Despairing Adolescent 1882 - 1980

This bronze sculpture of a despairing adolescent was made by Auguste Rodin, and now lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rodin had this uncanny ability to capture raw emotion, and here, the figure arches back in anguish, arms raised as if in protest or surrender. I can only imagine the hours he spent in the studio wrestling with the clay, coaxing out this intense feeling. You can almost feel the weight of the bronze, the heaviness of the adolescent's despair. Look at how the light catches on the rough texture of the surface. Those marks and indentations, they're like a map of his emotional state. I think about how Rodin’s work paved the way for so many artists to explore human psychology. And, as artists, we’re all in conversation with each other, trying to make sense of the world, one gesture, one sculpture at a time.