NOWHERE MEN
After seeing the Giacometti retrospective at the Guggenheim, one considers his work in a new way. His figures are sculptures and also portraits. They are not abstract symbols for the human condition but depictions of this person and that person, though those individuals may not be named. Each figure has the nuances, character, and dignity of a real human person; it carries a soul. Some of the loveliest pieces are of his wife Annette.
The show also offers lessons about scale. It’s a handsome installation, the best sculpture installation I can remember at the museum. Larger than life-size figures have been placed singly, in private niches on low pedestals, and cast dramatic shadows across the curving outer walls. Small figures are collected in standing vitrines closer to the inner railing, and are swallowed in streams of museum visitors. Medium-sized pieces are set in groups on low curved tables that permit views from both the front and the back. Surprisingly, it’s these mid-sized pieces that have the most powerful presence. Together, they make engaging compositions that call one forward.
Even those figures that share a platform or base seem entirely disconnected from one another, entirely alone. Whether walking about or standing still, they worry. To consider numbers of them at once is shattering. These impossibly elegant figures, who we see as real men and women, are doomed by their individuality, They cannot connect to the world around them, or to each other.
Photograph courtesy of the Guggenheim Museum.