Auguste Rodin's sculpture The Kiss is not well understood if you don't know the story behind it. Rodin wanted to make the audience feel the romance and give a story to the sculpture. He depicts a moment from Dante's The Divine Comedy in which two lovers, Paolo and Francesca, share their first kisses. But Constantin Brâncuși's The Kiss understood well enough at the first sight. His sculpture brings out a vivid feeling of love and affection with the evident loving embrace and wrapped arms around each subject.
Auguste Rodin's sculpture The Kiss denies its material. Marble does not have the feeling of marble but more of human skin. The sculpture is aesthetically pleasing from all angles. Choosing a rough stone over the classical marble, Constantin Brâncuși gave the sculpture an archaic, yet modern look, in contrast with the literal style at the time, represented by Rodin. His sculpture doesn't deny its material. Simplifying geometric forms and emphasizing simple geometrical lines balance forms inherent in his materials with the symbolic allusions of representational art. The shape of the original block of material is maintained.
While addressing the same theme Auguste Rodin and Constantin Brâncuși handle form in a drastically different manner. Rodin being an impressionist created the sculpture in true human form. His powerful style is seen in the sculpture The Kiss and even its original title suggest sensuality and passion. The sensuality of it is manifest in the texture and the rendition of muscle and bone. There is a palpable tension. Brâncuși's The Kiss is simple and direct, highly stylized and cubistic in its conception. Also, it is static and has no movement to it. It is more suggestive of love than of passion. The man and the woman depicted in the sculpture are bonded as if they are one unit, suggesting stability and deeper emotional unity than that conveyed by Rodin.