At the Musée Rodin last Saturday, I was repeatedly struck by the grandeur that Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) gave his human figures. Only when I entered the museum's room devoted to works by Camille Claudel (1864-1943) did the comparative playfulness and lightness of her sculptures make me notice how all that grandeur had gradually turned into an exhausting grandiosity. Claudel's 1897 sculpture in onyx and bronze, "Les Causeuses ou Les Bavardes", offers something Rodin rarely seems to aim at: sheer pleasure in the experience of being human. The woman's sculpture of four women gives shape to a joy I did not see in the man's works, no matter how magnificent they are. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 July 2026)