Nude Kneeling c. 20th century

Auguste Rodin made this watercolor, Nude Kneeling, sometime in his career, and it now lives at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The image is mostly pale washes, the faintest blush of color giving shape to a body. Look closely, and you'll notice the washes aren't uniform. See how the pigment pools in the hollows of the knees, suggesting the pressure of the figure against the ground? The process feels immediate, almost like a sketch, but the control of the medium is evident. Rodin really understood light. Notice the blank space where the face should be, and how it somehow conveys more than detail could? It's like he’s asking us to consider what we’re really looking at when we look at a body, and what we project onto it. Artists like Alice Neel come to mind – painters who are less interested in surface appearances than in emotional truth. It's this honesty, this openness to the ambiguity of experience, that makes art so compelling.