Eve Eating the Apple c. 1885

Curator: This sculpture, "Eve Eating the Apple," rendered in bronze by Auguste Rodin, dates back to about 1885. Editor: There’s something so sorrowful about it, isn’t there? Her whole body seems to droop with regret, like she’s already carrying the weight of the world. It makes me wonder what Rodin was thinking about concerning that precise moment... before anything else, nothing but that instant choice! Curator: It’s striking how Rodin departs from traditional depictions of Eve. He eschews idealization, opting instead for a palpable sense of human frailty and emotional realism. Editor: The positioning! Her hunched posture creates such tension. Visually, you see the way the light plays on her back, and it is such a lovely study in artistic form, and it also reinforces the shame that the sculptor so obviously wants to showcase in her disposition and figure! She literally shrinks from what she has just done... Curator: Indeed, and that shame is further emphasized through the texture. Rodin leaves the surface rough and unfinished in certain areas, which heightens the emotional rawness and immediacy. Consider it semiotically; the lack of polish mirrors the loss of innocence, a fall from grace, as it were. Editor: The sensuality too… Rodin captures the figure’s softness. The very humanness of it. It really highlights that feeling of being trapped, but perhaps with an ironic sense of our potential? Does the sculpture not posit a suggestion that through knowing that potential one may grasp redemption? And is not every woman since also grasping that, as well? Curator: Perhaps, in the complexity of the pose and the expressiveness of the figure, Rodin presents a commentary on humanity's constant struggle with temptation, and more subtly, a glimmer of the self-knowledge and growth that could also arise from difficult choices? Editor: You know, pondering on all this, the piece takes on this added nuance and poignancy now…I'm actually starting to see some new parts I hadn't even considered on first glance... thanks!