Shepherd of the Landes 1951

Germaine Richier's "Shepherd of the Landes" stands in bronze, a figure emerging from a dream, maybe even a nightmare. The surface is gnarly, almost crustacean, as if the form grew rather than was constructed. I think Richier is all about the process, the push and pull of material, a slow accretion of meaning. Up close, the figure seems to be dissolving. The surface is eaten away, marked by time or some unknown force. Notice the legs, they're like stilts, elongated and precarious. They give the sculpture a feeling of instability, a sense that it might topple over at any moment. And the head - is it a skull, a mask, or some kind of monstrous mutation? Richier, like Giacometti, another artist obsessed with the figure, understood that art doesn't give answers, it poses questions. And those questions keep us looking, keep us thinking, keep us alive to the strangeness of the world.