Head of Balzac c. early 1897th century

Auguste Rodin made this head of Balzac, and what strikes me is that it's not just a portrait but a solid thing with a surface, an idea, and a feel. Rodin’s hands shaped this bronze, and you can almost see the energy he put into it. His fingerprints left marks like a painter’s brushstrokes, a way of thinking through form. Rodin wasn’t just trying to capture what Balzac looked like but the essence of his being. It's like he was searching for the writer's soul by pushing and pulling at the clay, trying to find that spark of creativity. I bet he thought of the writer’s intensity. The piece reminds me of Medardo Rosso, another sculptor who worked with wax to create blurry, atmospheric figures. Rodin’s and Rosso's works are testaments to how we can be both solid and ephemeral, fixed in form yet always changing in perception.