New york Christie's company Exception Auction price is 830 crores
There is something poignant and sublime about this tall and filiform sketch of a man named Man Pointing, whose creator was Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti. Measuring 70 ½ x 40 ¾ x 16 3/8 ” the bronze sculpture appeared in 1947 during the period called Post War Expressionism. The metal is worked in such a way as making the human figure appear charred, as if it had been burned. While stylized and reduced, the still recognizable human shape stands at the same time as frail and fragile and yet as physically grounded, balanced and strong. One arm is curved or bent in an awkward, elegant and embracing gesture, while the other one is extended, stretched out with the hand pointing as if showing a direction. The head is slightly turned toward that same direction. Every part of the body is dramatically elongated. The shape and the movement create a volume around, outside the sculpture. Looking at a two dimensional picture of the figure, we could see it fitting into an irregular diamond shape, as lines would intersect at the top of the head, at the end of each hand and at the feet. However, in the actual sculpture, the movements of the arms make us feel and see a palpable voluminous sphere of space and air around it. It’s not that the statue stands like inside a huge transparent bubble. Rather, it actually opens a great amount of space that seems to belong to the figure itself. What would be the focus? It seems to be this very immobile movement that creates space. Indeed, every part matters and relates to the others, but the face and the arms produce spatial volume, direction and strong emotions. The tormented texture all over the body, the disheveled, bewildered and anguished facial expression, the overall distortions and the impressive long neck emphasize a definite break from the classical “statues” that were made from anatomical knowledge and precise observation of the human body. In relation to the painting and literary movements of the time, we could place the Man Pointing as echoing and announcing the anguished quest that will characterize the Art Brut of a Dubuffet, and the tragic search for direction in the 50’s Absurdist movement when works by Beckett (Waiting for Godot, Molloy) will overlap with, and eventually submerge the efforts of existentialism.
