February 1, 1932

An exhibition of modern sculpture, including works by Aristide Maillol, Pablo Picasso and Gaston Lachaise, was, said Nancy Rodman ’32, in The Miscellany News, “so surprisingly good that it is difficult to give preference to any particular work.” Noting “a decided contrast in the artistic conceptions and artistic demands of the Renaissance and those of our times,” Rodman declared, “detail has been completely subordinated to form, mass and rhythm. It is as if the artist had become a psychologist, a philosopher. He thinks now in universal truths, formerly he thought in local mannerisms.”

While the works all evidenced these novel powers, she noted, “the figures by [Wilhelm] Lehmbruck, Maillol, Lachaise, Picasso, [Georg] Kolbe and [Charles] Despiau seem to stand out and claim our particular attention.” Commenting at some length on Lehmbruck’s Figure and on Woman Arranging Hair and Girl Kneeling by Maillol, she concluded that “Picasso’s Head is by far the most interesting piece of the exhibition. It cannot be called a protrait head, it is not a portrait. It is an idea, an abstraction, a philosophy, anything but a human creature… As the bronze flows towards the left, it flows into abstraction, back into its primitive state. It is a return of life into matter.”