Grand Cerf 1929

François Pompon's bronze deer is about the distillation of form, or about the process of searching for essence, which is something I think about a lot in my own painting. Look at how he's smoothed and simplified the animal. You can see the artist is taking something quite complex in nature and turning it into something pure. There’s a real respect for the material, too. The bronze is allowed to be itself, a solid, earthy thing. It's almost like Pompon is asking: what is the least I can do to this material to make it speak of a deer? I imagine him working and reworking the clay to get the form just right. It's not about surface detail, but about finding the underlying structure. And that’s how artists have always worked, learning from each other across time, whether it's through bronze or paint, trying to see the world in a new, essential way.