Alberto Giacometti : [Brochure] the Museum of Modern Art, October 11, 2001-January 8, 2002

Alberto Giacometti : [brochure] the Museum of Modern Art, October 11, 2001-January 8, 2002

Author Giacometti, Alberto, 1901-1966

Date 2001

Publisher The Museum of Modern Art

Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/165

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists.

FLOORPLANS

Galleries

1/2 FromStampa to theEarly Years in Paris,1918-27 3 Representationand Abstraction: Portrait Heads, Summer 1927 4 PlaqueSculptures, Signs in Space:The Beginnings of Surrealism,1928-30 5/6 Surrealism,1930-34 7 InSearch of a NewWay of Seeing,1934-45 8/9 PostwarParis, 1947-51 10/11 Returningto Painting,1949-65 12 Drawings,1951-64/Studies of Diego and Annette: 1950-54 13 TheWomen of Veniceand Figures for a PublicProject, 1956and i960 14 TheLast Years, 1962-65

1 LyA\ hoHA

ALBERTOGIACOMETTI AlbertoGiacometti has been credited with the invention of "a wholenew tribe of people."Even for thoseonly slightly famil iar with twentieth-centuryart, animage of Giacometti'stribe leapsto mind.It is dominatedby frail, elongated,impossibly slenderrepresentations of figures:standing women and walking menwith kneaded, gouged, and palpably animated surfaces, modeledin clayor plasterand then cast into bronze.First created in thelate 1940s in Giacometti'stiny, crampedstudio in Paris,a citythen still reelingfrom the devastatingimpact of WorldWar II, thesefigures continue to hauntthe popularimagination when everGiacometti's name is invoked. Thereare, however, other sides to Giacometti.Chief among themis the youngartist who began making elliptically erotic, essentiallyabstract sculptures in thelate 1920s—sculptures that, withina fewshort years, would catapult him to theforefront of the ParisianSurrealist avant-garde. There is alsoGiacometti the painter-sculptor-draftsman,anartist who moved between medi umswith a fluidity unseenin anyof the othermodern masters of the pastcentury, with the exceptionsof PabloPicasso and Henri Matisse.The present retrospective-the first to beheld in a New Yorkmuseum in overa generation-aimsto redressstereotypical notionsof Giacomettiand to showhis artistic achievement in its truerichness and diversity. The exhibition affords the opportunity to seeGiacometti's sculpture in its full developmentalrange (from1919 through 1965), and reveals his great gifts asa painter anddraftsman. It featuressome ninety sculptures, forty paintings, andsixty drawings, many of which-inparticular the fragile plas ter, wood,and terra-cotta works of theartist's pre-World War II, or avant-garde,period-have rarely been seen in NewYork. Giacomettimade his first lastingimpression on an American audiencein 1948,with a retrospectiveexhibition of hiswork at the PierreMatisse Gallery, New York. Including his new, attenuated figures,this showwas accompanied by a cataloguecontaining an essayby the influential existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre,and marked the inception of interpretationsof Giacometti's work as revealingthe anxiety and alienation of twentieth- centurylife. Eventoday, over half a centurylater, while readings of theartist's work have multiplied, this "existentialist"view of hisartistic achievement continues to exerta powerfulhold. Giacometti,however, characterized his project in verydifferent terms.He saw himself as a realist,attempting the "impossible"

2 projectof representingthe appearance of things as he saw them, in a manneracknowledging that ourcomprehension of the per ceivedworld is neverfixed but constantly subject to change.His preoccupationwith what he described as "rendering my vision" led himfirst to radicallyreimagine the forms of modernsculpture andsubsequently to returnto drawing,painting, and sculpting fromthe model,rendering these most conventional aspects of academicdiscipline powerful in importantnew ways. AlbertoGiacometti was born near Stampa, in the remote valleyof the Bregaglia,in thesoutheastern Swiss Alps, on October 10,1901.His parents, Annetta Giacometti-Stampa and the Post- Impressionistpainter Giovanni Giacometti, came from families withdeep ties to the region.Despite their relativeisolation, they wereon the friendliestof termswith prominent Swiss artists of thetime: Augusto Giacometti, one of thetwentieth century's ear liest adventurersinto abstraction,was a cousinof both;the Fauvistpainter Cuno Amiet was the godfatherof theirfirstborn, Alberto;and the Symbolistpainter Ferdinand Hodler of their youngest,Bruno. Alberto's boyhood years attached him firmly to thevalley of hisbirth, and his first experiencesof art meshed seamlesslywith a closefamily life. Manyhappy hours spent in hisfather's studio provided the boywith an early and natural training.If Alberto'svocation as an artist was never in doubt,it yet poseda quandaryin hislate teens: how to choosebetween sculptureand painting. Aftersome cursory formal training in Genevaand travels in Italy,Giacometti would seem to haveresolved his dilemma when, in Januaryof 1922,he enrolled in Emile-AntoineBourdelle's sculptureclass at theAcademie de la GrandeChaumiere, in Paris. Withthe exceptionof threewartime years, Giacometti would henceforthlive in Parisuntil hisdeath in 1966,although he would makefrequent and sometimes lengthy visits to Stampa.These twovastly different places were the vital pointsof Giacometti's life, at the centerof hisenergies and creativity.

3 1/2 FROMSTAMPATOTHE EARLY YEARS IN PARIS,1918-27 Giacometti'sextraordinary natural gifts, togetherwith his early training,had made him an accomplished artist even before leaving highschool in the springof 1919.The sculpture, drawings, and paintingshe produced in Stampabetween 1918 and his arrival in Parisin 1922reflect his close contact with contemporarySwiss modernismas well as his serious study of traditionalEuropean art. In onepair of drawingsfrom 1918of himselfand his mother, heturns the facesto a three-quarterview and cultivates stylistic traitsthat recallat onceAlbrecht Diirer and Nicolas Poussin; in a secondpair, the facesare frontal and subjected to a treatment stronglyreminiscent of Hodler.A small,exquisitely modeled headof his brotherBruno from 1919is classicallytraditional but infusedwith a sweetgentleness that is closeto the Gothic. Dramaticin conceptand execution, Giacometti's Self-Portrait of 1921reveals much about the youngartist. In this, the largest paintinghe would make until 1947,Giacometti drew together all that he hadlearned from his father in animage of himselfas masterof histrade. The sure touch of brushand the flattened patterningof bright,densely packed tonal values show his easy controlover the paternalPost-Impressionist style. Intensely self-aware,the pose,set againstthe backgroundof the father's studio,is bold,and so mindfulof the bordersof the canvasthat the figurestrategically escapes their bounds.Literally and metaphorically,the picturereads as a declarationof the artist's intentto movebeyond the familiarworld of his youth.Whether Giacomettiknew at the time of its executionthat it would be oneof hislast serious adventuresinto paintingfor manyyears is questionable; in hindsight,though, the paintingsignals his move to Parisand his imminent shift towardsculpture. Self- Portraitjoints significantly to the futurein another sensealso: to beassessed as a whole,the paintingwants the viewerto lookat it across the planeof its surface, Self-Portrait.1921. Oil on canvas, 32%x 28%"(82.5 x 72cm). AlbertoGiacometti-Stiftung, Zurich butto engagefully withits

4 subject,the paintingdemands that the viewerstand squarely in front of the figure,in anexchange of gaze.Giacometti would frequentlystrive for this obligatoryreciprocity of lookingin the 1920sand 1930s, and would come to pursueit with obsessive passionin the postwaryears. ByJanuary 1922, some six monthsafter the completionof Self-Portrait,Giacomettiwas in Paris,enrolled in Bourdelle's highlyreputed sculpture class. Training comprised modeling and drawingfrom life with occasionalcomments and corrections by Bourdelle.Although their temperaments and aesthetic views were muchat variance,the five yearsGiacometti-at times sporadi cally-attendedclasses were of fundamentalimportance to him. Hisfirst threeyears in Pariswere a periodof apprenticeshipfor the oncesupremely self-confident young artist. The process of learning,unlearning, and absorbing took placeonly partially in Bourdelle'sstudio. Paris was rich with possibilities—amongthem the Museede l'Homme and its collectionsof tribaland Oceanic art, the Egyptianrooms at the Louvre,and the presenceof contem porarysculpture by ConstantinBrancusi, Aleksandr Archipenko, HenriLaurens, and Jacques Lipchitz, all of whomhad to a greater or lesserdegree assimilated Cubist principles into their art. Only a few experimentsin sculpturesurvive from Giacometti's early studentyears in Paris,and these were made in Stampa,to which the artistwould regularly return for a monthor moreat a time. Hislife drawingsand notebook comments, however, reveal the problemshe was having finding a styleof his own. In Torso(1925), Giacometti established the rootsof his workto come.A small,intensely compelling piece, Torso has justifiablybeen related to almostall of the constellationof Parisianpresences enumerated above, as it haswith equal justice beenuniversally recognized as stamped by Giacometti'sown personality-hisfirst unequivocallymodern sculpture. Torso's stereometricasymmetry most immediately recalls Fernand Leger'sseries of paintingsContrast of Forms(1913-14), and its innervitality bringsto mindcertain of Brancusi'ssculptures, thusaccomplishing in its ownway Giacometti's increasing desire to effecta unionof the geometricand the organic.Made during a time whenGiacometti felt compelledto returnto the origins of the humanexpressive need, Torso is possessedof an uncanny sexualallure and wholeness at oddswith its truncatedparts. Likemany of the sculpturesthat wouldfollow, Torso provokes surprisingassociations. Its two contrapuntalmovements, the

5 descendingbody and the ascendinglegs, have been variouslyinterpreted: the femalebody as phallic obelisk;the bodyassuming a treelikeaspect (as though reenactingthe nymph Daphne'sarboreal metamor phosis);an arrow plunged into the earth,solidly anchoredby a pedestalset onthe bias.Another reading of Torsointerprets the legs as openingand rising, creating Torso.1925. Plaster, 22 % x 9% x 9'/«" (58x 25x 24cm). AlbertoGiacometti-Stiftung, Zurich a concavespace between thighsand trunk that, togetherwith the pronouncednotch of the right hip, modelsnot onlythe sculpturebut also the space aroundit. Here,as is evenmore evident in hisfigures of women thatwould come after World War II, Giacomettishows himself to bean artist who works as much with light aswith mass. Thecreation of Torsocoincided with Giacometti'smounting anxietiesworking from life in Bourdelle'sclass. Even though he did notdefinitively leave until 1927,his attendance became more andmore fitful ashe devoted himself with energyto working out of his ownhead. Of the seriesof worksthat followed,some seempredominantly influenced by Cubism,others by tribal art, andyet others(such as the paintedterra-cotta Dancers of 1927) combinethe two genresin startling,unexpected ways. Common to his useof bothidioms was a tendencyto structurehis sculp turesas virtually two-sided reliefs, thus perversely accentuating their eccentricprofiles. Almost all of the worksof this period haveto do withabstracted metaphorical bodies, and are dense withintimations of the sensationsof physicalencounter. Giacometti'smost famous and imposing piece of the second half of the 1920sis the monumentalSpoon Woman (1926-27). Herfigure combines planes and volumes derived from Cubism with a conceptbased most probably on spoonsused by the Dan tribe in centralAfrica. The largest sculpture Giacometti had yet made,Spoon Woman has a vastconcave belly surmounted by a tiny waistand sharply geometric bust and head. Set on a pedestal combiningthe curvedand the rectilinear,she yields dramatic frontaland rear views and a literally breathtakingprofile. The

6 figure'sgreat, spoon-shaped belly inevitably associates woman with nourishment,hunger, pleasurable sensation, and fertility. Thefirst in whattwo decadeslater would become a procession of standingfemale figures, Spoon Woman, for all hermassive presenceand reproductive promise, anticipates important char acteristicsof heryounger, thread-thin sisters of the 1940sand 1950sin herinsistent symmetry, hunched, almost Etruscan shoulders,and slender, if moreemphatic, profile. Beyondthis, SpoonWoman shares with the laterattenuated figures the cre ationof a notionaldistance from the spectator.Her proportions somehowmanage to implythat sheis verynear. The effect forecastsGiacometti's postwar efforts to bendthe illusionistic effectsof paintingto sculpture,and it reflectshis view that the physicalincongruities of Africanfigures, with their largeheads andshort legs, were not, asprevalent assumption had it, con ceptual.Instead, he said, they representwhat one actually sees whenstanding opposite and close to anotherperson: the head, facingone's own, is enlarged,while the legsappear to diminish. Onlyfifty-seven inches high, Spoon Woman seems monumental, endowedwith ritual,elemental force.

3 REPRESENTATIONANDABSTRACTION: PORTRAIT HEADS, SUMMER1927 WhenGiacometti returned to Stampain the summerof 1927 afterhaving produced Spoon Woman and various other sculptures in whichhe hadexplored the boundariesbetween abstraction andrepresentation through forms born of the imagination,he set himselfa taskof moreperplexing order. By definition, the portraitbust is representational;but those Giacometti made of his motherand father in the summerof 1927interrogate that definition-how,and how far, couldhe take an abstracting styl- izationand yet preservelikeness. And the questionposes itself: whyattempt such a perverseendeavor? The answer lies in Giacometti'sobsessive will to renderhis "vision"-to capture visiblepresence (for whichrepresentation would do nicely) andat the sametime to graspthe ungraspableessence or core of humanencounter (which style alone could attempt). Giacomettibegan by workingbefore his modelswhile at the sametime easing tentatively toward distortions of naturalistic representation.The subsequent busts of his motherand father retainthe characteristicsby whichwe recognize the subjects, althoughtheir renderingstrays far fromthe traditional.In a

7 bronzeof Giovanni—77zeArtist's Father (flat andengraved)-the front half of the headis shearedflat, hisfeatures engraved onto its surface.In a marble—77zeArtist's Father, the mostradically abstractedof the series—the headis alsoa flat triangularplane, barelyinterrupted by the exquisitelydelicate relief indications of mouth,nose, and eyes. Although scarcely inflected by sculptural incident,this smallmarble mass bears an unmistakablelikeness to its sitter,and, in certainlights, its verymateriality seems to speakof the immaterial-ofephemeral, vanishing presence. A relativelyrealistic bronze of Annetta,The Artist's Mother (1927),plays with Giacometti'salready demonstrated penchant for the two-sidedlow reliefsculpture, but herethere seems an inclinationto fool the spectator. Although the bust is vi rtually stripped of front-to-backmass, the modelingof the head,when viewed frontally,seems to promisea greaterthree-dimensionality than its plaquelikedepth provides.

4 PLAQUESCULPTURES, SIGNS IN SPACE:THE BEGINNINGS OFSURREALISM, 1928-30 Returningto Parisin 1927,Giacometti and his youngerbrother Diegomoved into the tiny, ramshacklestudio at 46, rue Hippolyte-Maindronthat the artistwould occupy until his death in 1966.That winter he spent working on a seriesof flat sculptures whosecontours are very like thosein the previoussummer's portraitof his mother.Highly suggestive of Cycladicart, these plaquesculptures (as they havecome to be known)are close to whollyabstract, yet they projectan uncannysense of human presence.The most telling pieceis GazingHead (1928): from a flat, gentlyundulating plaster surface, two eyes-soft, elliptical indentations,one vertical, the otherhorizontal-gaze out. Lookingback at theseblind eyes, the viewer'ssight is arrested asthough encountering a mute wall. Butthe insistentviewer wholooks directly into the eyesof this silenthead will find that it hasswitched into a profile.Gazing, it allowsno returnof gaze, in an eeriereversal of the rolesof spectatorand object. Themarvelous qualities of GazingHead immediately attractedthe attentionof Surrealistartists and writers when it wasexhibited in 1929at the GalerieJeanne Bucher. At the sug gestionof the eminentcritic CarlEinstein, Michel Leiris wrote the veryfirst, still spellbindingarticle on Giacometti,for Georges Bataille'snew magazine, Documents. Suddenly Giacometti's friendswere tout Paris-or at leastavant-garde Paris. Whether

8 partisansof Surrealism'spope, Andre Breton, or of the great dissident,Bataille, the membersof Surrealism'spantheon embracedGiacometti. Theyear after producinghis plaquesculptures, Giacometti begana seriesof smallopen-work constructions, sometimes describedas signs in space.Where identity in the plaquesculp turesis suggestedby ideogramsimpressed onto the compact massof an opaquesurface, the processis reversedin the suc ceedinggroup, where the signifyingmark is delineatedby the openspace around it. Giacometticalled these pieces "a kind of skeletonin space.. . transparentconstructions." One of the mostsuccessful of theseis RecliningWoman Who Dreams (1929).The three vertical posts at eachend have just sufficient massto actas lines of forcein an otherwiselaterally floating composition;yet they arealso the postsof a bed,whose curving undulationssuggest at oncethe formof the recumbentwoman andthe wavesof the dreampossessing her. Read as oneiric

/.«s/n" RecliningWoman Who Dreams. 1929. Bronze, painted white, gViix 1615 x 5 (24x 43x 13.5cm). AlbertoGiacometti-Stiftung, Zurich landscape,her head, at the left, becomesthe moonabove mov ing water,and the thrustof the threediagonal elements the penetratingsubstance of the dreamer'sdream. Such"perforated" sculptures, in Leiris'swords, as Reclining WomanWho Dreams and Man (Apollo)-also of 1929—werecriti calto the evolutionof a conceptof cagelikeconstruction that the artistwould further elaborate throughout his life. Oneof the first andbest-known of theseis SuspendedBall (1930).Exhibited in the GaleriePierre Loeb in the springof 1930,the objectcaused a furorin AndreBreton's circle. Surrealism's most exciting new recruit,Salvador Dali, described it as"a woodenball, stamped

9 witha femininegroove.. . suspendedby a violinstring over a crescentthe wedgeof whichbarely grazes the cavity.The spec tatorfinds himself instinctively compelled to slidethe ball up anddown the ridge,but the lengthof stringdoes not allowfull contact."As Dali notes, Suspended Ball is a tease.Like other sculpturesto come,it createsan expectationthat its movement will achievea certainend, and that expectationis thenthwarted. Anotherpreoccupation that wouldprove to be of long durationemerged in the first two yearsof the 1930sin the form of modelsfor environmentalsculptures. The first (andmost astonishing)is Projectfor a Passageway(1930), realized only asa plastermodel. Its structureand whiteness reminded Bruno Giacomettiof the houseshis brotherhad constructed out of snowas a child-roofless,they were strung together in boxesas thoughpart of a game.The adult Alberto's plaster passageway hasits ownplaylike aspects-a metaphor for the interiorof a woman'sbody, it is intended,at full scale,to be enteredand negotiated.The potent erotic charge of the modelis manifest evenbefore its abstractparts cohere in the viewer'seye and solicitan imaginary voyage. Beyond its compellingpresence, Project'shorizontality and its potentialviability as an object withouta basehave given it historicalimportance in the innova tionsGiacometti brought to twentieth-centurysculpture.

5/6 SURREALISM,1930-34 Bythe endof 1930,Suspended Ball had established Giacometti asthe newstar of Breton'sfaction of the dividedSurrealist group;his allegiance was not, however,total, andhe neverfully acceptedits doctrines.Suspended Ball hasbeen credited with launchingthe Surrealistvogue for objectmaking, and has also beenseen as an avatar of notionsof the "formless"as advocated by Surrealism'sgreat anti-Bretonian, Bataille. The contradic tory flexibility of Giacometti'sposition undoubtedly owes to an inflexibilityinherent to his owncreative nature. For all that both branchesof Surrealismappealed to histemperament, he was a sculptorwhose commitment to plasticintegrity was too independent,too ingrainedto be fundamentallyaltered by Surrealism'sstrictures of whateverstripe. Giacometti's unique achievementwas to demonstratethat Surrealismand modern sculptureneed not be mutuallyexclusive domains. His works fromthe early1930s are radical on manylevels, including the historyof modernsculptural form. Ranging from portable objects,

10 to workswith movablecomponents, to modelsfor environments in whichthe spectatorwas intended to moveabout, the work reconceivesthe relationshipbetween art andaudience. Pointto the Eye(1932) recasts the terrainof sculptureas a horizontalgame board or playingfield. HereGiacometti con frontsan impassive skull-like head mounted on partof a rib cagewith a slender,tapering blade whose stiletto pointthrusts directlytoward an eyesocket. The implied menace is unmistak able,but the fictiveaction in this ritualizeddrama of violation anddeath can no morebe completedthan the ball andcrescent wedgecan meet in SuspendedBall-the blade,supported by a largepin, canonly swivel on its pivot.On one level Point to the Eyesymbolically rehearses the tenserelationship between the subject'sand artist's seeing eye and the reciprocalgaze of the objectand world seen; on another,it is a pawnin the artist's ongoingattempt throughout the Surrealistperiod to makesculp turethat will inciteactive, if onlyimaginary, participation—that will pull the beholderinto its spatialcontinuum. Oneof the greatmasterpieces of the early1930s is Woman with tier ThroatCut (1932). Although this extraordinaryassem blageof partsdoes not conform to the Surrealists'interest in the object,nor to theiremphasis on spontaneous creation, the sculp ture'sunprecedented sexuality and violence would have fed directlyinto their concerns.It representsa womanstrangled, her jugularvein cut-but there is scarcelya formwithout several meanings.Death and the artist havemelded the figureinto a beingthat is partwoman, part crustacean, part reptile, and part

Womanwith Her Throat Cut. 1932. Bronze, 8 x 34'/, x 25"(20.3 x 87.6x 63.5cm). TheMuseum of ModernArt, New York. Purchase insect.Yet placed on the floor withouta base,as Giacometti intended,the jumble of bodyparts and splayed legs powerfully conveysthe imageof a womanwho has been raped and mur dered.It wasGiacometti's wish that the phallicpod, movably attachedto the armbending over the head,be heldin the woman'sleaflike hand. Dead, the womanis not dispossessedof Freudianmenace: in additionto whatmay be the souvenirthat sheholds in herhand, the fangedshapes of herrib cageand hip bonesimpersonate the feared vagina dentata of Surrealistobses sion.The iconography of this pieceis so powerfulthat it tendsto delayour recognition that its intensityand energy issue from Giacometti'smastery of formalsculptural concerns. It is perhaps relevant,however, to rememberhis own words: "In everywork of artthe subject is primordialwhether the artist is awareof it or not. Thegreater or lesserformal quality is nevermore than a signof the greateror lesserobsession of the artistwith hissubject." Caress(Despite Hands) was probably made somewhat laterin 1932than Woman with HerThroat Cut. In spiteof its ini tial enigmatic,even hermetic appearance, Caress immediately seemsto radiatehuman presence and sensuality. Its prominent convexcurvature is usuallyinterpreted as the bellyof a preg nantwoman, and the staggeredcuts opposite as shorthand for the backbone.The incised hands on bothsides of the slender (if seenfrontally) arched body are those of a mancaressing a woman.The silhouettes of the handsseem to becontours result ing fromtracing around actual hands (if so, morelikely than not,the artist's).The title, image,and form of this sculpture indicatea turningaway from violent content toward figures such asthe life-sizeWalking Woman of the followingyear. Privileged by history,we can see in this developmentthe artist'sgradual evolutiontoward the workof his postwaryears. HandsHolding the Void(Invisible Object), Giacometti's first large,representational image of a wholehuman figure, appearedin 1934.Highly stylized, a nudefemale figure balances on a sort of throne,which, together with the pillory-likeboard coveringher shins, appears to forma partialcage restraining herfrom any action other than the gestureshe makes with her hands.These, held in front of heras though holding something, holdnothing. There have been numerous interpretations, none conclusive,of whatthe heldvoid represents, and the artist him self wasdeeply evasive on that point.As has been suggested, it mayindeed be the voiditself that is grasped.Carl Einstein, one

12 s/i»" Caress(Despite Hands). 1932. Marble, i87i«x197jx6 (47.5x49-5x16cm). Musee national d'artmoderne, CentreGeorges Pompidou, Paris of Giacometti'searliest and most percipient critics, had written, "Thework of art is a protectionagainst the invisiblethat prowls everywhereand frightens: a barrieragainst the diffuseanimism that threatens."Of whatever it consistsor doesnot, this void seemsoffered to the spectatorwho advances into the field of the girl'ssightless gaze. Those eyes that stareblankly belong to a headthat Giacomettihad despaired of everfashioning; while walkingaround a flea marketwith Breton,he hadprovidentially comeupon a metalmask that struckhim as exactly right for his figure'shead. Breton himself had discovered a ratherunusual spoon,and made much of the "twofinds that Giacomettiand I madetogether," seeing in this marvelousoperation of fate evi denceof analmost mystical bond between them. Ironically, by the endof the yearGiacometti was to shockBreton by suddenly devotinghimself to modelinga headfrom life, andBreton to appallGiacometti by protestingthat everyoneknew what a head was.Giacometti's ties to Breton'sSurrealist circle were subse quentlyonly selectively maintained.

7 INSEARCH OFA NEWWAY OF SEEING, 1934-45 Bythe endof 1934,Giacometti had become convinced that only by returningto life studiescould his art approachan adequate expressionof "the totality of life." Rememberingthis juncture in his career,Giacometti said that "the desire"had come "to makecompositions with figures,for this, I hadto make(quickly I thought)one or twostudies from nature,just enoughto understandthe constructionof a head,of a wholefigure, and

in 19351took a model.This should take me two weeks... . Nothingturned out as I hadimagined." The projected two weeks stretchedout to morethan ten yearsof intenseactivity and experimentationthat broughtrelatively little returnuntil the mid-l940s.During this period,his circleof friendsshifted and grewto includeSamuel Beckett and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others.Internationally, his reputationwas growing, with his first NewYork exhibition in 1935and, in 1936,the inclusionof ThePalace at 4 a.m.in TheMuseum of ModernArt's Fantastic Art, Dada,Surrealism exhibition. Purchased by the Museum, the sculptureremained in NewYork on prominentdisplay. Thelong decade of Giacometti'stransition to his postwar styleincluded a returnto painting.In the summerof 1937in Stampaand at Maloja,the familysummer home, Giacometti producedthree canvases that clearlyanticipate the manythat wouldcome between the late 1940sand the endof hislife. WhereGiacometti had adapted a formof Cezannianbrushstroke in hisSelf-Portrait of 1921,fourteen years later, in his portrait of his motherand in twostill lifes of a singleapple on a table, he respondedto the earlierartist's technique with a sculptor's eye.The field of perceptualvibrations Cezanne had set upwith flecksof colorbecome, in Giacometti'sthree canvases, a frame workof linesof energyand contrasts of light anddark, largely devoidof mass.In each,the beginningsof aninternal frame arevisible, and traces of rapidexecution are combined with an obviouslysustained effort. Giacometti'ssemisculptural approach to paintingwas matchedby hissemipainterly approach to sculpture.But where the attitudehad worked in painting,it provedmore difficult in sculpture.In thelate 1930s,he made his first attemptsto sculpta figureseen in the distance.Observing that a familiarfigure seen far awayis still recognizable,and affective as a humanpresence, hefocused on adjustmentsof scale.Making ever smaller figures andplacing them on large pedestals, he thought to frame,as in a picture,the illusionof a tiny figurein an expanseof space. Exactlywhen Giacometti began making his small-format sculpturesis unclear,but it wasprobably as early as 1936,when hewas otherwise devoting hours of eachday to workingfrom the model.By the time, however,of hiswartime departure for Switzerland,almost his entireattention was given over to these

/«x HandsHolding the Void (Invisible Object). 1934. Bronze, 59 7 12%x 10"(152.1 x 32.6x 25.3cm). TheMuseum of ModernArt, New York. Louise Reinhardt Smith Bequest

15 Twosculptures, each titled Small Figure on a Pedestal.1940-45- Plaster and metal on plaster base, /.e/» (left) 4 x 2 x 2Vs" (11.4x5-1x5-2 cm); (right) 33 x 1lI x 1 " (9-5x4-3x4-2cm). The Museum of ModernArt, NewYork. Gift of Mr.and Mrs. Thomas B. Hess

figures.Leaving his brotherDiego in the rueHippolyte-Maindron studio,Giacometti set off to visit his motherin Genevaat the end of Decemberof 1941,where he would unexpectedly remain for the nextthree and a half years.Working in an evensmaller space in Genevathan he had had in Paris,Giacometti's concentration on the diminutivefigures in no waydiminished. On the contrary,his accountof hisefforts is of anobsession: "But wanting to create frommemory what I hadseen, to myterror the sculptures became smallerand smaller, they only hada likenesswhen very small, yet their dimensionsrevolted me, and tirelessly I began,again andagain, to end,several months later, at the samepoint." Giacometti'sonly knownescape from the tyrannyof the tiny figureoccurred at Maloja,between 1942 and 1943, with his creationof a nude,standing female figure, nearly four feet high, mountedon a roughlycubic base supported by a smallcart. As canbe seen in photographstaken before the figurewas removed fromthe studio,Giacometti painted her twin onthe studiowall. Thesculpture and the paintingare only a whisper'slength from the workGiacometti would begin after his return to Paris—indeed, theyseem a logicalbreak from the reignof the minuscule,the mostevident link to his postwarwork. But the artist'sdemons continuedto plaguehim, and it wouldbe another three years beforehe couldbuild on this initiative.

8/9 POSTWARPARIS, 1947-51 WhenGiacometti returned to Parisin mid-Septemberof 1945, hefamously brought with himsix matchboxescontaining the

16 tiny figuresthat hadoccupied him over the previousfour years, andwhich would continue to holdhis attentionfor yet another year.Featured in Cahiersd'art, theyacquired legendary stature assymbols of the hardshipsof postwarEurope, and of individual, undefeatedendurance. Giacometticredits his breakfrom the thrall of the minus culein about1945 to certainhallucinatory experiences and to drawing.In his ubiquitouslyquoted letter of 1948to Pierre Matisse,he refers to the pastyears of struggle:"All this changed a little in 1945through drawing. This led meto wantto make largerfigures, then to mysurprise, they achieved a resemblance onlywhen long and slender." InJuly of 1946,Annette Arm, twenty-four years old and readyto sharethe primitiveliving conditionsof the artist shehad met in Geneva,arrived in Paris;she was to become Giacometti'swife almostexactly three years later and to begin herrole as his modelalmost immediately. More likely thannot, sheis the figurein severaldrawings of 1946and 1947, realized almostcoincidentally with the first appearanceof Giacometti's thin, elongatedsculptures. In eachdrawing, the nudefemale figureis a slender,central vertical occupying only a fraction of its support.The expanse of whitepaper surrounding her illu minatesa spatialfield whoseproportions establish distance betweenthe viewerand subject. The gouged and kneaded con toursof the sculpturesto comeare anticipated in outlinesmade indeterminateby the abrasionsof penciland eraser. Fromthe time of thesedrawings until the endof hislife, Giacometti,with few exceptions,limited himself to a verysmall groupof models,principally Annette and his brotherDiego. This economyin the useof modelsextended to hissubjects; rarely did hetake on anyother than the walkingman, standing woman, andbust. In 1947,the sameyear that heinitiated these subjects— probablyshortly before-he made three sculptures, The Nose, TheHand, and Head on a Rod,that thematicallyrecall Surrealist works.Of these, the mostdramatic is TheNose. Hanging from an opencage, a fantastic,repellent head thrusts its sinister Pinocchionose far out into the spacebeyond its frame.Nose, head,and neck of this bizarrependulum balance in anequilibrium moreprecarious than that in the earlierSuspended Ball, whose formsit grotesquelyechoes. The long blade of the noserecalls the menacingstiletto of Pointto the Eye,but its aimis nowat the gazeof the spectator;however, unlike the earlierpiece,

17 thereis nosense here of sadisticplay. Where the skull of Pointto the Eyewas impassive and, ultimately, seen to be engagedin a ritualcharade closed off from realspace, the death'shead of TheNose is practicallyexpressionist, distorted by suffering,and a denizenof ourown space. In TheNose and its companionpieces, The Hand, Head on a Rod,and The Leg (con ceivedin 1947but not executed until 1958),the narrativetease of the earlierworks is gone,replaced by a sober,unsentimentally articulateview of the humancondition. "Art,"Giacometti said, "interests me greatly but truth inter estsme infinitely more."He also remarked: "Have you noticed that, the moretrue a work,the morestyle it has?"Disregarding the semitautologicalriddle these two remarksopen up, they areuseful to an understandingof the underlyingprinciple of Giacometti'spostwar work. Truth, as Giacometti understood it, wasthe totality of experienceof a physicalthing, andthus by definitioncontingent and subject to almostinfinite extension— in otherwords, ungraspable. Yet Giacometti had further stated, "Theform must be fixed in anabsolute manner." Sartre, in his essayfor Giacometti'slandmark exhibition at the PierreMatisse Galleryin NewYork in 1948,declared that the artist hadfound a wayout of hisinsoluble dilemma in the discoverythat relativity couldbe considereda standardof the absolute. Giacometti'sfirst filament-thinrenderings of figures-such asthe 1947Walking Man and Tall Figure-crystallize the artist's transientsensations of seeing,and objectify conditions under whichthat seeinghas taken place: he hasseen the figurefrom a certaindistance, in a spacethat uncertainlyreveals the bound ariesof solidforms, and while seeing, he hasknown that in the nextinstant vision will becomememory. The slenderness of the figuresreconstitutes an experienceof seeingacross an extend edspace, an effectpartially preserved even if the viewercomes asclose as the artist musthave done while working on them. Their^substantiality still leavesspace around them, and the elongationof each,increasing in degreefrom headto feet, createsproportions approaching those that a modelstanding acrossthe studiowould perceptually have. The enlarged feet andrelative mass of the basesreinforce the notionof an upright figureseen at roomdistance. Closeup, the rough,knotted, nervous surfaces of Tall Figureand Walking Man impose a conceptualdistance between viewerand object, just asthey paradoxicallyexact an intimacy

18 that solicitsthe viewerto touch-evenif onlyimaginatively— their unevenbumps and hollows. Jean Genet, a closefriend of the artist, recountshow, in touchingthem, sensations flowed to the endsof hisfingertips. "Not one was alike-my hand ran acrossthe mostvivid and varying landscape." Each separate movementof the surfacehe declared to beas necessary as all thosenotes in Mozart'sMagic Flute. The beauty of such sculptureswas captured, he thought, in their incessant,unin terruptedcoming and going from the mostextreme distance to the closestfamiliarity. Theillusory interpenetrations of massand space created by the irregularedges of TallFigure and Walking Man exemplify Giacometti'salmost Cezannesque obsession with the elusiveness of contour.Sharing much, these two figures are nonetheless oppositional,and reveal much about their author.Giacometti's figuresof womenare always frontal and static, ritualistic in their formality;the figuresof menlargely share these traits but arein movement,usually a sedate,somewhat tentative walking.The heads of the menare also animate, alive with a kindof waryattention; those of the womenare impassive, the surfacetreatment no morethan a continuationof the body's. Thepace of WalkingMan, Giacometti's first largefigure of its kind,is closerto the solemnityof Egyptianstatues than to nearerprecedents in Westernart. At leastempathically a self- portrait,the figuremoves forward cautiously, as if makinga first-everattempt at walking. In CitySquare of 1948,whose size and format recall the game-boardconfigurations of his Surrealistyears, Giacometti arrangesa raretableau in whichthe malefigure appears with the female.When the pieceis viewedfrontally, the femalein the middledisplays the hieraticpose observable in hersisters, andthe malefigure closest to herseems a transpositionof the largeWalking Man of 1947.One of severalpieces to assemble groupsof personagesin seeminglysterile encounters, City Squarederives from modern urban experience. Although it hasoften been interpreted as expressing the loneliness,isola tion, andeven alienation of the humanbeing in contem porarysociety, it mayhave as much or evenmore to do with Giacometti'sfascination with the scenearound him: "In the streetpeople astound and interest me more than any sculpture or painting.. . theyform and reform living compositionsof unbelievablecomplexity."

In anothersculpture, The Cage (Woman and Head) of 1950, Giacomettisets up a variantconfrontation of manand woman, but in a settingat the farthestremove from street encounters. Althoughvividly fixing a lived moment,The Cage immediately locatesits spacein the artificial.On a solidplatform supported by a high,tablelike structure, the tiny figureof a monolithically slimwoman faces out; to herright, vastlylarger in massand almostequal in height,is the profiledbust of a manwhose gaze is directedat a right angleto herown. The two are placed within a spaceframe similar to thoseof SuspendedBall and The Nose, which,like the entireconstruction that elevatesthem to the expectedeye level of painting,announces their removalfrom the spaceof reality.Each figure, provided with its ownsmall pedestal,is to be readas a statuettefixed in the realmof art. Thisartwork within an artwork, like manymodern paintings and someof Giacometti'sSurrealist sculptures, shifts the construction of narrativefrom the artistto the beholder.Although The Cage is opento multipleinterpretations, it is not difficult to seethe workas a metaphorfor Giacometti'sdaily confrontation with his grandsubjects: the encountersbetween men and women, the encountersbetween life andart. Ofall Giacometti'sworks from the extraordinarilyproduc tive yearsbetween 1947 and 1951, The Chariot (1950) may be the mostmysterious and arresting. Rising above two high wheelsthat recallthose of Egyptianbattle chariots, an elegantly slenderfigure seems both fragile and dominating. The aesthet ic, iconographiclaw by whichthe armsof Giacometti'sfemale figuresmust be boundto their bodiesis herebroken, and the armsof the figureare allowed their freedomin a gesturethat is at oncewelcoming and forbidding. This goddesslike demeanor is somewhatundermined by the figure'sprecarious equilibrium, apparentlymaintained by thesesame meaningful movements of herarms. Unlike the muchsmaller wheels supporting Woman with Chariot(1942-43), the wheelsof TheChariot are held motionlessby their attachment to woodchocks. But, because they areupended, the chockscreate an apparent situation that might be describedas an accident waiting to happen.The Chariot's intimationsof instabilityset upambivalent sensations; at one momentthe spectatorcan sense an incipient forward movement, andat anotherthe reverse-aphenomenon observable, if less apparent,in all of Giacometti'sfemale figures of the period.

WalkingMan. 1947. Bronze, 66"/»x g'/u x 20'/,"(170 x 23x 53cm). Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung, Zurich

21 10/11 RETURNINGTOPAINTING, 1949-65 Giacometti'smid-l930s move toward working before the model broughtwith it a renewedinterest in painting,but onethat had onlya sporadichold. Beginning in the late 1940s,however, and up until the endof hislife, sculptureand painting gripped him with equalintensity and, as has been observed, the practicesof onesometimes slipped over into thoseof the other.In neither wasanything allowed to appearcertain, and as a corollary, Giacometti'shabitual way of realizinga canvasor a sculpturewas througha processof incessantbuilding, effacing, and building again.Giacometti almost always painted from life, whetherpor trait, still life, or landscape.His sculptural practice was more flexible.Beginning before a model,he was as likely asnot to put the workaside after oneor twosessions and continue it from memorywhen the momentmoved him. Giacometti told the art critic DavidSylvester that afternoonhours he hadspent painting fromlife sometimescame to his rescuewhen, in the evening, he returnedto hisattempts to finisha sculpture.This symbiotic interactionaided him in keepinga passageopen between the polesof hisinspiration, the innerand outer realms of vision. Giacometti'spreferred format in the paintingsof 1949-50 wasa singlefigure in aninterior, usually seated in the studio. Oneof the mostcompelling of theseis Annettewith Chariot (1950).Giacometti's young bride is posedon a stoolin the exact middleof the painting,jostled on herright by the newlyexe cutedFour Figurines on a Standand on herleft by the equally recentsculpture The Chariot. A traditionalone-point perspective mightbe said to obtainhere, but its usefulnessconsists in the distortionsit allows.The orthogonals establishing the far corner of the studioretreat along such sharp diagonal paths that their convergencepitches the floor forwardeven as it compressesthe spaceof the pictureinto thetight confinesof a recedingtriangle— itself immediatelycountered by the forward-thrustingwedge formedby Annetteand her flanking sculptures. Looking at the picture,one seems to bestanding very near her, yet onesees herproportionally as one would if shewere at a distanceacross the studio.The interior frame that Giacomettialmost always drewaround his compositionsis hereonly partiallyindicated alongthe bottom,upper right, and left edgeof the paintingin a skewedline that aggravatesthe picture'sforward tilt. Annetteis evidentlythe protagonistof this composition,yet the spaceshe is in is almostas forcefully present, its substancedefined by

22 linearvectors crisscrossing a semitransparent film of gray-brown paint.And everywhere, volume and space are porous. Behind Annette'sright shoulderand glimpsed through the barsof Four Figurineson a 5tandis the figureof FlandsFlolding the Void, whosecontours are indicated by linesambivalently describing formand the fall of light. In Diegoin a PlaidShirt, painted four yearsafter Annette with Chariot,the half-lengthfigure confronts the viewermuch ashe musthave faced his brotherwhile sitting for the picture. HereGiacometti presents his subject almost naturalistically, and allowshimself a rareexcursion into brightcolor. Still, he has keyedup the nearnessof the figurewith the kindof optical perspectiveof a snapshot,and maintained the visibility of space-lessby linesthan by a dense,sometimes opaque, some timestranslucent, veil of paintthat bothsurrounds and merges

Annettewith Chariot. 1950. Oil on canvas, 28V4Xl9"/u" (73x50 cm). Private collection

23 withthe figure.This incursiveness of spaceis evenmore perva sivein two portraitsof JeanGenet painted shortly afterthe Diegoportrait. In one,based on an Egyptianfigure of a seated scribein the Louvre,the subjectagain seems very close, his nearextremities (the legs)enlarged as if by photographiclens in a mannerfar moreacute than the treatmentof handand thigh in the portraitof Diego.Genet remembers seeing this imagein the crampedquarters of Giacometti'sstudio as "a tangleof curvedlines, commas, closed circles crossed by a secant,"and the colorsas "somewhat rose, gray or blackand a strange green-avery fine entanglementhe [Giacometti]was making andwhere no doubthe lost himself."The idea came to Genetto takethe pictureinto the courtyardoutside Giacometti's studio, andhe recallsthe effectas stunning; the furtherhe got from the picture,the moreit tookform, took on a realitythat he foundfrightening, radiating a living presencenot of a single momentbut of all the livedmoments of its subject.Genet's experimentwith distanceand form can be reenactedwith almost all of Giacometti'selongated sculpted figures; seen close up, the figuresdisappear and the imagesdissolve. All that remains is the materialcomprising them. Veryclose inspection juxtaposed with a readingat conven tionalviewing distance of Giacometti'sstill lifes andlandscapes will reveala similarphenomenon of formlessnessconverting to form.This is not a pictorialtechnique introduced by Giacometti; it canbe seen in variousold masters,as, for example,in certain of Rembrandt'sself-portraits, where the handsseen close up are anincomprehensible jumble of brushstrokesand become firmly modeledat a distanceof a fewfeet. Themodernity Giacometti bringsto this old ploylies in his unabasheddisplay of process. Asidefrom the implicittestimony of Giacometti'spaint ings,we know from the accountsof Sylvesterand James Lord (bothwriters and friends of the artist,as well as sitters for him) that the artist'spicture-making process was agonizingly pro tracted,marked by dailylosings and findings and refindings of the likenesshe sought. Both report that the innumerablestates a picturemight go through were often as much finished as the final version;the finality of anyone version was frequently establishedwhen the sitter becameunavailable. All of the por traits of theJapanese philosophy professor Isaku Yanaihara, executedbetween 1956 and 1961, bear witness to thesestrug gles.The Yanaihara portraits prepared Giacometti for the series

24 hewould make of Caroline,a youngprostitute he hadmet in 1959.A freshimmediacy and intensity of encounterradiate fromGiacometti's images of her.In CarolineII (1962),the torso, treatedin analmost Abstract Expressionist manner, rises before the viewerat a distancethat seemsat oncenear and far. The yellow-brownspread of paintsurrounding her figure is her ownparticular space, a kindof etherealthrone that imperially ignoresthe boundariesmarking the interiorframe of the picture. Thefigure's head seems projected forward with nearsculptural force.Its built-up, reworkedand layered surface stands in relief-like contrastto the rapid,darting lines of the body,which configurethemselves into a whitenedV shapethat leadsthe viewer'seye up to the faceand its unrelentinggaze.

12 DRAWINGS,1951-64/STUDIES OFDIEGO AND ANNETTE: 1950-54 Drawinghad always been at the heartof Giacometti'sendeavor. Hegrew up drawingand never ceased. He credited the medium with manyof his aestheticbreakthroughs, which came about throughthe heightenedawareness and visual concentration the processbrought. Although he mightmake sketches after hisown work, he almost never made preparatory studies for specificsculptures or paintings-theseek-and-find nature of his approachto paintingand sculpture would have ruled out such premeditation.During his postwarperiod in particular,there wasrarely a pointin the constructionof a workwhen his eye lost its criticaledge, when it told himthat anyone piece was complete-rather,it consistently led himto furtherand yet further explorations.He worked with a kindof sustainedspontaneity that left little roomfor distinctionsbetween preparation andexecution. Owingto the natureof the medium,a greaterrange of subjectswas available to Giacomettias a draftsmanthan as a painteror sculptor.Only partially excluding his Surrealist objects, Giacometti'sconstant sculptural motif was the grandtheme of classictradition, the humanfigure-varied only rarelyby brief foraysinto the animalworld. Although far froma conventional artist, Giacomettias painter took hissubjects from the three greatgenres of the art: the figure,the landscape,and the still life. Hisdrawings add to theseonly in their greatervariation on persistentthemes and by the manycopies of masterpiecesof the pastthat he madefrom childhood through old age.

25 Theworld Giacometti found himself in washis to draw,and his representationof it wasprolific and wonderfully skilled. His useof the whiteof the papersupport fills portraits,landscapes, andstill lifes alikewith numinous energy. His empathic identifi cationwith hissubjects radiates from portraits of friendssuch as thoseof Genetand Lord, and his nephewSilvio Berthoud, and is especiallyapparent in AnnetteIV and Annette V, done in the last yearsof hislife. Giacomettioften made self-portraits, but after the early1920s they were not sculpted or paintedbut were always donein penor pencilon paper.In oneespecially finely worked self-portraitof i960, the artist presentshimself prematurely agedand fixing the worldwith a steady,tolerant regard. During the courseof Giacometti's life, his motherwas often hissubject; among the most poignantof thesedrawings aretwo images showing her in 1963,the last yearof her life. In one,her gesture sug geststhat sheis sewing,her fragility apparentin the net workof delicatelines that describeher head and hands; in the other,she is reading, "M' herhead and crossed hands moreforcefully presented to indicatea light fromabove illuminatingthe bookthat sheholds. Roughly contem porarydrawings show a room u/i»xl2,s/u" Self-Portrait,i960. Pencil on paper, 19 (50.4x32.8cm).Kiewancollection in the Hotel L'Aiglon on the boulevardRaspail in Paris,to whichGiacometti had retreated to convalescefrom the stomachsurgery he hadundergone the previousFebruary. The banal objects in the room-tablecloth, table,and armchair-are schematically indicated by variously crispand fuzzy pencil strokes, which, in magictandem with Giacometti'seraser, create the shaftof light andthe soft breeze that visiblyenter the roomthrough the windowto the left. In 1953,after returningto life studiesin sculpture, Giacomettibegan to extendAnnette's role as a model,working with hernot onlyfor paintingsbut alsofor sculptures.The resultingfigures, such as Standing Nude III, of 1963,and Nude,

26 after Natureand Standing Nude without Arms of the following year,share little otherthan their frontal postures with their much thinner,"visionary" predecessors of 1947-50.Far more natura listic in form,they also have less convulsively worked surfaces. Asapparent in someslightly earlier busts of Diego,Giacometti's interesthad turned toward an expressivitymore closely tied to physicalappearance. Initially, in his bustsof Diegoof 1950and 1951,a naturalismparallel to the figuresof Annetteof three yearslater is manifest.While this newtendency did notvanish withthe bustsof Diegomade in 1953and 1954, they were sub ject to moreradical alterations than the Annettes.For his large, weightierfigures, Giacometti gave up the distancingpedestal, transferringits formaland weight-bearing functions to the uppertorso, which, in combinationwith the moretraditionally modeledheads, produced a newsolidity. To relieve the inert qualitieshe detected in the moreconventional heads, he began to breakup the surfaceeven more determinedly than he hadin the past.This emphasis on the materialityof the sculptureadded a newdimension to anaesthetic device that, whenapplied to the slenderfigures of someyears earlier, had contributed to a sense,not of substantiality,but ratherof materialdissolution. Throughthe relationof narrowhead to imposingbody, Giacomettifound a meansto manipulateperception. In painting, close-upviews and those taken at a lowangle tend to causea senseof perspectivalretreat. Transferring this principleto sculp ture, Giacomettiwas most successful in histreatment of Diego in a Sweater(1953), where the expanseand weight of the body conspireto drawattention to the small,intensely gazing head above.The contrast of tiny headand massive pedestal developed in the minusculesculptures is hereexponentially heightened. A problemthat constantlyplagued Giacometti—the discrepancybetween the front viewof a headand its profile (the vexatiousfact that neithercould be inferred from the other)-wasaddressed in a seriesof bladelikeheads of 1954-55- In the late 1920s,to solveother problems, he hadflattened the headcrosswise in his portraitof his motherand the slightlylater GazingHead; now,in the mid1950s, he flattened it fromfront to back,treating it ratheras he hadthe bodyin Caressof 1932. LargeHead of Diego(1954) presents a conventionalview of shoulderssurmounted by a ratherunusual head; composed of low-reliefprofiles set at right anglesto the body,the head offersa fleetingfrontal aspect-only, however, if the vieweris

27 stationednose-to-nose and eye-to-eye with it. Aninch or two to the right or left andone eye sees the bladeedge of the head whilethe otherregisters a profile.Here Giacometti manages to imposehis ownacute awareness of the contradictorynature of perceptionon anyoneopen to anotherlook at the world.

13 THEWOMEN OF VENICE AND FIGURES FOR A PUBLICPROJECT, 1956AND 1960 Thestanding female figures Giacometti made in anticipationof an exhibitionof hiswork in the Frenchpavilion of the 1956Venice Biennalehave achieved an almost cultlike status. Between Januaryand May of that year,the artist, usingthe sameclay overthe samewire armature, produced some fifteen figures, which,the momenthe found them satisfactory, his brother Diegocast in plaster.Ten of thesewere seen in Venice,and nine werelater cast in bronze.The experience gained from making the bustsof Diegois evidentin thesefigures in a lateralflat teningof their torsosand a front-to-backnarrowing of their headsand feet. Moreemphatically three-dimensional than their predecessorsof the late 1940sand early 1950s, these figures synthesizesuch life studiesas the Annettesof 1953and 1954 withthe earliermore visionary nudes. More than likely, the Womenof Venicewere the subjectof a conversationbetween Genetand Giacometti that wentlike this: (Giacometti)When I'm walkingin the streetand see a prostitutecompletely dressed, I seea prostitute.When she's in a roomnaked in front of me,I seea goddess.(Genet) For me a nakedwoman is a naked woman.That makes no impression on me.But in yourstatues I seethe Goddess.(Giacometti) You think that I'vesucceeded in showingthem like I seethem? Giacomettihad his Women of Venicein mindwhen, in responseto aninvitation to makea publicsculpture for the new ChaseManhattan Plaza in NewYork, he proposeda groupof threelarger-than-life sculptures: a standingwoman, a walking man,and a headon a pedestal.The idea of groupinga number of sculpturalforms in a publicgathering place went back to Giacometti'sModel for a Squareof 1930-31.Presented with the actualopportunity in 1956,however, he naturallythought of figuresthat hadbeen the majorthemes of hiswork during the previousten years-thewalking man as the symbolof human striving,the headas the site of visionand consciousness, and, mostcomplex of all, the standingfemale nude as goddess, giver

28 s/«" BustofDiego. 1951. Bronze, painted, 13V«xl2x6 (35x30.5x16cm). CollectionJan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski of life, and,always for Giacometti,the Other.Several versions of the figureswere cast in bronzein i960, althoughthe com missionhad been, for variousreasons, withdrawn. When Giacometticame to NewYork for his 1965retrospective at The Museumof ModernArt, hevisited the site andconcluded that a singlestanding woman, twenty-five feet tall, wouldhave best suitedthe surroundings.

14 THELAST YEARS,1962-65 Otherthan exhibiting a pronouncedinterest in the expressive possibilitiesof the pedestaland a similarrough treatment of surface,Giacometti's portrait busts of Annettefrom 1962and thosemade of hisfriend the photographerElie Lotar three years later evidencefew commontraits. The busts of Annetteshow herindividuality; embodying vivacious personality, they engage the viewerwith their lively presence.Those of Lotarare the almostgeneric presentation of "manat the endof hislife"; theyare the facesof old men,their piercinggazes no longer appearaimed at the viewerbut at somereality beyond. A critic closeto Giacomettiobserved that the bustshave little specific

29 resemblanceto Lotar,and conjectured that in their universality asimages of a beingconsciously at death'sabyss, they are self- portraitsof the artist.The fact that thesewere the last works Giacometticompleted before he diedlends them a characterof final achievement,an elegiactranscendent aura. Giacometti'sself-imposed, self-defined "impossible" projectof capturinglived experience often left himlamenting, if not in someways boasting, of hisfailure. He wrote, "The days pass,and I deludemyself that I amtrapping, holding back, what's fleeting."But his deluding of himselfwas, as it were,clear eyed, andhis repeatedpronouncements of failure had an optimistic sideto them:"All I cando will onlyever be a faint imageof what I seeand success will alwaysbe less than my failure or perhaps equalto the failure."Giacometti's obsessive attempts to achieve that criticalequation between success and failure have left us anart that expressesthe humancondition with a startlingand enduringrelevance.

LotarIII. 1965.Bronze, 25% x 11x 14"(65.5 x 28x 35-5cm). Private collection

30 PublicPrograms Fall 2001 The following programs will be heldin conjunctionwith the exhibitionAlberto Giacometti.

HOWALBERTO BECAME GIACOMETTI Monday, October 15 Art historianReinhold Hohl and Giacometti biographer James Lorddiscuss the life andvisionary work of AlbertoGiacometti.

GIACOMETTI'SDOG Monday, October 22 Art critic MichaelBrenson examines the textureand poetry of Giacometti'swork through a sustainedlook at oneof the artist's mostbeloved sculptures, Dog, of 1951.

PERCEPTIONSATPLAY: GIACOMETTI THROUGH CONTEMPORARY EYES Monday,November 5 RoxanaMarcoci, Janice H. LevinFellow and Curatorial Assistant, Departmentof Paintingand Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, addressesthe waysin whichcontemporary artists such as JanineAntoni, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Gober, Paul McCarthy, BruceNauman, and Gabriel Orozco, among others, have kept AlbertoGiacometti's legacy operative in their presentwork.

GIACOMETTI'SGRANDE FIGURE Friday, November 16 Art historianFriedrich Teja Bach considers Giacometti's first monumentaloutdoor sculpture, Grande Figure (also known as Figurein a Garden) of 1930-32,in relationto the artist's contemporaneousSurrealist objects, and to the problemsof site-specificity.Grande Figure is beingshown publicly for the first time in this exhibition.

ALBERTOGIACOMETTI: ANARTIST'S PANEL Monday, November 19 A paneldiscussion with artists Vanessa Beecroft, Vija Celmins, RichardSerra and William Tucker, moderated by AnneUmland, AssociateCurator, Department of Paintingand Sculpture,The Museumof ModernArt, andco-organizer of theAlberto Giacomettiexhibition.

All programsbegin at 6:30p.m. and take place at the Donnell LibraryCenter Auditorium, 20 West 53 Street (please enter libraryby eastdoor). Tickets are $8; members$7; students and seniors$5 and are available at TheMuseum of ModernArt's LobbyInformation Desk. For more information, please call the Departmentof Educationat 212.708.9781.

31 PUBLICATION AlbertoGiacometti ChristianKlemm, in collaborationwith CarolynLanchner, Tobia Bezzola,and Anne Umland Thepublication accompanying the Alberto Giacometti exhibition is the mostcomprehensive survey in manyyears of the workof oneof the twentiethcentury's greatest artists.

Thisexhibition is madepossible by Joan and Preston Robert Tisch. Majorcorporate sponsorship is providedby BananaRepublic. Anindemnity has been granted by the FederalCouncil on the Artsand the Humanities. Additionalfunding is providedby PresenceSwitzerland, Dr. and Mrs. David A. Cofrin,Margaret and Herman Sokol, and Pro Helvetia. Theaccompanying publication is madepossible by the BlanchetteHooker RockefellerFund. Thisexhibition was organized by The Museum of ModernArt andthe Kunsthaus Zurichwith the collaborationof the AlbertoGiacometti Foundation.