Giacometti started his artistic career as a surrealist and cubist. Being a sculptor his cubistic work soon came to end as the purpose of cubism to create a multi perspective image without the renaissance perspective seemed overdone with a sculpture you can walk around anyway. But as a surrealist he earned glory and fame. Typically for that period his early work aimed to make abstractions of reality, which symbolizes the modern paradigm in which abstraction is considered to be approaching truth, just as in science. Famous is his Suspended Ball, a ball with a spike (a classic theme in surrealism), that represents an eye that gets stinged by a needle and is thus blinded. This symbolizes the march into pure rationality, disposing oneself of the misleading contingent perception and find absolute truth is mathematical (a priori) schemes.

In his later work Giacometti leaves abstraction and the ideal for an atomic representation of reality. This move was controversial in the art scene and with it Giacometti lost his reputation and respect among many. The focus in his work is from then on aimed at creating meaning in the context of his sculptures and visualizes his own perception of the world. One can say that instead of concentrating on a universalistic and rigid meaning in the sculpture, he then wants to emphazise the contingent and contextual meaning in the surroundings of the sculpture. His sculptures become tall, flat and out of proportion persons that invite you to walk around them and to orientate on their environment.

The holistic approach that Giacometti adopts in his later work is symbolic for a more networked way of thinking. To find the changing paradigm of an artist in this direction (many artists get more abstract over time) is something which I find an interesting analogy of the changing paradigm in society that we are researching. Moreover it is remarkable that this artist is honoured today with an enormous exhibition, after having been absent in the Dutch museums for years and years. Apperantly there is something in Giacometti which has attracted the attention of a wide audience and I am convinced this something is recognition.