The Round 1883 - 1884

Curator: Welcome. Today, we’re looking at Auguste Rodin’s etching, “The Round,” created between 1883 and 1884. This piece is rendered in ink, pencil, and etching on paper. Editor: Oh, my first thought is that it looks like a half-remembered dream! Those figures are barely there, swirling together… almost like a secret whispered in charcoal. Curator: Indeed. Note how Rodin employs line weight and hatching to create a sense of depth and movement, focusing less on concrete form and more on the suggestive power of gesture. The academic style is evident, but it's clearly experimental in its approach to figuration. Editor: I see them struggling and supporting each other, like echoes or the faintest glimmer of lost loves and hopes… Makes me wonder about the people he knew, you know? Did they all just kinda melt together like this sometimes? I’ve seen so much similar with Degas; the soft figures, movement in life, I always found this era amazing in what it wanted to portray and the struggles these artists faced Curator: Interesting interpretation. The composition shows two distinct clusters of figures; the somber group supporting a man possibly being removed from a cross and, to their right, the whirling dance around the other three figures— Editor: Hold on a sec! "A cross?" You see this like it’s some somber crucifixion scene? Dude, to me this is like some beautiful celebration! This dance; the ecstasy of the swirling mass that brings hope… The darkness to light. It’s that feeling, that movement, those touches in life, that makes something worth cherishing! Curator: Perhaps both. What appears to be an ecstatic embrace can also contain hints of sacrifice. The ambiguity is where Rodin's genius truly lies—how forms can signify both agony and hope, often at once! Editor: I suppose. Art, life—never just one thing. Curator: Precisely. Consider it not just as a work, but a visual philosophical query into human existence, elegantly captured with ink and paper. Editor: Yeah… I need to ruminate on the duality now… but definitely still want to see people doing this celebratory circle of hope and change and acceptance right after! A proper way to capture the now that continues to be hopeful.. Curator: Then our time here has truly been productive. Thanks for your, as always, enlightening observations!