I don’t create to make beautiful paintings of beautiful sculptures. Art is just a means of seeing. — Alberto Giacometti
The making of art for Giacometti was neither a matter of technique nor process, just a simple and absolute need. There is a deep psychological distance between us, the viewer, and the sculptures of Giacometti; a distance that may be read as a metaphor for the distance between the artist and his quest; an expression of his ‘horror of the infinite’, which is so powerfully felt in that inevitable and slightly disturbing space which surrounds his figures, whether sculptures, drawings or prints. This sense of isolation is a defining characteristic of Giacometti’s sensibility and thus of his work.
A mental image of the last sight of his friend and model Isabel Delmer, seen from afar after their goodbye in a street in Paris was her tiny and ever tinier figure within the ever more imposing space between the rows of house to her left and to her right — tiny and yet still a unique individual.
The intrusion of others into that quest of self-revelation is extraordinarily, even dramatically, demonstrated in his falling out with Sartre after a valued 25-year friendship. Sartre’s autobiography The Words included a surprising passage in which the author passes his own judgment and interpretation of Giacometti’s accident in late 1938 in the Place des Pyramides in Paris and the effect it had upon him. Whilst it was a serious ‘moment’ in Giacometti’s life, which he mentioned frequently and left him permanently lame. he felt deeply that it was his experience and his alone. Oddly Sartre chose to impose his own interpretation on this event and virtually put words into his friend’s mouth. Giacometti’s response was unequivocal: how dare his old friend judge another’s very private experience? The two did not speak again; and probably what most offended Giacometti was, the misinterpretation apart, the fact that a kindred spirit had assumed a right to intervene in another’s world.
The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
SCULPTURES
Reclining Woman Who Dreams, 1929. Painted bronze, 24.5 x 43 x 14 cm. Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Kunsthaus Zurich.
Woman with her Throat Cut, 1932. Bronze, 22 x 87.5 x 53.5 cm. Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
Flower in Danger, 1933. Wood, metal, string and plaster, 56 x 78 x 18 cm. Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Kunsthaus Zurich.
La Main / The Hand. 1947. Plaster, 65.5 x 79 x 12 cm. Fondation Alberto Giacometti, Kunsthaus Zurich.
Homme qui chavire, 1950–1951. Man Losing his Balance. Broze, h: 50 cm. Private Colletion.
Bust of Diego, 1954, Bronze, 26.7 x 20.5 x 11 cm. The Maeght Foundation.
Standing Woman I, 1960. Bronze, 270 x 54 x 36 cm. The Maeght Foundation.
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Alberto and Annette Giacometti on the stairway in the alleyway to the studio, ca. 1946. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 29.8 x 19.7 cm, 31.4 x 21.9 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Gordon Parks: Alberto Giacometti working in the Paris studio, 1951. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 34.5 x 22,7 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Gordon Parks: Alberto Giacometti with five sculptures, 1951. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 32.4 x 27.1 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Gordon Parks: Homme qui marche (Walking Man), 1951. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 33.9 x 27.3 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Gordon Parks: Trois Hommes qui marchent (Three Men Walking), 1951. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 34.5 x 27.5 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
David Kronig: Alberto Giacometti writing in the studio, Paris, ca. 1955. Gelative silver print on baryt paper, 23.4 x 19.1 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Robert Doisneau: Alberto and Annette Giacometti at Café Express, Paris, December 1957. Gelatine silber print on baryt paper, 25.6 x 20.3 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Ernst Scheidegger: Alberto Giacometti painting Yanaihara in the studio, Paris, 1959. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 29.6 x 20.7 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Kurt Blum: Alberto Giacometti in Eberhard W. Kornfeld’s office in Bern, 1959. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 17.2 x 11.4 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Alberto Giacometti on rue d’Alésia, Paris, 1961. Gelatine silber print on baryt paper, 29.6 x 20 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Franco Cianetti: Alberto Giacometti working on a bust of Annette, Paris, 1962. Gelatine silber print on baryt paper, 23.7 x 30.4 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Loomis Dean: Alberto Giacometti in the parlor in Stampa, ca. 1962. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 34 x 24 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Paola Salvioni Martini: Alberto and Annette Giacometti in Stampa, 1963. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 24.1 x 29.9 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Fotowerksätte Wölbing-van Dyck: Alberto Giacometti at the entry to his studio, Paris, 1965. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, probably tinted, 23.3 x 17.6 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Bo Boustedt: Alberto Giacometti in the park of the Louisiana Museum in Humlebk, 1965. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 39.6 x 30.2 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Annette. 1957. Oil on canvas, 73 x 60 cm. Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Kunsthaus Zurich.
The Artist’s Father, c. 1930–32. Oil on canbas, 40 x 32 cm. Private Collection.
The Artists Mother, 1950. Oil on canvas, 89.9 x 61 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Diego Seated, 1949. Oil on canbas, 80 x 54 cm. Trustees of the Tate Gallery, London.
Ottilia, c. 1934. Oil on canvas, 46 x 40 cm. Private collection. Switzerland.
(Left) Ernst Scheidegger: Isaku Yanaihara (矢内原伊作) sitting as a model for Alberto Giacometti in the studio, Paris, 1959. Gelatine silver print on baryt paper, 29.1 x 23.3 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum. (Right) Yanaihara by Alberto Giacometti, 1961. Colour plate 72, Oil on canvas, 54.5 x45.5 cm. Private collection.
DRAWINGS AND PRINTS
Self-portrait, 1965. Lithograph, 68 x 65 cm. The Maeght Foundation.
Copy based on Picasso, ca. 1953. Ballpoint pen on glossy paper (Art Digest, 1, December 1953, p.8, with addition “Giacometti a profile” by Hetra Wescher, pp. 17, 28–29), 30.8 x 21.9 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Two figure busts, ca. 1964. Ballpoint pen on glossy paper (L’Express, 23 to 29 November 1964), 28 x 20.3 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Three heads, one eye, and two sketches, ca. 1963/64. Ballpoint pen on newsprint (Les Lettres francasise, Arts, Sciences spectacles, no. 1.009, 26 December to 1 January 1964) 30.3 x 42 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
Two heads, one in profile and one frontal, 1957. Ballpoint pen on envelope. 21.6 x 26.5 cm. Bündner Kunstmuseum.
贾科梅蒂在给法国作家让·热内的一封信里说：One day, I saw myself in the street like that. I was the dog. 他后来回忆说：For a long time, I’d had in my mind the memory of a Chinese dog I’d seen somewhere. And then one day I was walking along the rue de Vanves in the rain, close to the walls of the building, with my head down, feeling a little sad, perhaps, and I felt like a dog just then. So I made that sculpture.
