Alberto Giacometti

I'm a recent convert...

I recently finished reading Giacometti: A Biography by James Lord and I have some thoughts. So, I thought that I would share them with you, or try to, at least. When I first think of things and just what to say, I’m a freaking genius. Then, a few days pass and I’m a moron again. So, please forgive me if I sound, well, less than a genius.

On to Giacometti…

When I was younger, I did not appreciate Giacometti. Of course, I could recognize his genius and respect his body of work, but it just wasn’t for me at the time. I would often confuse Giacometti with Brancusi and if you know who each are and what each of them did, you would say, ‘what planet do you come from?’ They are nothing alike, in case you might not know. I also wasn’t into Brancusi, but somehow channeled him with a high school plaster abstract sculpture that kind of looked like this one by Brancusi:

The piece that I did looked nothing like a woman’s head as it was non-representational, but the entire shape was very much in-line with this. I doubt that Brancusi was even on my radar in my senior year of high school, so I can’t even say, ‘yeah, I ripped off Brancusi,’ or even, ‘this is my homage to Brancusi…’ Or something to that effect. Nonetheless, that piece of mine did not survive. I tossed it about five years later. It was kind of ugly and it wasn’t in my wheelhouse at that time or now. I’m not sure if a pic is around somewhere, but maybe.

I did do this sketch, though, back in 1990, so I must not have disagreed with Giacometti too much. And sculptures in general are fun and rewarding to sketch, especially ones with interesting textures.

This was done at an outing with a friend at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Sometimes, I think that I sketched better in my younger days. I like those thick pencil lines.

That piece, Standing Woman II was done just six years before his death. here is that piece (not my photo):

Speaking of texture, I really should have added more…

So, thoughts on Giacometti. My pleasant surprise with appreciation for the Swiss sculptor happened when I took a chance on a movie a few years ago, that came up in my streaming recommendations called Final Portrait (2017), a film directed by Stanley Tucci and starring Geoffrey Rush as Alberto and sex cannibal Armie Hammer as the journalist James Lord. The movie was adapted from Lord’s book, A Giacometti Portrait from 1965. This movie hit me with all the right feels and became a fave right away. I was and still do get inspired watching this little known film. One of the many surprises for me was that I did not know that Giacometti was a painter, as well. A damn good one, I might add. It fascinates me how he built up his portraits. his structure lines are not what one would call structure (or construction) lines. What was he thinking when putting those marks on canvas? What was the internal process? Here’s the one of Lord, which was, in fact, his final painting:

The lines in the face that really probably shouldn’t be there fascinate me. I want to see what he saw. The book, Giacometti Portrait touched on his process and thoughts, as does the movie, but I needed more. Just those bits really had me going.

One of the many rewards from reading is in finding connections across time and distance, especially in places and with people that one might not expect. I think that I felt this way with Giacometti. I was more than a bit surprised and pleasantly so, to see that some of our thoughts were similar. Odd. This Swiss sculptor from a completely different background, different experiences, different societal norms, all of that. And yet, here we are, with similar thoughts and similar reactions to different things. Interesting to say the least.

In the bio, Lord talks about Giacometti’s many relationships with the different artists of the time. One of them was the French Fauvist André Derain. Derain was hit by a car and died not long after. Unfortunately, for a well know artist, his funeral was attended by only one well known artist. Giacometti. Two hours before his death, someone asked Derain if he needed anything. His response?

“A bicycle and a piece of blue sky.”

This appealed to me. This and something that James Lord said about Giacometti:

“The real beauty of youth is the conviction of limitless possibility, and Alberto had that till the end.”

These are two things that have stuck with me since childhood. I used to lay in the grass in the empty lot next to our house, weather permitting, and just stare up at the blue sky. It was important to me for reasons that still elude me. I couldn’t think of any reason a person had for committing crimes or other such actions under that blue sky. It was impossible for me to imagine. Derain’s words struck that nerve again. Giacometti’s belief hit me, in the same way. Again, when I was a kid and we spent weekends at my grandparents and at night when my grandma, Nan, was putting us to bed, she would give us a kiss goodnight and say ‘tomorrow is a whole new day. What will it bring?’ Sending me off to bed with those words filled me with thoughts of adventure and ‘limitless possibilities.’ It was nice to read that this guy near the end of his life (too young, if you ask me…) had those thoughts.

The French poet Baudelaire had this to say about Giacometti:

“Genius is childhood recaptured at will.”

Now, like I said earlier, I’m no genius, but, I think that I had this ability and kept it near and dear for a long time. Somewhere along the way, as it happens, I lost it. I’m working on regaining that skill. Reading books, such as the Giacometti bio help in doing so.

Oddly enough, Giacometti’s surrealist years didn’t do too much for me. I’m more in the Dali (not a true surrealist according to the surrealists), Tanguey camp in those regards. It wasn’t until I saw his more figurative works that I became interested. And, in my early days, even that wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t until I read some about his thought process that had me looking for more. Giacometti wasn’t that interested in capturing a likeness. He could do that standing on his head. He wasn’t even looking to capture the personality of his subject. He was looking for something else. Something in the process. The journey, so to speak, but something else.

When the Nazis invaded France and the occupation of Paris began, he and his brother fled the city on their bicycles. They were gone for ten days and returned when they thought that they could survive what was happening. Those ten days, however, had a huge impact on his future sculptures and paintings (remember those construction lines?). They were strafed by German fighter planes, their caravans were bombed, people were decimated. They slept in fields and ditches. Just as J.D. Salinger spent the rest of his life trying to write his way out of WW II, so Giacometti did as well, but with sculpture and painting. I wish that he spoke more about this. It wasn’t the features of his sitters that he sought, it was what was in the shadows.

The shadows.

Creative Notes:

Currently reading: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

The Navy Seal’s Bug-In Guide by Joel Lambert

Currently Listening to: Domino by Genesis