Hands Holding a Void 1935

This is Giacometti's print, "Hands Holding a Void," and I can imagine him working on this image, scratching away at the plate, trying to get at something elusive. There's a lone figure trapped in a chair, and they’re holding emptiness, as if it were a precious object. I wonder, what’s it like to be Giacometti making this? He repeats lines over and over, building them up, almost like he’s trying to find something that keeps slipping away. And those eyes, staring right through you, they’re unsettling. The hands make me think of a child cradling an imaginary friend. Giacometti's sculptures can feel like this, too. His figures are always reaching, always searching, as if he’s trying to grasp something just beyond reach. You can see he's in conversation with Picasso and maybe some surrealist art too. It's a conversation that goes way back, and continues to this day, with all of us artists making and looking, and thinking about what it all means. It's less about answers, and more about the ongoing search.