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Rachel Cohen

Giacometti

Giacometti at the New Fogg

Giacometti at the New Fogg

Giacometti, Portrait of David Sylvester, 1960, detail, Fogg Museum


Giacometti made this portrait of the British art critic David Sylvester in 1960:

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I think a restful thing about Giacometti is the way different permutations of the same lines and shadings -- the same darkly scratched lines and the same shadings of gray, white, and black -- constitute both the figure and the ground.  

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A person is a coalescence.  

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And derives substantiality from the abstract.  

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The longer you look, the more humane this seems.  

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