Giacometti made this portrait of the British art critic David Sylvester in 1960:



I think a restful thing about Giacometti is the way different permutations of the same lines and shadings -- the same darkly scratched lines and the same shadings of gray, white, and black -- constitute both the figure and the ground.  

 

A person is a coalescence.  



And derives substantiality from the abstract.  



The longer you look, the more humane this seems.