Here's one last memory of my November trip to Chicago to attend the annual meeting of the National Communication Association. While touring the Art Institute, I took an opportunity to meet Albert Giacometti's Walking Man II (1960). I'm told that postwar existentialists celebrated Giacometti's skill at articulating some semblance of the modern self: a crushed and beaten figure who somehow manages to move forward.
Taking these (admittedly low quality) mobile phone pix, I was intrigued by the museum curators' placement of Walking Man, given its commanding view of a Chicago skyscraper. One could interpret this scene in at least two ways: as affirmation of our abilities to build massive monuments to human ingenuity, or as proof that we are increasingly the tools of our tools, even that we're starting to resemble them. What do you think?
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