Vijfentwintigjarig professoraat van Adolphe Pinard 1907 1907

This small lead medal of Adolphe Pinard was made in 1907 by Marcelle Lancelot-Croce and feels more like a sketch than a sculpture; the soft matte surface has a worn look, like maybe it's been rubbed smooth over the years. There are two sides to this coin, and each seems to champion a different element of Pinard’s work. One side shows a profile of Pinard, with the name of the maternity assistance group below, and the other side shows a mother and child. This side has the words: “The milk of the mother belongs to the child.” The artist’s marks are pretty clear. You can really see the action of the artist's hand in the quick marks that form the soft musculature of the mother’s arm or the baby’s bundled form. The quick, gestural quality of these marks gives the figures a fleeting, vulnerable quality, like a passing moment. The flattened perspective in this work reminds me of some of the work of Christina Ramberg. Both artists embrace a kind of formal compression, flattening figures and objects into a shallow, almost claustrophobic space. Like Ramberg, Lancelot-Croce seems interested in the ways that the body is shaped by external forces, whether social expectations or physical constraints.