Guitar Player 1918

Jacques Lipchitz made this bronze sculpture, Guitar Player, and when you look at it, it's like seeing the world through a Cubist lens. Forms are distilled down to their essence, all about planes and angles and simplified shapes. It’s like he's trying to show you all sides of the guitar player at once. I find myself drawn to the texture of the bronze. It is rough and uneven, like he wasn't trying to smooth things out or hide the process. You can almost see the marks of his hands in the clay, before it was cast in bronze. Then there is the way the light catches on the edges of those planes and facets. It's all about the play of light and shadow. This is not just a sculpture, it's a record of an action, a dialogue between the artist and his materials. Lipchitz reminds me of Picasso. They both were obsessed with breaking down and reassembling the world in new ways. The sculpture embodies the spirit of experimentation and innovation that defined early modern art.