Morning 1906

Rodin carved Morning out of marble, and like so much of his work it is about the body, the weight of it, the curve, the gesture. I can imagine Rodin chipping away, his focus intense, figuring out how to make this heavy material look almost weightless. The figure arches and stretches, but her face is hidden. I wonder if Rodin was thinking about a specific person, or an archetype. Her pose is about awakening, yes, but there’s also something self-contained about it. I think about other artists and how they’ve represented women, like the work of Alice Neel, how she could capture a person’s whole life in a single pose, or the nudes of Picasso, twisted and distorted. Artists are always in conversation with each other, riffing on ideas, pushing boundaries. And here we are now, still looking, still figuring it out.