Object Details
Artist
Alberto Giacometti
Date
1960
Medium
Bronze Edition 5/6
Dimensions
72 × 37 × 8 1/2 inches (182.9 × 94 × 21.6 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Percy Uris
Object
Number
76.005
As Alberto Giacometti began to sculpt the threadlike figures that he became famous for, his choic(…)
As Alberto Giacometti began to sculpt the threadlike figures that he became famous for, his choices were reinforced by a concurrent development of the phenomenological theories of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the late 1930s. Merleau-Ponty argued that space was ambiguous and that vision itself was not objective but rather sensory data synthesized by unconscious thought. Giacometti’s realization that vision is not stable is reflected in his representation of the figure as if seen from a great distance. It was the impossibility of capturing in his art what he actually saw that concerned Giacometti throughout his life. Associated with surrealism in the early ’30s, he shifted toward a figurative style based on an observable reality later in the decade. A series of family tragedies and mounting evidence of the atrocities of the Second World War ushered in Giacometti’s signature postwar style.
The figures, with their emaciation and isolation, were immediately celebrated as appropriate metaphors for the human condition in postwar Europe. Giacometti began to devote his time equally to drawing, painting, and sculpture, which might explain the almost painterly surfaces of his bronze sculptures. With traces of the artist’s kneading hands expressing at once angst and vitality, his bronze surfaces seem to flicker with light and shadow in such a way that it is almost impossible to perceive them as solid. He again and again attempted to render his vision, which was more about tracing the transitory act of seeing than defining a fixed reality, making Giacometti’s sculpture utterly relevant to contemporary audiences.
Walking Man II was a gift to our collection in 1976 from Mrs. Percy Uris. Born Joanne Diotte in 1900, she married Percy Uris in 1935. Percy and his brother, Harold D. Uris, Class of 1925 and Trustee emeritus, were Manhattan developers and builders. The brothers and their wives were among Cornell’s first 185 foremost benefactors, their names inscribed on the terrace of Uris Library. Joanne Uris died in 1985.
(Andrea Inselmann, A Handbook of the Collections, 2018)
