Seated Female Nude (Black Torso) 1911

This sculpture is an artwork by Olexandr Archipenko called *Seated Female Nude (Black Torso)*. This piece is a solid object, smooth and dark, it looks like it was formed slowly, with deliberation, yet its curves and forms evoke an incredible sensation of flow and movement. I wonder if he, like me, was obsessed with the question, what is it to be a body? What is it to move and be moved by forces? It looks so self-contained, a little world unto itself. I bet Archipenko was in dialogue with the cubists when he made this! The way the planes meet and imply each other is a dance of seeing and knowing. I think of the ways we try to embody feeling or thought and translate our inner selves into shapes, gestures, and marks in the world. We work with what we have, and what we have is feeling, thinking, seeing. I love that this piece invites us to think about our own.