Adventitious Woman

Day 6 – La Misére – Misery 1887

JULES DESBOIS (1851 -1935)

Her eyes engage you. You do not see the intensity of her stare quite at first, but you feel it. You make the conscious decision to glance underneath her face, so she is peering down upon your face. However, when you make that transition, and look back up at her, you nearly want to look away, but for a moment, and take a second to grasp her gaze of intensity.

Converging in the Hôtel Biron, where the rest of the sculptures and some paintings reside in…you ascend the staircase to your right, stroll through a short hall then to your left, placed between two objects of fenestration, on the main circulation path, she shares the left façade of the gallery space she rests in.

There is not a mirror behind La Misére, like I have seen other sculptures of her size have; but she sits upon a pedestal, in a glass case. With a height of about 37.5cm  she does not dominate the room in mass.

The two other sculptures she shares this interior left façade with are bronze busts, one with a joyful expression gazing towards the center of the room, the other more serious, but the same scale as the former. They are not large bronze busts. They actually face the broad bronze bust named “Portrait of Rodin with multiple profiles (1910)”; Whom gazes towards “La Misére’s direction.

La Misére is not polished, in contrast she appears to be distressed both physically and emotionally. The horrific look on her face she exudes portrays these feelings well. Hunched over, she seems to have just been in that stage of positioning her body for a moment as she sits there in thought. The folds on her skin show her age, and the patina helps describe the dialogue of distress.

I found after awhile of really paying attention to La Misére and studying her, that no one else really would give her any mind. This frustrated me seeing as though she was on a main circulation path in the room, and she is enticing. Maybe it was just my eyes that saw, and my brain that thought beauty came in this form of anguish.

Although she appears distraught and adventitious, her soul though longing, it had a lot to give, and possible lingering hope. 

For Reference - La Misére - Musée Rodin