Cage 1931

Alberto Giacometti made this ‘Cage’ sculpture out of wood in, well, we don’t actually know when. It's not really a cage, but more of a skeletal architecture, a framework for holding shapes, relationships, maybe even feelings. The grainy surface of the wood, it’s so unrefined, brings to mind the artist's touch, his hand moving through the material. You can almost see him assembling it piece by piece, adjusting the angles, deciding where each element should sit. That rake-like form on the right, for example. What's that doing in there? It’s a funny interruption, jutting out like that. And the cage itself, it's not symmetrical, not perfect. Giacometti wasn’t trying to hide the process, but rather reveal the messy, beautiful struggle of bringing something into being. It reminds me a little bit of David Smith's sculptures, they share that rawness, that feeling of things being made rather than found. Anyway, I never really think about sculpture as ever being finished, more like an ongoing conversation.