Liberal Arts Blog — Alberto Giacometti: Walking Man, Standing Woman, Bust of Annette
Liberal Arts Blog — Friday is the Joy of Art, Architecture, Film, Design, and All Things Visual Day
Today’s Topic — Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966): Walking Man, Standing Woman, Bust of Annette
I always assumed he was Italian. Not so. Giacometti was Swiss. Which may or may not partially explain the contrast between his style and that of, say, the full-bodied look of a Michelangelo. His pinched style evokes the focused precision of a Swiss watchmaker or an accountant working deep in the bowels of a Zurich banking house. In fact, during the 1938 to 1944 period his sculptures became smaller and smaller (with a maximum height of less than 3 inches). It was only after his marriage to Annette Arm in 1949 that his sculptures became tall and thin. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
WALKING MAN (1961): (l’homme qui marche)
1. “both a humble image of an ordinary man, and a potent symbol of humanity” (Sotheby’s)
2. “Giacometti is said to have viewed “the natural equilibrium of the stride” as a symbol of “man’s own life force”.
3. Appeared on the 100 France Swiss banknote in 1998. Sold at auction in 2010 for $104 MM.
NB: He usually portrayed men walking and women standing. “Asked by Genet why he treated male and female figures differently, Giacometti admitted that women seemed naturally more distant to him. As an adolescent, he’d been rendered infertile following an attack of mumps. Later, he blamed this for his problems with impotence, which were most easily cured by having sex with prostitutes, whom he could not disappoint.” (Lara Feigel, Guardian, 2017)
FEMME DE VENISE V (1958)
1. His sculptures always made me think of Auschwitz and the liberation of the death camps in 1945.
2. He seems to be working through some internal demons.
3. Some existential terror.
NB: “I do not work to create beautiful paintings or sculpture. Art is only a means of seeing. No matter what I look at, it all surprises and eludes me, and I am not too sure of what I see.” (Giacometti)
ANNETTE (1965)
1. The busts of his wife Annette are a sharp contrast with his emaciated walking men and standing women.
2. Annette was his main model.
3. Another was his younger brother Diego. (See last three links)
APPENDIX: He was born into a very artistic family (his father was an impressionist painter) and, at age 13, did a realistic sculpture of Diego. Moving to Paris in 1922, he went through a cubist/surrealist phase before his miniaturist period which he in turn abandoned after the war. Two of his sculptures that I almost included in this post are The Chariot (1950) and Pointing Man (1947) — see the fourth and fifth links.
Giacometti: Icons of 20th Century Art
Alberto Giacometti. The Chariot. 1950 | MoMA
How Alberto Giacometti Became the World’s Most Expensive Sculptor | artnet News
On the edge of madness: the terrors and genius of Alberto Giacometti
Fondation Giacometti — TRIBUTE TO ANNETTE GIACOMETTI
‘Bust of Diego’, Alberto Giacometti, 1955 | Tate
‘Diego’, Alberto Giacometti, 1959 | Tate
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