Torso of Venus c. 1918 - 1928

Aristide Maillol made this bronze torso sometime in the first half of the 20th century. There’s a kind of classical roundness to the figure. I think about the making, the building up of form, how it might be as much about adding as it is taking away. The torso is cut off, headless, limbless, but it’s also totally complete. The bronze is dark, almost black, but you can see the way light reflects off the curves and hollows of the form. It’s smooth but not too smooth, you can see the marks of the making, the artist’s hand. The feet almost seem too small for the heaviness of the torso. It’s like the sculpture is sinking into the earth. I look at this and I think about other artists like Brancusi, the way they both were trying to get at some essential form, some elemental truth about the body. But with Maillol, there’s this groundedness, this sense of weight and gravity that I find really compelling.