Daphnis achtervolgt Chloë 1937

This is Aristide Maillol’s “Daphnis achtervolgt Chloë”, and it's a woodcut, so it's all about the cut, the gouge, the mark. It is about the simplest way to communicate an idea. The texture of the work is really interesting, because you get a sense of the grain of the wood coming through the black ink. It's like the image emerges from the material itself. Maillol isn’t trying to hide the process. And look at the way he simplifies the bodies, focusing on the essential forms. Especially in the arm gesture of Daphnis, which seems to both push and pull Chloe, that tension between attraction and repulsion, and the way it's caught in this dance. You know, this reminds me a little of Gauguin’s woodcuts, that same interest in primal forms and simplified expression. But Maillol brings his own sensibility to it, a kind of classical serenity mixed with a modern interest in process. Art is all about a conversation and building on the past.