Woman Seated in Chair Wiping her Left Side 1891 - 1920

Edgar Degas made this bronze sculpture of a woman seated in a chair wiping her left side sometime in his career, and what strikes me most is how immediate it feels. It's like he caught her in the middle of something, in a moment of pure, unselfconscious being. The texture of the bronze is rough, almost unfinished, and you can see the marks of his fingers, as if he was wrestling with the material, trying to capture the essence of her form. The way she's seated, leaning forward, creates a sense of weight and physicality, like she's really there, present in the space with us. The curve of her back, the angle of her arm, it all feels so natural, so unposed. You know, there's something about Degas's work that always feels so modern to me, like he's speaking to us across time about the beauty and complexity of the human experience. Think about Rodin, wrestling with similar ideas, pushing the boundaries of what sculpture could be. For Degas, like all of us artists, it's the process, the act of making, that reveals the truth of the subject.