Cupid and Psyche 1905

Auguste Rodin made this marble sculpture, Cupid and Psyche, sometime in the late 19th century. Looking at the surface, you can almost feel the cool smoothness of the marble, but what strikes me is how he’s left part of the stone rough hewn. It’s this combination of the highly polished and the raw that really makes the piece sing, I think. The way Cupid’s arm curves around Psyche feels so tender, so intimate. But then, notice how the rough, unfinished block of marble grounds them, anchors them to the earth. Rodin has managed to capture this fleeting moment, but he’s also reminding us of the weight and substance of the material world. I find it interesting to think of the similarities between Rodin's approach to sculpting and someone like Gerhard Richter's approach to painting. Both use the properties of their media to introduce something other than pure representation into their work. What might seem like a fragment or off-cut actually holds the key. It’s not about perfection, it’s about process.