Ovid's "The Art of Love" ("L'art d'aimer" d'Ovide) 1935

Aristide Maillol made this drawing using sanguine crayon, giving it that lovely, warm, earthy feel. It looks like he's searching for the form, allowing the lines to overlap and shift, which, for me, really emphasizes the process of art-making itself. The texture of the paper comes through, doesn't it? That, combined with the crayon, gives it a tactile quality, like you could almost feel the softness of the figure. Look closely at the back and you'll see how Maillol uses these hatching marks to create shadow and volume. Those little clusters of lines—they're not just describing the body; they’re adding a kind of emotional weight, a sense of the figure existing in space and time. Maillol reminds me of other sculptors like Rodin, in the way they both capture the human form with such sensitivity and a modern sensibility. Art is, after all, an ongoing conversation, full of echoes and reinterpretations.