sculpture, recombining their parts and figures into new compositions, and new names.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: As Rodin's practice developed into the 1890s, he became more and more radical in his pursuit of fragmentation, the combination of figures at different scales, and the making of new compositions from his earlier work. A prime example of this is the bold "The Walking Man" (1899–1900), which was exhibited at his major one-person show in 1900. This is composed of two sculptures from the 1870s that Rodin found in his studio – a broken and damaged torso that had fallen into neglect and the lower extremities of a statuette version of his 1878 "St. John the Baptist Preaching" he was having re-sculpted at a reduced scale.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Without finessing the join between upper and lower, between torso and legs, Rodin created a work that many sculptors at the time and subsequently have seen as one of his strongest and most singular works. This is despite the fact that the object conveys two different styles, exhibits two different attitudes toward finish, and lacks any attempt to hide the arbitrary fusion of these two components. It was the freedom and creativity with which Rodin used these practices – along with his activation surfaces of sculptures through traces of his own touch and with his more open attitude toward bodily pose, sensual subject matter, and non-naturalistic surface – that marked Rodin's re-making of traditional 19th century sculptural techniques into the prototype for modern sculpture.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: By 1900, Rodin's artistic reputation was entrenched. Gaining exposure from a pavilion of his artwork set up near the 1900 World's Fair ("Exposition Universelle") in Paris, he received requests to make busts of prominent people internationally, while his assistants at the atelier produced duplicates of his works. His income from portrait commissions alone totaled probably 200,000 francs a year. As Rodin's fame grew, he attracted many followers, including the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and authors Octave Mirbeau, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Oscar Wilde.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Rilke stayed with Rodin in 1905 and 1906, and did administrative work for him; he would later write a laudatory monograph on the sculptor. Rodin and Beuret's modest country estate in Meudon, purchased in 1897, was a host to such guests as King Edward, dancer Isadora Duncan, and harpsichordist Wanda Landowska. A British journalist who visited the property noted in 1902 that in its complete isolation, there was "a striking analogy between its situation and the personality of the man who lives in it". Rodin moved to the city in 1908, renting the main floor of the Hôtel Biron, an 18th-century townhouse. He left Beuret in Meudon, and began an affair with the American-born Duchesse de Choiseul. From 1910, he mentored the Russian sculptor, Moissey Kogan.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: While Rodin was beginning to be accepted in France by the time of "The Burghers of Calais", he had not yet conquered the American market. Because of his technique and the frankness of some of his work, he did not have an easy time selling his work to American industrialists. However, he came to know Sarah Tyson Hallowell (1846–1924), a curator from Chicago who visited Paris to arrange exhibitions at the large Interstate Expositions of the 1870s and 1880s. Hallowell was not only a curator but an adviser and a facilitator who was trusted by a number of prominent American collectors to suggest works for their collections, the most prominent of these being the Chicago hotelier Potter Palmer and his wife, Bertha Palmer (1849–1918).


title: Auguste Rodin

text: The next opportunity for Rodin in America was the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Hallowell wanted to help promote Rodin's work and he suggested a solo exhibition, which she wrote him was "beaucoup moins beau que l'original" but impossible, outside the rules. Instead, she suggested he send a number of works for her loan exhibition of French art from American collections and she told him she would list them as being part of an American collection. Rodin sent Hallowell three works, "Cupid and Psyche", "Sphinx" and "Andromeda". All nudes, these works provoked great controversy and were ultimately hidden behind a drape with special permission given for viewers to see them.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: "Bust of Dalou" and "Burgher of Calais" were on display in the official French pavilion at the fair and so between the works that were on display and those that were not, he was noticed. However, the works he gave Hallowell to sell found no takers, but she soon brought the controversial Quaker-born financier Charles Yerkes (1837–1905) into the fold and he purchased two large marbles for his Chicago manse; Yerkes was likely the first American to own a Rodin sculpture.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Other collectors soon followed including the tastemaking Potter Palmers of Chicago and Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) of Boston, all arranged by Sarah Hallowell. In appreciation for her efforts at unlocking the American market, Rodin eventually presented Hallowell with a bronze, a marble and a terra cotta. When Hallowell moved to Paris in 1893, she and Rodin continued their warm friendship and correspondence, which lasted to the end of the sculptor's life. After Hallowell's death, her niece, the painter Harriet Hallowell, inherited the Rodins and after her death, the American heirs could not manage to match their value in order to export them, so they became the property of the French state.


title: Auguste Rodin

text: After the start of the 20th century, Rodin was a regular visitor to Great Britain, where he developed a loyal following by the beginning of the First World War. He first visited England in 1881, where his friend, the artist Alphonse Legros, had introduced him to the poet William Ernest Henley. With his personal connections and enthusiasm for Rodin's art, Henley was most responsible for Rodin's reception in Britain. (Rodin later returned the favor by sculpting a that was used as the frontispiece to Henley's collected works and, after his death, on his monument in London.)


title: Auguste Rodin

text: Through Henley, Rodin met Robert Louis Stevenson and Robert Browning, in whom he found further support. Encouraged by the enthusiasm of British artists, students, and high society for his art, Rodin donated a significant selection of his works to the nation in 1914.