Art 109A: Contemporary Art (Arts Since 1945)Westchester Community College

Alberto Giacometti(1901-1966)

Alberto GiacomettiSwiss-bornLeading sculptor in ParisBegan as a Surrealist

Irving Penn, Alberto Giacometti, 1950. Art Institute of Chicago

Alberto Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m.., 1932-33. Construction in wood, glass, wire, string MOMA

Alberto GiacomettiTook refuge in Switzerland during the war where he worked on tiny figure sculptures done from memory

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alberto GiacamettiImage source: http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2005/02/giacometti-and-cartier-bresson.html

“Wanting to create from memory what I have seen . . to my terror the sculptures became smaller and smaller . . .”Alberto Giacometti

Alberto GiacomettiUpon his return to Paris he began casting them in bronze, and placing them on enormous bases

Gordon Parks, Alberto Giacometti, 1951LIFE Magazine

Alberto GiacomettiHis work typically consists of strangely elongated figures, alone or in groups, occupying vast tracts of empty space

Alberto Giacometti, The City Square, 1948-49Museum of Modern Art

Alberto GiacomettiCast bronze is a medium usually associated with monumental size, and heroic connotations

Alberto Giacometti, The City Square, 1948-49Museum of Modern Art

Auguste Rodin, Age of Bronze, 1876/1906Metropolitan Museum

Giacometti’s figures are diminutive, and appear fragile and frail . . . .

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/profzucker/3256792359/sizes/l/

Their insignificance and alienation is further amplified by the size of the bases he made for them, creating a vast expanse of space that seems to envelop them

Featureless and anonymous, Giacometti’s lonely figures seem to wander aimlessly through what Simone de Beauvoir called an “infinite and terrifying emptiness of space,” as each seeks to “make their way” in the world.

Alberto Giacometti1945 began working on a larger scale

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Giacometti in his Studio, c. 1952. Wikipedia

“But then to my surprise, [the figures] achieved a likeness only when tall and slender.”Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947Museum of Modern Art

Alberto Giacometti. Walking Man, 1960 (cast 1981). Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris © Adagp

Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing, 1947Museum of Modern Art

Bronze Statue of Zeus from Artemesion, c. 460 BCE. National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Based on a famous Greek statue depicting the Olympian god Zeus, Giacometti’s Man Pointing reflects the Existentialist rejection of Humanism in its expression of the unbearable loneliness and fragility of human existence 

Alberto Giacometti, Man Pointing (L’homme au doigt), 1947.  Bronze with patina and hand-painted by the artist.  Height:  69 7/8″.  Christies 

Tall and slender to the point of emaciation, the man points into the infinite space that surrounds him

“Man – and man alone – reduced to a thread – in the dilapidating and misery of the world – who searches for himself – starting from nothing.”Francis Ponge, “Reflections on the Statuettes, Figures and Paintings by Alberto Giacometti”

Alberto GiacomettiSartre embraced Giacometti as the preeminent existentialist artist

He wrote an essay for Giacometti’s 1948 exhibition in New York

Gjon Mili, Jean Paul Sartre, Paris, 1946LIFE

Alberto GiacomettiSartre likened Giacometti’s work to prehistoric cave painting

Alberto Giacometti, Head of a Man on a Rod, Bronze, 1947Museum of Modern Art

“. . . neither the beautiful nor the ugly yet existed, neither taste nor people possessing it.”Jean Paul Sartre

Alberto GiacomettiHe also discussed the artist’s manipulation of perception

Phenomenological size: scale is determined by our relation to the work

Gordon Parks, Skeletal Giacometti sculpture on Parisian street, 2005LIFE Magazine

“They are moving outlines, always half-way between nothingness and being” Jean Paul Sartre

View of the sculpture “Three Men Walking”, made by painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) at the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland. Image source: Georgios Kefalas 

Alberto Giacometti

Gordon Parks, Skeletal Giacometti sculpture on Parisian street, 2005LIFE Magazine

Giacometti “shows us that man is not there first and to be seen afterwards, but that he is a being whose essence is to exist for others.” Jean Paul Sartre

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti, The Chariot, 1950. Museum of Modern Art

“At first glance we seem to be up against the fleshless martyrs of Buchenwald”

Alberto Giacometti

“But a moment later we have a quite different conception; these fine and slender natures rise up to heaven, we seem to have come across a group of Ascensions, of Assumptions”Jean Paul Sartre