Hand of A Pianist at The Musée Rodin, Paris

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In 1900, the critic Gustave Kahn wrote that Rodin was the sculptor of hands, fierce, tensed, arched, and doomed hands. There is no doubt that Rodin attached more importance to this part of the body than any other. Fascinated by the expressive power of isolated hands, he studied them ceaselessly, accumulating numerous studies in clay or plaster in his studio where the sensitivity of the modeling competes with the authenticity of the gesture. Through hands, Rodin expresses the full range of human emotions, from anxiety to suffering, from resignation to desperation. As revealing as a face, on their own they can sometimes symbolize a form of human activity, such as this Hand of a Pianist that seems to run over an imaginary keyboard with frantic energy.