Giacometti is best known for his chiseled, elongated, stick thin figures, to my mind, they look like what Nuclear holocaust victims would look like, right before they disintegrated. But this, his piece by piece deconstruction of what the title says " a woman with her throat cut" seems to speak out to me, in it's bronze starkness, of the issue of violence against women.
It seems that this particular phenomenon has lost its kudos with the media, domestic violence so yesterday, so eighties, so over, and maybe with video games and popular culture glorifying a rise in extreme behavior in both genders people maybe a little unaffected by the idea of something so provincial as wife beating, rape, assault. To me, the sculpture symbolizes the price of breaking the silence, if a woman speaks up, she gets her throat slit. In many parts of the world that is still a reality. In many parts of the "civilized" world that is still a reality. In many parts of the private world, inhabited by men and women of science, art, literature, finance... that is still a reality. Teach your sons that a hand raised in anger is a slippery slope to hell, and teach your daughters to hit back, hit back, hit back and run for their lives.
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