Cesar Baldaccini (The Sculptor Cesar in his Workshop) 1955

Robert Doisneau captured this black and white image of the sculptor Cesar Baldaccini in his workshop, though we don’t know exactly when. I like to imagine Cesar thinking about the next piece he is going to make. Is it going to be another compression? How do you even make a compression? So many levels of pressure, to condense a volume into a small package. I’m reminded of John Chamberlain and his crushed cars, the way he managed to make color work, like a kind of beautiful violence. Looking at this, it seems that sculptors have a conversation with other sculptors across generations – sort of like painters do. Cesar’s rough, welded surfaces remind me of something Medardo Rosso might do, if he wasn’t so invested in capturing the soft contours of skin. Artists are always having this kind of conversation, sharing ideas, pushing each other to see things in new ways, each piece a thought in a broader aesthetic dialogue. And that's how newness happens.