Exhibition: Giacometti Reimagined


Exhibition
Life & Times

Giacometti
Tate Modern, London, 10 May–10 
September 2017.

GIACOMETTI REIMAGINED
I met a stranger on a train and a week later 
we are at the Alberto Giacometti exhibition 
at the Tate Modern. I fear being smothered 
by the stench of decay, depression, and 
despair. A confrontation with atrocity and 
human isolation. A Godless world of self-
deception, anxiety and ego. A futile search 
for meaning when there is nothingness and 
suicide. Dear reader, I share with you the 
cluttered colours in my mind with honesty 
and sincerity, exposing my vulnerability and 

fragility, with rawness 
and trepidation.

I step inside with 
the vinyl music of Joy 
Division’s Closer playing 
in my mind. Immediately, 
the mundane transcends 
the exceptional to 
the sublime with 
Giacometti’s flirtations 
with cubism, primitivism, 
surrealism, violence, and 
sexuality: a plaster heart 
dangling by a thread; a 
scorpion with a half-cut 
throat; a peach and a 
melon making love. And I 
sense an affinity with his 
playwright friend Samuel 
Beckett and Waiting for 
Godot. 

I stroll into the piercing 
gaze and judgement of 
a group of elongated 
sculptures, Women of 
Venice. I see their tears, 
hear their screams, 
and suffer their scrutiny 
of my nakedness. The 
memories of a teenage 
romp through the 
ugliness of Nietzsche’s 
Thus Spoke Zarathustra 
cascade through my mind, causing crisis, 
confusion, and contradiction. 

I tiptoe towards Giacometti’s iconic 
sculptures of emaciated men: the artist’s 
response to the horrors of the Second 
World War; an assimilation of history and 
symbolism of opportunity. He embraces 
the philosophy of existentialism, of 
individual freedom and conscious choice, 
articulated by his friend Jean-Paul Sartre 
in his essay Being and Nothingness. He 
works frenetically, relentlessly, tenderly, 
and meticulously, reapplying, removing, 
smoothing, and ripping pieces of clay to 
create the essence of resilience and survival: 
trees without leaves. 

It is the distance between the figures, 
the aggressiveness of the void and the 
lingering hate in the silence that is so 
haunting. In this existential community there 
is no conversation, no celebration of trust, no 
encouraging and enabling relationship, no 
collaboration and fighting for shared values, 

no appreciation of spirituality, no solace in 
enduring love, no hope, no joy.

My companion whispers in my ear and 
we smile. I catch a glimpse of her beauty. 
I feel the compassion of a gentle caress. 
For a moment, memories and possibilities 
collide and she is the most important reason 
for my existence, for my being. Are we still 
strangers? Can we become friends? Will we 
be lovers? A transition from the cataracts 
of my mind and the steel scaffolding of my 
identity to the passion of my heart and the 
clarity of my soul. 

So, dear reader, go with a stranger, a 
friend, or a lover, to explore and discover the 
exceptional potential of every brief encounter 
and find meaning in your endeavour.

Sunil Bhanot,
RCGP Council member, Wessex Faculty Chair, and 
GP Partner at Holmwood Health Centre, Hampshire.

E-mail: gpnews@aol.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X691481

318  British Journal of General Practice, June 2017

Woman of Venice IV, 1956. Plaster, 121 × 16.5 × 
34.5 cm. Collection Foundation Alberto et Annette 
Giacometti, Paris. © Alberto Giacometti Estate, ACS/
DACS, 2017.

Diego Seated, 1948. Oil paint on canvas, 80.5 × 65 cm. Sainsbury Centre for 
the Visual Arts, Norwich. © Alberto Giacometti Estate, ACS/DACS, 2017.