Ailsa Mellon Bruce 1927

Jo Davidson carved this marble bust of Ailsa Mellon Bruce sometime in the first half of the 20th century, and what strikes me is the contrast between the highly polished face and the roughly hewn stone around it. The face emerges, pristine, from this craggy ground. Davidson really coaxes the light on the face through the smooth surface of the stone. Then, by way of contrast, he leaves the surrounding stone raw and unworked, giving it a wonderful sense of texture and physicality, so we can see the marks of the chisel. You can almost imagine Davidson chipping away at the block, each strike a decisive act of creation and destruction. That tension between the worked and unworked elements is what really sings here. It's like the artist is saying that beauty and refinement emerge from the raw, unformed potential of the stone. It reminds me a little of Rodin's work, which is not at all to say that Davidson is trying to be Rodin. It's just that art’s a conversation, a back and forth of ideas across time, always open to interpretation.