[김애란] 'Walking man'

'Walking man'  

By Kim Ae-ran

I think "Walking man" created by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) is not only a representative image of the 1960s but also of contemporary times. People in motion are constantly hurrying towards somewhere in big cities. 

Giacometti said, "Look at the people on the street. They don't have a sense of weight. In certain cases, they are lighter than dead and unconscious people. Without knowing, that is what I try to show through the process of cutting and making the thin silhouettes. That lightness!"

Each of us earnestly and passionately keeps walking in spite of all the destructive and negative signs of the times such as global warming, nuclear threats, sexual abuse, unexpected violence and natural disasters happening here and there in the world. 

Giacometti, a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman, and printmaker, is one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. It is said that even Picasso envied his particular vision in his works.

Giacometti was born in 1901 in Stampa, Switzerland. Influenced by his father, a painter, Giacometti at the age of 13 started his work of plaster sculpture with his brother, Diego as a model, and, in 1922, he moved to live in Paris. 

He won the Grand Prize for sculpture in 1962 and died of heart disease and chronic bronchitis in 1966. Since December last year in Korea, about 135 creative works of art are exhibited at Seoul Arts Center, which will stay until April this year.

He was first influenced by Cubism and Surrealism, but, later in the 1930s, he was most interested in philosophical existentialism, phenomenology, expressionism, and formalism. Like Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), he put the fundamental philosophical questions about the human conditions in extremely small or tall, and slender figures.

Out of the reduced and emptied images, he tried to create the essence of life which he perceived as the sign of alienation, anxiety, loneliness, melancholy, disintegration and destruction. The motif of the suffering human figure as a symbol of post-war trauma is well expressed in stick figures sometimes almost reduced to a thread. 

His figures look beaten, yet they still stand tall and upright without losing their sense of dignity. Perhaps his struggling agony came not only from the desperate post-war situation but also from his hurt and dissatisfaction with three women, Isabel, Annette Arm and Caroline. 

"In the end, I got up. And I stepped forward. I don't know where to go and where the end is. Nevertheless, I walk. That's it. I have to walk on."

The walking man leans forward to an unknown destination with sunken but staring eyes, tiny head, clenched fists, big club-feet, thin and slender arms and legs. Truly, "the sculpture contains the person, and the person contains the soul." 

How to see and how to capture what we see makes a difference. The confident affirmation of Giacometti in the form of "Walking man" reminds me of the Blessed Fr. Alberione, the Founder of the Pauline Family, who always asked of himself, and of us as well, as follows: "Where is humanity going, how is it moving, toward what goal? Humanity is like a gigantic river flowing into eternity. Where is it going?"

Living in the 21st century, we, consecrated Pauline sisters, are seriously and desperately asking the same question of us. Considering those questions, all the members of the Daughters of St. Paul in Korea recently gathered together in three groups to discuss the hectic problems, challenges, vision and new initiatives. 

Where is humanity going? How is it moving? Toward what goal is it moving? 

The author is a member of the Daughters of St. Paul (Figlie di San Paolo) living and giving the Good News to the world by means of social communication. Learn more about the congregation at fsp.pauline.or.kr.