.

No surprise that Alberto Giacometti

was hungry for expression in his mid

40's, and as such, eliminated mass

and volume from his walking men

(and women) series. His clay figures

were long and lean, perhaps because

Giacometti's postwar WW 2 Paris

was populated by so many emaciated

veterans and victims. Attenuated

figures with hollow eyes.

His forms breathe solitude as they

stride towards some unnamed horizon.

But they are also caught up in the coming

and going of lonely crowds. Perhaps they

are a visual manifestation of Giacometti's

belief that an individual's life force is best

evidenced in the natural balance of (his)

walking. In an epoch of abstraction,

Giacometti stretched the limits of

representation towards the push-pull

frenzy of modern metropolitan life.

For example, his portrait of a friend,

Jean Genet, depicts a traditional 17th

C pose, but is one that conveys a sense

of solitude (which Genet referred to

as a "wound").

“Beauty has no other origin than

the singular wound, different in

every case, hidden or visible, which

each man bears within himself,”

wrote playwright Jean Genet.

“Giacometti’s art seems to me

determined to discover this secret

wound in each being and even in

each thing, in order to illuminate

them.”

The artist's solitude is likely filled with

self-doubt. But art, like writing, is not a

wound one bears (unless one loves to pick

at scabs). More likely, art is a flightpath

to freedom. A sense of lifting up and out,

in a quest for connectedness.

"If I am only what I am, I am indestructible.

Being what I am, and unconditionally, my

solitude knows yours.'"

(Jean Genet, The Studio of Alberto Giacometti)