erhaps the most powerful thing that I saw this year was one of the smaller works of art, which. I found the emptiness here more interesting; without it, the hands could be interpreted not as a secret, but as a prayer or perhaps a pledge. It was only after I had been looking at it for quite some time that I realised that both are right hands (two versions of the same one), which might support any of those ideas. In any event, a strong emotional charge came from this little version, stronger, I’m sure, than from the bronze casts. The hand is believed to have been modelled on that of Loïe Fuller, an American-Parisienne modern dancer who was a friend of Rodin and who did have outward-curving thumbs.
