Alberto Giacometti

La primera retrospectiva en más de cinco décadas con mas de 200 obras del escultor suizo Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) se exhibe en el Museo Guggenheim de Bilbao, España, hasta febrero del 2019.
El crítico de arte, Juan Carlos Flores Zuñiga (AICA) examina el legado del artista suizo centrado en la expresión de la alienación humana a través de su escultura expuesta en Bilbao, para Ars Kriterion E-Zine.

Some modern western artists between both World Wars were fascinated by a "new" primitivism that was being discovered and promoted in those days: sumerian art, that was used as a source of inspirationby artists like Moore, Giacometti, Ernst, Baumeister or Miró.

Jacques Dupin, qui écrit très tôt des poèmes mais ne voit ses premiers écrits publiés qu'en 1949, donne à lire la violence dans chaque poème, à chaque ligne presque : elle est au cœur même de son expression. Qu'elle soit sémantique ou syntaxique, minérale ou physique, tantôt incendiaire tantôt sexuelle, sa présence gouverne la poétique de J. Dupin. Cette esthétique s'explique en partie par le contexte historique : les événements catastrophiques de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle impactent fortement les artistes, notamment en poésie et en arts plastiques. À l’expérience du drame collectif s’ajoute l’expérience individuelle, qu'on ne peut passer sous silence tant les textes de Jacques Dupin sont empreints de cette mémoire traumatique. Cependant, bien que la dimension biographique des textes soit constitutive de l’œuvre, elle est insuffisante pour appréhender dans toute leur complexité les enjeux poétiques de l’écriture de Jacques Dupin. Le biographique ne constitue pas pour nous une réponse pleinement satisfaisante, suffisante, et nous avons la certitude qu'il y a une perspective à la fois plus intellectuelle et moins immédiatement intelligible dans cette « nouvelle dimension poétique toute de colère et d'irréparable ». Des éléments textuels portent à croire en une possible ontologie de la violence : la violence nous semble être une matière poétique à part entière, permettant un travail de fondation de la langue dans un monde en crise – en ce sens, elle serait le lieu même du renouement avec l’altérité.

Si propone ai ragazzi un modo di guardare all'arte contemporanea profondamente connesso con il passato e con la loro propria esperienza personale, volto perciò a permettere la lettura e l'immedesimazione con gli autori e le forme anche più lontane dai canoni attraverso i fatti più semplici dell'esistenza: "mind, body, space" (Gormley)

Volume 10 of the Catalogue raisonné of the Orozco collection of artist and illustrated books as well as prints, dedicated to Francis Bacon, Giacometti, Henry Moore, Kandinsky, Marino Marini, Frans Masereel. It describes the pieces of the collection, the circumstances under which they were produced, references to the museums throughout the world that keep a copy of the piece described, the appropriate catalogue references, their passage through auction houses, etc. and photographs of the pieces.

Alberto Giacometti "a tientas" © 2009-2010 by Antonio Navas Montilla is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Este artículo aborda la cuestión del sentido del tacto en la obra de Alberto Giacometti, bajo la con-signa de profundizar en este sentido artístico, como característica fundamental de toda época de KRISIS.Aunque apenas ha sido señalado, el interés de Giacometti por recrear la sensación y los hechos físicos, se mantuvo a lo largo de toda su trayectoria. Su atención a la mano, cobra vital importancia cuando Alberto se propone "volver al trabajo", a partir de 1934, dejando de lado la experiencia surrealista. ABSTRACT This article explores the issue of the sense of touch in Alberto Giacometti´s work, under the slogan of deepening about the fundamental artistic sensibility, that characterizes every period of crisis. Although scarcely it has been indicated, Giacometti´s interest in recreating the sensation and the physical facts, it was kept throughout Giacometti´s artistic development. His attention to the hand, has a vital importance when Alberto proposes «return to work» from 1934, leaving aside the surrealistic experience. Keywords: Alberto Giacometti; hand and sense of touch in art; Interwar period; Surrealism; Paris; grey color.

Özet:
Varoluşçu sanatı betimlemek için varoluşçu modern sanatçıların ele aldıkları insan, özgürlük, seçim, başkaldırı, korku, kaygı, endişe, saçma gibi ortak konulardan yola çıkılabilir. Ne var ki eldeki yazıda varoluşçu sanat incelenirken sıklıkla yapıldığı gibi endişe, yalnızlık, çaresizlik, umutsuzluk, yabancılaşma gibi durumların psikolojik özellikleri yerine; varoluş, hiçlik, boşluk ve uzaklık kavramlarının ontolojik anlamları üzerinde durmak istiyorum. Bu yüzden Sartre’in varoluşçuluğun sanattaki en yüksek ifadesi olarak saydığı Giacometti’yi ele alacağım. Şu halde, Sartre’ın varoluşçuluğu ve Giacometti’nin sanatı arasındaki özel bir etkileşimden doğan felsefi bir imkânı aydınlatmak istiyorum. Bu bağlamda ilkin Giacometti’nin bakışını inceleyeceğim ve onun dışsallık ile kurduğu ilişkiyi ele alacağım. Giacometti için temel mesele insan figürünün bütününü yakalamak için başvurduğu uzaklığı bakışıyla ele geçirmektir. Sanatçının bakışını ifade etme biçimi ulaşılamaz bir görsel hakikat sorununu ortaya çıkarır ve sanat yapıtı bir ifade problemi haline dönüşür. Söz konusu betimlemenin ontolojik analizini Sartre’ın çokluktaki birlik, öz ve varoluş, varlık ve hiçlik sorularının sunduğu teorik pusulayla araştıracağım.

Abstract:
In order to describe existential art, it is possible to draw upon common issues of the existential modern artists such as human, freedom, choice, revolt, fear, anxiety, absurdity. In this article, I would like to emphasize the ontological meanings of the concepts of existence, nothingness, emptiness and distance rather than psychological features such as anxiety, loneliness, despair and alienation, as is often done when examining the existential art. That is why I will analyse Giacometti, whom Sartre considered to be the highest expression of existentialism in art. I would therefore like to enlighten a philosophical possibility of a special interaction between Sartre’s existentialism and the art of Giacometti. In this context, I will first examine Giacometti’s gaze and examine his relationship with external world. The main issue for Giacometti is to capture the distance by his gaze. The way in which the artist expresses his view reveals an unattainable problem of visual truth and the artwork becomes a problem of expression. I will explore the ontological analysis of this description with the theoretical compass presented by Sartre’s questions of unity in the multitude, essence and existence, being and nothingness.

The Swiss-born artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) is renowned for his elongated, thin-headed sculptures engulfed in space and emitting an unsettling sense of loneliness. His practice was a cross-fertilisation of sculpture, drawing, painting, writing and debating which determined the searching approach to his work.  The focus here will be on the development of his life's quest to capture the reality of the human figure through paint on canvas, which was serially taken up and abandoned throughout his career.  The influence of Cezanne and his father's post-impressionism, his association with Surrealism, his exploration of cubist abstraction, the importance of politics, phenomenology and existentialism along with his intent to reproduce the sensation of reality, will be traced through his portraits from 1921 to 1965.

In 1939, Alberto Giacometti proposed an unusual work for the Swiss National Exhibition: a tiny head placed on a wide pedestal, which gave rise to dramatic scalar effects. This essay places this little-known episode at the origin of Giacometti's post-war experiments with scale, and argues that those experiments emerged out of a historical context – Switzerland's tense negotiation of national identity in the 1930s – in which monumental forms of sculpture could no longer fulfil their political functions. By untethering the bigness of a monument from its scale, Giacometti's little head disclosed scale's more profound social operation: to formalize and embody our historical practices of engaging with vast structures, including the political structure of the nation. This alignment of aesthetic and political scale suggests how a new phenomenological account of modern sculpture, indebted to Jean-Paul Sartre rather than Maurice Merleau-Ponty, calls into question modernism's supposed negation of the monument.

This article is about artistic freedom of speech and censorship. It compares sadistic and misogynistic elements of (uncensored) Surrealism (from Hans Bellmer's dolls and pornographic photographs, to Giacometti's 'Woman with Her Throat Cut' and the writing of Georges Bataille) to recent censorship of Drill music and self-censorship in comedy. It analyses the cases for and against repressing taboo themes by comparing the Surrealist call for 'pure psychic automatism' with conservative calls for artistic censorship on the grounds of moral decency or blasphemy and liberal calls to censor politically incorrect themes - questioning the unconscious motives of both. It subjects Surrealist art to Peter Tatchell's criteria for censorship, concluding that morality is not fixed and that, unless it falls fowl of Tatchell's three exceptions, art should not be censored.

Après son éviction du surréalisme au milieu des années 1930, Alberto Giacometti aurait, par son retour à la figuration, abandonné ce qui faisait pour certains toute la force et l'originalité de son travail. Pourtant, au-delà d'une discontinuité formelle évidente, il apparaît qu'une certaine permanence de logiques de faire et de rapports au réel permet d'apercevoir une continuité structurale entre la période surréaliste et son après. Partant des concepts de « dialectique » et de « fétichisme », il s'agit ici de construire un ensemble de points d'articulations entre les logiques de production, les systèmes conceptuels et les effets plastiques, par-delà cette supposée fracture. En s'aidant du concept de « dialectique négative » forgé par le philosophe allemand Theodor W. Adorno, il s'agirait également de mettre en évidence la présence latente d'une force critique dans le travail de Giacometti redevable d'un contexte idéologique et politique plus large. Cette force pourrait être envisagée comme un fétichisme à l'œuvre, en ce que le faire et le geste de l'artiste tentent à chaque reprise d'instaurer un rapport renouvelé au réel et à l'autre.

Edwin Dickinson is an enigmatic force in the world of art, and a seminal figure in American Painting, who’s aesthetic defies classification, due to the amorphous nature of his oeuvre. His work engaged a plethora of early Twentieth Century Art movements, both traditional and avant-garde... Despite the improbability of attempting to link Dickinson to any one particular movement, the philosophical theory of Phenomenology may be the most apt means of understanding the overarching theme of his work, and provide a conceptual framework within which the images can be interpreted.

Als populäres Sujet innerhalb der Künste markiert Blindheit keinen Gegensatz, sondern eine spezifische Ausprägung visueller Wahrnehmung. Vor dem Hintergrund der von den Visual Culture Studies, der Kunst-, Theater-und Kulturwissenschaft vorangetriebenen Beschäftigung mit Formen und Praktiken visueller Wahrnehmung, Sichtbarkeit und Repräsentation widmet sich Paradox Blindheit der grundsätzlichen Verschränkung von Konzepten des Sehens und der Blindheit. Der Band rückt mit dem Ziel, Bedeutungen und Funktionen von Blindheit in den Künsten näher zu bestimmen, eine Auswahl neuerer Arbeiten aus der Literatur, der Fotografie, dem Theater und der szenischen Installationskunst in den Fokus. Nachgewiesen wird, dass diese neueren, im Kontext des westlichen Denkens zu verortenden Auseinandersetzungen mit Blindheit keine Absage an das Paradigma der Visualität darstellen, sondern sich als produktiv für das Aushebeln und Aufbrechen verkürzter, ausgrenzender und normierender Praktiken visueller Wahrnehmung erweisen. Die Einbeziehung kulturhistorischer Deutungsmuster wie Blindheit als Strafe oder männliches Privileg ist dabei unabdingbar, dienen diese kulturellen Deutungsmuster doch bis in die Gegenwart als Matrix für vielschichtige und ambivalente Aushandlungen von Blindheit an der Schwelle zwischen konventionellen Kategorien des Sehens und Nichtsehens, des Wissens und Nichtwissens sowie des Materiellen und Immateriellen.

El artículo hace un recorrido por las decisivas transformaciones que experimentó la escultura en el siglo XX a partir de la crucial aportación de Auguste Rodin. Su nueva concepción del volumen, la masa, el vacío, el movimiento, el fragmento, la luz y la superficie, propició el abandono de las seculares propiedades de la escultura para alumbrar un mundo nuevo en este ámbito. Desde sus inmediatos contemporáneos, pasando por Brancusi, los impresionistas, Matisse o Picasso, hasta la nueva visión que proporciona el objeto surrealista, la escultura llega a la deconstrucción de si misma.

Death is ironic; as the archi-semiotician and first historian, death fixes object and meaning in a semiotic complex, separates non-sensuous meaning from bare physical existence, but thereby exposes meaning to the capriciousness of interpretation and tradition. The pause, however, conserves that which does not happen in repose, yet does not interrupt history, and lets history emerge in a movement in which all determination of meaning is suspended. This essay is written in memory of Werner Hamacher, whose life in writing shaped language around its distance and delay from the fixity of sound and sense, which, as he argued, are the subliminal conditions to every communication, presentation, and form in general: formative limits that separate and conjoin that which is and the surplus of un-actuality and incompletion that accompanies each instant of our intentional lives.

... apokryfy, imponderabilia. Alina Szapocznikow (1926-1973); Przebiśniegi: Roman Cieślewicz, Krzysztof M. Bednarski, Olivier de Sagazan, Agnieszka Zgirska, Tomasz Adamczuk, Arkadiusz Drawc, Emilia Grubba, Martyna Jastrzębska, Mateusz Michalczyk, Katarzyna Podpora, Sonia Rega. II edycja wystawy i katalogu, teksty: Maria Kitowska-Łysiak (dzięki uprzejmości culture.pl), Dorota Grubba-Thiede red. Aleksandra Piętka, wyd. Galeria Opera Teatr Wielki- Opera Narodowa w Warszawie 2013
Dorota Grubba-Thiede: O wystawie  "...apokryfy, imponderabilia – ALINA SZAPOCZNIKOW" (fragment)

Obserwując rysunek Aliny Szapocznikow z 1960 roku, ze zbiorów Krzysztofa M. Bednarskiego, konfrontujemy się z subtelną przestrzenią kwitnienia, prószenia, pylenia, pulsowania; jest coś z kształtów kwiatów lilii i irysa jednocześnie. Odśrodkowe prószenie wydaje się zapowiadać jej mnogie formy świetlne, podświetlane, iluminowane drugiej połowy lat 60., komunikujące tyleż sensualne wzrastanie, co krótkowieczność, ulotną atrakcyjność motylich skrzydeł w migotliwym balecie (prze)bogatych form.

Tańczące rzeźby
Odnosi się to też do jej prac minionych, rozedrganych, jak Maria Magdalena (1957), Bellissima, Róża – i na nowo do przyszłych, jak Krużlowa (1969) bądź do Zielnika, którego niemal transparentne karty gromadzą odciski ciała artystki i jej syna Piotra (1972). Poetyka tego rysunku przypomina o osobliwej kinetycznej konstrukcji Kochankowie (Les Amants), którą w 1991 roku zrealizowała Rebecca Horn – jest to rodzaj wędrującej wysoko pod sufitem pary mechanicznych ramion, rozpylających na ścianie czarny (i czerwonokrwisty) abstrakcyjny ślad. Pokrewną organiczną kłączowatość i napięcia między abstrakcją ekspresyjną a figuratywnością odnajdujemy w roztańczonej rzeźbie Duet (1959-1960, Muzeum Okręgowe w Toruniu). Osobowość Aliny Szapocznikow, której metrykalnie życie zamknęło się w latach 1926-1973, wydaje się oddziaływać na współczesnych artystów; nadzawartość jej prac otwiera drogę do coraz to nowszych odczytań tej twórczości, a zarazem wskazuje na potrzebę eksponowania i przeżywania jej oeuvre przez kolejne pokolenia wrażliwych ludzi1. Za sprawą nowojorskiej wystawy w MoMA (2011), kolejnych jej edycji, ekspozycji w paryskim Centrum Pompidou oraz m.in. w Sztokholmie nasila się międzynarodowe zafascynowanie charyzmatycznym dziełem Aliny Szapocznikow2. Już w roku 1976, w trzecią rocznicę śmierci artystki, jako student III roku, Krzysztof M. Bednarski, stworzył dla niej z żużlu wielką, czarną Różę. Czas wydaje się przynosić kolejne sensybilistyczne nawiązania, odniesienia, przywołania w działaniach coraz młodszych artystów, jakby „zaczadzonych pięknem jej sztuki i obecnego w niej jej ciała”. W 1965 roku uległ nim i Marcel Duchamp, z sukcesem rekomendując Alinę Szapocznikow do Nagrody Copleya za osiągnięcia w sztuce. Artystka z Paryża pisała: „W komisji między innymi Marcel Duchamp, Darius Milhaud, Jean Arp, Man Ray, Sir Herbert Read i inni laureaci: Soulages, Matta itd. (...) Poza tym pracuję wciąż i zaczynam w kółko niszczyć, co zrobię, bo nie mogę dojść do ładu z tym, czego chcę. Prawie jak Giacometti, którego śmierć była dla nas prawdziwym osobistym przeżyciem”3. Wydaje się, iż prywatnym memento dla Giacomettiego pozostaje zachwycająco piękna a zarazem tragiczna Głowa z łyżką, którą wykonała w 1966 roku, roku jego odejścia i która jednocześnie jest bliska słynnym powojennym figurom – cieniom „ostatniego wielkiego Monparno”.

The paper swivels around Albert Giacometti's stage design for Samuel Beckett's drama "Waiting for Godot".  It outlines their long-term friendship, their seeming perceptions of each other's work, points of thematic overlap, different connections to the Parisian existentialist "family", then culminates in Beckett and Giacometti working together on the set design in Giacometti's studio.
9pp.

*(2010). Fitch, S. Following Giacometti: Copying as a Basis for Studio Based Research. Canadian Review of Art Education, Volume 37, 73-89.

The act of copying has a long history of polemic within the discipline of art education; a debate rekindled as the artist/teacher phenomenon has brought more practicing artists into the field.
    How, then, does one learn from copying?  What can, in practical terms, be learnt from it and what does it in fact entail?  Using a hybrid research methodology based on self-reflective studio practice, I will demonstrate that this apparently simple act can serve not only as a basis for a multi-faceted approach to studio-based research but also as an original and exciting framework for teaching art in the classroom.

Alberto Đakometi (Alberto Giacometti) je umetnik koji zahvaljujući radu istoimene fondacije iz Pariza, koja je formirana posthumno – od strane njegove supruge, postaje najtraženiji skulptor na današnjem tržištu. Njegova tri dela nalaze se u vrhu liste najskuplje prodatih skulptura. Jedna od njih, njegova omiljena: „Čovek koji hoda“ ili „Homme Que Marche I“, postavila je rekord na aukciji. Dato delo zapravo je serija figura slične forme, koje predstavljaju izduženog i mršavog čoveka u hodu u bronzi, bez završne obrade. Ovakvih figura originalno postoji 5, stoga je moguće ispitati razne prostore u kojima su postavljane. Zahvaljujući velikoj popularnosti i učešću na puno izlaganja, na ovim delima možemo ispitati načine na koje razni faktori deluju na utisak publike, i koji je pravi izbor za izlaganje, na osnovu prvog utiska koji se želi postići. Kao medijum koristim fotografiju i video zapise, dok je metod istraživanja analiza datih uslova i dostupnog foto materijala u svrhu prikaza svih potencijalnih mogućnosti. U daljim koracima oslanjam se na prethodna istraživanja o posmatranjima umetničkih dela - skulptura i na formiranje virtuelnog 3d okruženja na kojem se parametri ispituju.

Nadie ignora que Pablo Picasso estuvo en el centro del panorama artístico del siglo XX y que ejerció una influencia enorme en las vanguardias. Si bien esta premisa es universalmente aceptada, aún existen reservas al evaluar su papel como articulador de un universo visual surrealista. En el presente estudio se analiza su pro ducción plástica y literaria lejos de las interpretaciones autobiográficas al uso, y apostando por la contextualización de sus metáforas en el universo de referencias high& low surrealista. Rafael Jackson indaga en la evolución de Picasso desde un repertorio basado en las formas zoológicas y botánicas, con La danza (1925) como punto de arranque, hasta su cristalización en un contexto específicamente sagrado, con el célebre Guernica (1937) como punto culminante.

Araştırmada güzel ve estetik kavramlarını ilk sorgulayan Antikçağ düşünürlerinden Platon’un duyulur ve düşünülür dünya olarak ayrım yaptığı gerçek ve idea kavramları ile Aristoteles’in duyular ve düşünceyi ortak bir gerçeklikte bir araya getirdiği madde form ilişkisi karşılıklı analiz edilerek doğanın taklidi ve doğanın tamamlayıcısı olarak sanat ve estetik değerler Alberto Giacometti örnekleminde incelenmektedir. Bu kapsam-da Platon’un idealizmi ile Aristoteles’in realizmi arasında çelişkili bir noktada konumlanan Giacometti heykelle-ri ve varoluşa ilişkin temel manifestosu, sanatın yansıtıcılık (taklit) ve tamamlayıcılık özellikleri ile yeniden yorumlanmaktadır. Araştırmanın devamında Alberto Giacometti ve Francis Bacon karşılaştırmasının benze-şen ve ayrışan yönleriyle birlikte bu tartışmanın Platoncu bakış açısından yansımaları çalışmaya dahil edilerek örnekleme alınan eserler üzerinden analiz edilmektedir. Son olarak Picasso ve Giacometti’nin estetik ve güzellik anlayışları Aristotelesci bakış açısıyla karşılıklı çözümlenmektedir.
İncelemeler sonucunda Platon’un sanatı ve sanatçıyı kötüleyen taklit kuramının aksine Aristoteles’in estetik düşüncelerinde sanatın haz verici ve arındırıcı bir kimlik kazandığı görülür. Bu anlamda gerçeklik ve imge ayrımı ile nesnel dünya ile duyumlar dünyası olarak ayrılan iki yaklaşımında taklit kuramından yola çıksalar da söz konusu kavramın yalnızca gerçekliğin yeniden yapılandırması olmadığı sonucuna ulaşılır. Taklit gerçeğin yansıması olduğu kadar, gerçeğin estetik yolla yeniden tasarımıdır ve alımlayıcıda haz duygusu uyandırdığı kadar duyguların arınmasında da etkin rol oynar. Giacometti heykelleri ve resimleri bu doğrultuda her iki yaklaşımın da birer yansıması ve imgelerin yeniden üretimidir. Picasso ve Bacon karşılaştırması da Pla-ton ve Aristoteles arasındaki bu etkileşimli ayrılığın, duyguların dışavurumunun, ruhsal arınmanın ve haz duy-gusunun doğrudan yansımalarına sahiptir.
In the research, Plato, one of the ancient thinkers who first questioned the concepts of beauty and aesthetics, distinguished between the concepts of reality and idea, which was distinguished as the sensible and conceivable world, and the relationship between matter and form, which Aristotle brought together senses and thought in a common reality, and created art as an imitation of nature and as a complement to nature. aesthe-tic values are examined in the sample of Alberto Giacometti. In this context, Giacometti sculptures and their basic manifesto regarding existence, which are located at a contradictory point between Plato's idealism and Aristotle's realism, are reinterpreted with the reflectivity (imitation) and complementary features of art. In the continuation of the research, the similar and divergent aspects of the comparison of Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon and the reflections of this discussion from the Platonic perspective are included in the study and analyzed through the sampled works. Finally, Picasso and Giacometti's understanding of aesthetics and beauty are mutually analyzed with an Aristotelian point of view.
As a result of the studies, it is seen that art gained a pleasurable and purifying identity in Aristotle's aesthetic thoughts, unlike Plato's imitation theory, which denigrated the art and the artist. In this sense, although they start from the imitation theory in their two approaches, which are divided into the distinction between rea-lity and image, and the objective world and the world of sensations, it is concluded that the concept in question is not only a reconstruction of reality. Imitation is the aesthetic redesign of reality as well as the reflection of reality, and it plays an active role in the purification of emotions as well as arousing a sense of pleasure in the receptor. Giacometti sculptures and paintings are a reflection of both approaches and reproduction of images in this direction. The comparison of Picasso and Bacon also has direct reflections of this interactive separation between Plato and Aristotle, the expression of emotions, spiritual purification, and sense of pleasure.

Фонд Маг – первый во Франции частный фонд, посвящённый модернизму и современному искусству. Вместе с каталонским архитектором Жозепом Луисом Сертом над проектом работали крупнейшие мастера международного модернизма – Жорж Брак, Жоан Миро, Альберто Джакометти. Каждый из трёх художников создал на территории Фонда собственное пространство, в котором специфическим образом сочетаются архитектура, ландшафт, скульптура и монументальное искусство. В основу общей композиции легла традиционная для Средиземноморья ностальгия по античной культуре, в частности – обращение к крито-микенской цивилизации и связанному с ней мифу о лабиринте Минотавра. // Fondation Maeght is the first private foundation in France dedicated to modern and contemporary art. Along with Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, three famous modern artists worked on the project – Georges Braque, Joan Miró, and Alberto Giacometti. Each of them created a personal space on the premises of the foundation, where architecture, landscape, sculpture and monumental art interact in a specific way. The general composition is based on the traditional Mediterranean nostalgia for the culture of Antiquity and, in particular, the Minoan civilization and its core myth about the Minotaur's labyrinth.

The Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti participated in Parisian literary and cultural circles from the early meetings of the Surrealists to existentialism and the diverse currents in art and poetry that followed. Numerous writers were inspired to respond to his sculpture, drawing, painting and publications during his lifetime and after his death in 1966. This book considers examples of poésie critique devoted to Giacometti's work by major French poets and thinkers from André Breton to Yves Bonnefoy. Through close readings of key texts, it discusses the extent to which each writer has succeeded in overcoming the dichotomy between a text and its visual stimulus that so often leads to a hierarchical relationship. Many of these writers focus on the materiality of Giacometti's works of art and of the written word. Examination of their writings thus allows new understandings of poésie critique and ekphrasis to be developed.

Alberto es un hombre tranquilo, con cierta pausa a la hora de hacerse notar y siempre con la cabeza en muchos lugares, incluido el que experimenta en cada momento. Hace poco le propuse dar una vuelta y conversar sobre algunos temas que nos vienen rondando por la cabeza últimamente. A pesar de su cojera, no rechaza salir a caminar y respirar un aire distinto al de su estudio, algo manido y viciado. Dice que cambiaría toda su obra por una hora de buena conversación. Puedo creer esa exageración. De vez en cuando, alguien nos para y le pide un autógrafo, algún garabato en un cuaderno de dibujo improvisado. Siempre le ha hecho gracia que le llamen «Sr. Giacometti». Me dice: «No sé por qué la gente no prefiere llamarme Alberto, es mucho más fácil de pronunciar». Y a continuación suena una especie de carcajada profunda. Nunca he sabido con certeza en qué estaría pensando. A pesar de gozar de buena salud, a Alberto le preocupa la muerte. No le preocupa, más bien le interesa. Para él no es una cuestión de establecer un final, un límite, sino un simple paso más. Seguimos caminando. No sabe si viajará a Nueva York para asistir a la inauguración de su próxima exposición. No es que esté muy lejos, es que hay que viajar mucho. Convencerle de algo es una tarea casi imposible; es una persona muy testaruda. El revuelo causado por una de sus últimas obras y estrella de la exposición, El hombre que camina, no pone las cosas fáciles. «Franck Maubert ha escrito un libro sobre esa escultura», me dice. No saber eso es una tarea complicada, todo lo que rodea a Alberto adquiere una dimensión que va más allá de cualquier frontera. Además, creo que no recuerda las tardes en las que nos sentábamos los tres en el café próximo a su casa. «Esa figura», nos contó Maubert antes de publicar el libro, «nos representa a todos. En ella está resumida toda nuestra historia, todo nuestro alcance como ser vivo, todo nuestro amanecer y decadencia. El hombre que camina es otro paso más, otro final, otra muerte. Pero también otro comienzo, otro punto de partida. De haber sido un dibujo, más allá de los bocetos, o una pintura, nunca habría llegado a convertirse en la viva imagen de nuestro destino. Esta escultura de deshace cuando la miras y palpita si la escucharla. ¿Qué tipo de arte se podrá hacer después? No lo sabemos. ¿Qué tipo de arte queremos ver después? Cualquiera que nos signifique, que sacuda nuestro pesar, que exista con nosotros y no ajena a este mundo».

È la lunga autobiografia, raccontata “in terza persona” sotto lo pseudonimo di Silvio, di un celebre editore e critico d’arte, nonché gallerista, uno spaccato della sua vita parigina vista da un’angolazione particolare, in cui le ragioni estetiche si mescolano con l’aneddoto e con la descrizione anche umana degli artisti nel loro contesto (lo studio di Kandinsky, le visite a Picasso, le conversazioni con Matisse e con Alberto Magnelli, le incomprensioni con de Chirico). Gualtieri di San Lazzaro (al secolo Giuseppe Papa, 1904-1974) fondò e diresse la rivista «XXe Siècle», pubblicata a Parigi a partire dal 1938, dedicando ogni numero a un diverso tema di arte contemporanea e illustrandolo con grafiche originali di maestri come Arp, Henri Laurens, Miró, Klee, Moore, Marino Marini, Magnelli e Picasso. Edito da Garzanti nel 1948 (Premio Bagutta Opera Prima 1949) e da Mondadori nel 1966, il libro diventa oggi una preziosa testimonianza di un clima culturale e dei suoi protagonisti, raccontati da un testimone diretto e partecipe.
Viene qui riproposta l’edizione modificata e accresciuta dallo stesso autore nel 1966.