Studio, 1950
"But he saw each line as a centripetal force. The face came back on itself, like a loop. Turn around: you won't find an outline, nothing but a middle. The line is the beginning of a negation, the journey from being to nonbeing. But Giacometti believed that the real is pure positiveness: there is being, and then suddenly it is no longer there. But from being to annihilation is not conceivable. Notice how the many strokes he draws are inside the form he depicts; see how they represent the intimate relation of the being with himself, the fold of a jacket, the wrinkle on a face, the projection of a muscle, the direction of a movement. All these lines are centripetal: they seek to contract and compress, they force the eye to follow them, and they lead always to the center of the figure. It is as though the face shrinks, the effect of some astringent substance: in a few minutes it will be only as big as a fist, like a shrunken head of the Jivaro Indians."