Me, myself … alone – Alberto Giacometti at the Tate Modern – Existentialism and Nobility of Humanity
Wandering through the Alberto Giacometti exhibition, I reflected on my initial thought: ‘the monumentality of mankind within a monumental landscape’.
The landscape – an anonymous block with the figure standing forth.
Giving the landscape an identity and purpose, a narrative: ‘Small Man on a Base’ completed whilst he was stranded in Switzerland with his mother in Geneva 1939 – 45.
Me, myself … alone – Giacometti Tate Modern London Existentialism Nobility Humanity
Returning to his beloved Paris after the War and leaving his earlier Surrealist work behind, Giacometti embarked on the works that he is most well-known for, his ‘stick’ figures.
To me Giacometti epitomises the Existentialist movement prevalent in Paris at the time. Jean-Paul Sartre …
… Simone de Beauvoir
and friends meeting at the Café de Flore Paris
and promulgating on the philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger’s phenomenology and taking it to their theories of the freedom of responsibility and individuality of … individuals.
Me, myself … alone – Alberto Giacometti at the Tate Modern
Here with Giacometti we have an interpretation of man and woman, standing alone, solitary, striding, movement and no movement.
Loneliness, wandering and lost? Alienated? Anxious? Maybe. Strength and solidity, striding forth to an unseen and unknown destination? Maybe.
My belief – mankind as brave and confident to move forward – by one’s self, alone within space.
Our individual call.
Me, myself … alone – Giacometti Tate Modern London Existentialism Nobility Humanity
The zeitgeist of the times. Standing proudly as a collection of individuals, not bending to the times, to the wind, to the prejudices and power of others, to the disasters of the War years.
To terrorism.
Humanity emerging at its noblest.
Alberto Giacometti
Me, myself … alone – Giacometti Tate Modern London Existentialism Nobility Humanity
The noble monumentality of the soul of mankind within the universe.