The Gondolier 1914

Olexandr Archipenko made this sculpture, “The Gondolier” sometime during his life. It's bronze, or bronze-like, and super stylized. I imagine him working on this, piece by piece. Like, how do you even start? What part of the body do you begin with? Does the oar come first? It’s as if Archipenko wants to show you all the parts, but also make a new thing. He’s playing with geometric shapes and negative space, right? But there’s also this tension between the abstract and the figurative. Like, is it a person? Is it not? What does it mean? It reminds me of Picasso and Cubism, but in three dimensions. It’s like Archipenko is asking: what does it even mean to represent something? How little can you get away with? So, it's not just about seeing a gondolier, it's about the possibilities of form, and how artists keep pushing each other to see the world in totally new ways.