The Three Grace Maillol Analysis

After walking up the grand staircase in the lobby of the Algur H. Meadows Museum, visitors enter an open and light upstairs landing lined with doors that lead to expansive galleries housing many Spanish treasures. On this landing, three women stand nude and surrounded by the open air, their lead forms glistening under the skylight which pours in natural sunshine. These three female figures are Aristide Maillol’s The Three Graces [Image 1]. Modeled from Maillol’s young model of a decade, Dina Vierny, The Three Graces are Maillol’s invocation of two qualities. The first is the sculptor’s concept of Woman, his feminine ideal as an expressionless, calm, and blank face and a rotund, voluminous, and smooth figure. The second is classically inspired …show more content…
The frame of nothing but pure air highlights the volume of these three figures, five feet tall with curvaceous forms. The expanse of each Grace’s hips are defined by the empty space that draws the fluid outline of their form. [Figure 2]. These hips are shaped by the air around them, the void of space that draws a smooth curve outwards from the waist, to the hips, and down the thigh. It is no defined musculature that defines these hips, but the volume and space that each curve takes up. Higher up the torso, the pert breasts of the three female figures are not incredibly detailed breasts [Figure 3]. There is a slight trace of a nipple, no conspicuous areola. These breasts are created out of a continuous curve, voluminous protrusions from an otherwise bare and statuesque chest and thrown back …show more content…
The viewer is, at first, taken aback by these glorious figures, with their flawless skin and smooth metal forms, with their never-ending curves and voluptuousness. These qualities are tantalizing to the viewer, beckoning to him or her who, in a museum setting, cannot reach out and stroke the soft curve of these Three Graces, feel the smooth and cool metal under their fingertips. However, Maillol has rendered the figures in a way that transposes smooth, fluid texture and smooth, fluid volumes in a way that, of all the sense, is purely optical. This sensation can be interpreted as erotic. Because the Graces have no context and are surrounded solely by open air, they are completely and utterly bared to the viewer in an extremely intimate way. Empty space is the backdrop of the Graces, which further emphasizes their very sexual figures, because there is nowhere else to look but their bodies. The eyes of the viewer must focus on their voluminous forms as their line of sight leads them from head to toe. Take, for example, the rear view of the center Grace. The elegant line of the neck leads to statuesque, curved shoulders, which draws the eyes down the soft curve of the Grace’s spine, before grazing over the buttocks, and finally, tracing down the curved legs to the pedestal on which she stands. Though we have discussed Maillol’s focus on volume rather than definition, where viewers can visibly see