Aphrodite en Eros (1925) 1925

This bronze medallion, Aphrodite en Eros, was made in 1925 by the artist L.-C. Mascaux. It's about the size of a hockey puck and weighs almost as much. I bet Mascaux was thinking about ancient Greece when he made this. Just imagine, the artist carefully carving away at the metal, letting Aphrodite and Eros emerge. I wonder if he had a particular model in mind, or if he was just riffing on old ideas. The figures are caught in a quiet moment of exchange with the flower, frozen in time but somehow still alive. The two sides feel different, one is intimate, the other more monumental. It reminds me of how artists through the ages have taken inspiration from the past, reinterpreting old myths and stories in new ways. It’s all one big conversation, artists talking to each other across time. So, we can embrace the ambiguity and let the work speak to us in its own way. It’s like the artist is inviting us to participate in the process of making meaning, you know?