To some degree, artists do want to imagine an alternative to the "real world," but their work means more when it is seen in relation to the times. It does not necessarily have to mimic herd-thought; it resists, it revises. That Giacometti created his distorted people in a Paris that was just recovering from the destruction of World War II is important. We can imagine reasons for their laceration and their stoic will to go on. They express an anxiety about and alienation from an earlier era's easy beauty. These figures are beautiful not because they are blooming with health, but because they look like they have suffered and yet managed to go on.
The physical setting of Giacometti's works also helps us to enjoy them. There is a delightful dissonance between the crusty, lean human figures and the smooth, generous square on which they walk in "City Square" (1948). A white marble sculpture like "The Artist's Father" (1927) makes us conscious of lighting: The way that the shadows fall in the room line up exactly to Giacometti Sr.'s receding hairline. The whiteness of his bald pate just glows and you can't help but think Giacometti got some wry delight out of that.
Consider, also, how Giacometti refused to be boxed into one medium. He did a lot of painting between 1949 and 1965. And anyone can tell that the person who painted the portraits of Annette also worked with metal: Gray steel, rust, tar, and abrasion aren't in the typical portrait painter's palette. Giacometti also made drawing three-dimensional. The protruding veins in the paper of "Figures in an Interior" (1946) make you think he drew on the paper from the other side to remind you that drawings need not be flat.
Art can't mean much when it is hermetically sealed off. It gains in relation to the world. In a time of anxiety, Giacometti's anxious figures serve as both a reminder that people before us have dwelled much on suffering and a reassurance that there is a human will to go on.
"Giacometti as the Sartre of sculpture, the heavy-hearted Existentialist of emaciated women and anguished men, might lead you to imagine him the right subject for troubled times. But that would be the wrong reason to see this exhibition," says Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times. The right reason to see the show, Kimmelman says, is that, "like all perceptive and eloquent art, it tells you why it is good to be alive. It investigates the pleasure of thinking and looking long and hard, which is never as simple as it sounds."
This is what I was reminded of, walking through the galleries. Thought and contemplation are so necessary in our times, though it is difficult to clear a space for them when other demands press on us. The Giacometti exhibition asks us to look from multiple angles, to think about what a change in light might do to a sculpture, to consider an artist's lived experience. What can be a heavy black pencil mark on one side can be the rise of a white ridge on the other. Such art isn't so much a retreat from politics as a reminder to get involved--to see what it really means when you make a mark. At a time when our leaders are apt to wear blinders, this is something I wish everyone would consider.
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Reaction #1: All hail sculpture
Reaction #2: It's all relative
Reaction #3: What a confused attitude toward women
Reaction #4: Let's think about context