'Astonishing, ravishing, sublime' – Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece review

British Museum, London
The Frenchman made some of the best loved sculptures in the world. But his magnificent work is still no match for the Parthenon Marbles. My god, what art!

The British Museum’s astonishing, ravishing, sublime new exhibition – I could add a lot more superlatives and still be understating it – brings you face to face with the most revolutionary sculptures ever created. It also has some fine works by Auguste Rodin.

The wonder hits you as soon as you enter and find yourself confronted by Rodin’s The Kiss sharing a pedestal with two goddesses carved two and a half millennia ago. The Kiss is, well, it’s The Kiss – one of the most sensual and captivating masterpieces of modern times, a provocatively erotic blast of free love that shook Paris in 1882. It is one of the best-known, best-loved sculptures in the world. And those old Greek goddesses blow it away.

How modern, how alive, how strange and dreamlike the Parthenon marbles look when we see them through Rodin's eyes

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