Giacometti, Alberto

"Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern

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"Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern
Paul Gauguin , Ezio Bassani , Christian Feest , Sidney Geist , Donald Gordon , Jean Laude , Gail Levin , Jean-Louis Paudrat , Philippe Peltier , Laura Rosenstock , Alan Wilkinson , Evan Maurer , Richard Oldenburg , Jack Flam , Rosalind Krauss , Constantin Brancusi , Jacques Lipchitz , Amadeo Modigliani , Henri Moore , Alberto Giacometti , and Kirk Varnedoe
Manufacturer: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Primitivism and Twentieth-Century Art: A Documentary History
Primitivism and Modern Art (World of Art)
Primitivism in Modern Art (Paperbacks in Art History)
Art Of The Senses
African Art (World of Art)

ASIN: 0870705342
Release Date: 2002-07-02

Book Description

"In 1906 tribal sculpture was ""discovered"" by 20th century artists; these objects had suddenly become relevant because of changes in the nature of modern art itself. These two volumes comprise the first comprehensive scholarly treatment in half a century of the crucial influence of the tribal arts--particularly those of Africa and Oceania--on modern painters and sculptors. In this visually stunning and intellectually provocative work, 19 essays confront complex aesthetic, art-historical, and sociological problems posed by this dramatic chapter in the history of modern art. The main body of the book contains a series of essays on primitivism in the works of Gauguin, the Fauves, Picasso, Brancusi, the German Expressionists, Lipchitz, Modigliani, Klee, Giacometti, Moore, the Surrealists, and the Abstract Expressionists. It concludes with a discussion of primitivist contemporary artists, including those involved in earthworks, shamanism, and ritual-inspired performances."

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Best book on one of true greats
Giacometti: Alienation and estrangement
That's a good book!

Giacometti: A Biography of his Work
Yves Bonnefoy
Manufacturer: Flammarion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Alberto Giacometti: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings (Art & Design)
Alberto Giacometti
A Giacometti Portrait
Alberto Giacometti
Brancusi: Revised Edition

ASIN: 2080135120
Release Date: 1993-06-01

Book Description

Although Alberto Giacometti has long been recognized as one of the most original artists of the twentieth century, his life and work have not been the subject of a large illustrated monograph for many years. Yves Bonnefoy, poet, essayist and friend of the artist, has been reflecting on Giacometti's work since their first meeting, and began working on this book in 1981 while giving a series of lectures at the College de France. Yves Bonnefoy examines the entire range of Giacometti's creative production: sculpture, painting, drawing, which was the basis of the artist's work, and his lithographs-among the finest produced in this century. By focusing on the works of art themselves rather than on the details of the artist's life, and by relying on the evidence of Giacometti's important writings and statements, the author reveals the psychological and intellectual context of Giacometti's inspiration, and provides a wealth of new interpretations of his drawings, canvases and sculptures.

Giacometti's early artistic development within his family circle, the impact of his voyages to Italy, the nature of his early apprenticeship in Antoine Bourdelle's studio in Paris, and his interest in African and Oceanian arts are traced with the help of contemporary accounts. Bonnefoy attributes great importance to Georges Bataille's thinking-re-evaluated here-and its influence on Giacometti's work, together with that of surrealism and the ideas of Andre Breton, whose relationship with the artist is analyzed. The periods that constituted the most significant moments of Giacometti's life are explored, especially his return to the study of the human figure in 1935, the Walking Man series in 1947, and the period of his study of 'heads' both in painting and sculpture during the 1950s. Bonnefoy's reflection on Giacometti's creative world leads him to raise important questions about the secret and profound relationship that an artist born in the mountains maintained with light, one that Giacometti sought to relive through his emotive landscapes.

In writing Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work Yves Bonnefoy benefited from documentary and photographic assistance from Annette Giacometti and other members of the artist's family, friends, and the galleries that exhibited his work. This study, therefore, evokes not only Giacometti's oeuvre, but also his childhood and later environment, his studios and the works that were important to him.

Bonnefoy's penetrating analysis of Giacometti's work throws much new light on issues central to the understanding of twentieth-century art as a whole. Accompanied by an extensive biographical chronology and bibliography and illustrated with nearly 60 works and documents, many of which are published here for the first time, this monograph will remain an essential for years to come.

Customer Reviews:

Best book on one of true greats.......2007-01-10

Alberto Giacometti gave Western art perhaps the most persuasive and comprehensive view of the state of being human post WW2; eroded to its core yet still possessing the intelligence to think it way out of the mess it constantly makes for itself.

Yves Bonnefoy's book Giacometti is the definitive work on this artist and should be compulsory reading for anyone contemplating becoming a contemporary artist as it contains all the clues that would alow someone to understand such essential things as integrity and the balancing act between idea and artistry.

Giacometti: Alienation and estrangement.......2004-03-23

Alberto Giacometti is among my favorite 20th century sculptors -- his semi-representational sculptures are powerful and expressive of the alienation and estrangement of the human condition.

That's a good book!.......2001-10-22

After i review it and i'll type what i feel!

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TO SEE VERY MUCH
Absolutley Fabulous!

A Giacometti Portrait
James Lord
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Giacometti: A Biography
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Plausible Portraits of James Lord: With Commentary by the Model
Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work

ASIN: 0374515735

Book Description

When we look at a painting hanging on an art gallery wall, we see only what the artist has chosen to disclose--the finished work of art. What remains mysterious is the process of creation itself--the making of the work of art. Everyone who has looked at paintings has wondered about this, and numerous efforts have been made to discover and depict the creative method of important artists. A Giacometti Portrait is a picture of one of the century's greatest artists at work.

James Lord sat for eighteen days while his friend Alberto Giamcometti did his portrait in oil. The artist painted, and the model recorded the sittings and took photographs of the work in its various stages. What emerged was an illumination of what it is to be an artist and what it was to be Giacometti--a portrait in prose of the man and his art. A work of great literarydistinction, A Giacometti Portrait is, above all, a subtle and important evocation of a great artist.

Customer Reviews:

TO SEE VERY MUCH.......2001-08-06

Anyone who has ever wondered how a truly great artist gets his inspiration, works on a daily basis and incorporates his philosophies of life into his work will want to read this terrific story of how a young, American writer sat for his portrait by the legendary Alberto Giacometti.

Almost non-stop upon their meeting, Giacometti opens up and begins letting his thoughts come tumbling out of his mouth. He tells his subject that he looks like "a thug...if I could paint you as I see you and a policeman saw the picture he'd arrest you immediately!" And then, "Don't laugh. I'm not supposed to make my models laugh." He tells the author of his trip to London's National Gallery where he says, "...I deliberately didn't look at the Rembrandts, because if I had looked at them I wouldn't have been able to look at anything else afterward." Later on in his work, "It's impossible to paint a portrait...the photograph exists and that's all there is to it."

Giacometti was not only one of the greatest artists of the last century he was also, obviously, a wonderful, contradictory, clever, intelligent, verbal, loving, open, warm companion. When the painting is not going well, the artist exclaims, "If only Cezanne were here, he would set everything right with two brush strokes." Lord gently corrects him pointing out that Cezanne had plenty of trouble. And then Giacometti (probably with a hint of happiness) agrees, "Even he had trouble."

One comes to know these two men so well in this small, beautifully written memoir that one feels close to them and to their emotional upset when after only eighteen days, they part ways. The author reminds us that Giacometti would be the first to remark that a portrait could only achieve a "semblence of reality." He hopes that the artist will enjoy this written portrait. As Lord writes, "To see even so little will be to see very much." True.

Included in the paperback are snapshots taken to show Lord's portrait in progress. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Absolutley Fabulous!.......1998-12-08

This book is a must, for fans of Giacometti's work and for artists world wide. It gives one the opportunity to be in the studio with a great artist. It is wonderfull but terrible at the same time, as an artist, I came away from the book feeling completely insignificant untalented and without hope, however this is a good thing, it is an experience all artists must, and do go through. Please read the book you will learn so much!

Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture in Plaster

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Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture in Plaster

Manufacturer: Verlag Scheidegger and Spiess
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art since Pollock (A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts)

ASIN: 3858817058

Book Description

Sculptors have long been fascinated, even seduced, by the possibilities of the human body. From classical Greece’s Doryphoros to Michelangelo’s David, the nude has captivated artists and viewers alike with its simplicity and power. One of the most arresting interpreters of the human form is Alberto Giacometti (1901–66), renowned for haunting nudes so prophetic for the moderns that they were claimed by the surrealist, existentialist, formalist, and expressionist movements in turn. Now, intensely personal photographs of Giacometti’s work are available for the first time in print in Ernst Scheidegger’s Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture in Plaster.
Alongside personal commentary documenting his twenty-year friendship with the sculptor, Scheidegger here presents photographs he took at Giacometti’s Paris studio and family home in Switzerland. These striking images document Giacometti’s little-seen work in plaster, the intermediate stage of his artistic process before the final bronze casting. They vividly evoke how the sculptor worked and offer unique insight into Giacometti’s creative process.
The images are accompanied by curator Christian Klemm’s critical essay on the sculptor who revolutionized the art world and entranced a 1930s Parisian milieu that included Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Giacometti’s later razor-thin, skeletal nudes, Klemm argues, reflect the devastation of postwar Europe and the angst of a generation. This rich collection of photographs provides a surprising new perspective on the way that Giacometti gave his artistic vision physical form.

Henri Cartier-Bresson And Alberto Giacometti: La Decision De L'oeil / The Decision Of The Eye

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Henri Cartier-Bresson And Alberto Giacometti: La Decision De L'oeil / The Decision Of The Eye

Manufacturer: Scalo Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, the Image and the World: A Retrospective

ASIN: 303939004X

Book Description

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) and Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) became friends in the mid-1930s in Paris. Both were seeking a way out of surrealism that would lead back to reality. Giacometti returned to life studies, Cartier-Bresson exchanged his brush for a camera. The content of this volume revolves around the many mutual resonances in the work of these two great artists. The book opens with shots of Giacometti taken by Cartier-Bresson over a period of three decades. At the same time, the inner workings of the artists' friendship is illuminated by a comparison between the two as draughtsmen—both searching for the 'instant décisif'—and by the question of how the photographs of one and the paintings and drawings of the other are used in por-traiture. This is a unique encounter of two giants of 20th century art and photography!In their essays, Tobia Bezzola, curator at the Kunst-haus Zurich and Yves Bonnefoy, poet and writer, not only follow the traces of this exceptional friendship with accuracy, but also place the work and visual dialogue between the two creative voices within the frame of the history of surrealist and Modern Art.This book was produced in collaboration with Henri-Cartier Bresson, the Alberto Giacometti Foundation and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris.

Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, and the Man

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A Great Artist -- A Ridiculous Book
The other ratings on this page are too high
A meticulous, scholarly, seminal body of work
Wilson's Giacometti and the vital necessity of art

Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, and the Man
Laurie Wilson
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0300113366

Book Description

Alberto Giacometti, one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, was also one of the most enigmatic. In this major new interpretation of Giacometti and his work, art historian and psychoanalyst Laurie Wilson demonstrates how the artist's secret beliefs and emotional scars are reflected in his evocative sculpture, drawings, and paintings.

Wilson's Giacometti was an extremely imaginative child who entwined fantasy and real-life experiences. As he matured, the artist combined fact and fancy into evolving myths, part conscious and part unconscious. Drawing on biographical data uncovered during a decade of research, Wilson reconstructs traumatic events and issues in Giacometti's life—including family births and deaths in early childhood, world wars and their aftermath, and his intense and ambivalent relationship with his parents—and examines their profound effects on his artistic evolution. These startling new interpretations will forever change the way we understand both the man and his work.

Customer Reviews:

A Great Artist -- A Ridiculous Book .......2006-10-25

The author is an 'art historian and psychoanalyst.' That should make you suspicious immediately. Wilson ignores what Giacometti said about his work and his life and posits absurd Freudian mumbo-jumbo to explain this complex man of genius. For example, Giacometti told biographer James Lord that he did not have homosexual desires. Indeed, Lord (an openly gay man himself)found no evidence whatsoever that Giacometti was not hetrosexual. But Wilson manufactures absurd reasons to insist that he was, in line with Freudian doctrine: Freudians insist, of course, that someone like Giacometti (or you or me) does not really know himself -- only the analyst can uncover the unconscious drives behind our every thought and move. What is amazing is not that a small group of psychoanalysts survives, but that the Viennese quack's nonsense is believed at all today.

As another reviewer pointed out, Wilson's leaps of logic (illogic, really) make her case -- and her book -- ridiculous. There are fine books on Giacometti out there -- Lord's biography is a good starting point -- read those instead.

The other ratings on this page are too high.......2006-04-05

I have been doing extensive research on Giacometti, and this is one of the worst books I have come across. The author clearly has done a good deal of research, and this book may be good for you if you can weed out her ridiculous leaps of logic. She seems almost obsessed with demonstrating his sexual deviancy, at times in excrutiating ways. Besides the absurd psychoanalytic portrait she portrays (which is probably the basis for her contrived leaps in logic), the writing is pompous and pretentiously self assured. Here are some gems:

"Head of a Man on a Rod is usually discussed in terms of the terror Giacometti felt when he saw the Dutchman die...but the cavernously open mouth of the work may also convey unconscious homoerotic longings to be orally penetrated."

"After the failure of Giacometti's much publicized attempt to develop a mutually satisfying loving relationship with a woman...he split all womankind into two. Women could either be idealized, untouchable figures with whom he could have intellectual exchanges on the model of his mother; or they could be subordinates who he could dominate..."

"Giacometti's uneasiness with touching could also help explain his artistic preferences...Giacometti had not been well held as an infant or young boy, and it might have been too painful to see hands holding children with loving gestures"

A meticulous, scholarly, seminal body of work.......2003-11-17

Laurie Wilson (Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, NYU Medical Center, New York Center) has written the definitive biography of the skilled and talented artist Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, And The Man. Tracing Giacometti's roots from his imaginative childhood the traumas in his early life, to surviving the hardships of world wars, and the effects of his life experiences on the nature, theme, and interplay of his art, Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, And The Man offers a excellent wealth of documented insights into the creation and message behind one man's great art. Alberto Giacometti is a meticulous, scholarly, seminal body of work which is especially recommended for academic library collections.

Wilson's Giacometti and the vital necessity of art.......2003-10-18

This biographical work is an exquisite study of the artist and of the vital necessity of his work to himself and to us, his audience. Wilson traces his life with a sensitivity that matches its history of loss and trauma while weaving it into an emotionally attuned connection to his work. The effect is an indelibly affecting portrait of this quintessential 20th century artist. This portrayal blends the best traditions of the psychoanalytic method of examining a life with appreciation of the artist's work on aesthetic and art historical grounds. The author brings to it a richly textured language, which avoids the possible pitfalls of formulaic interpreting, and instead brings to life the artist's personal and artistic existence. This feels particularly satisfying because it echoes Giacometti's own accomplishment: a rendering of human fragility and yet transcending it, and helping us transcend it through art.

Alberto Giacometti: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings (Art & Design)

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nice plates

Alberto Giacometti: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings (Art & Design)

Manufacturer: Prestel Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3791313711

Customer Reviews:

nice plates.......2000-11-07

lots of nice plates and informative text. a good book.

Traces of a Friendship: Alberto Giacometti

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Traces of a Friendship: Alberto Giacometti
Ernst Scheidegger
Manufacturer: Verlag Scheidegger and Spiess
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Alberto Giacometti: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings (Art & Design)

ASIN: 3858811262

Book Description

Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) is inarguably one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century. Immensely gifted and prolific, Giacometti gave physical expression to his twin obsessions of the human form and the alienation of modern life. Because of his canonical position in the history of art and the reams of scholarship produced about him, Giacometti remains to many the elusive master artist, distant and remote on the Olympus of creative endeavor.

Ernst Scheidegger, a friend of the sculptor, knew a very different Giacometti. Scheidegger accompanied him to his studio, ate and drank with him, and relaxed with him in his family home. Traces of a Friendship is a document of this intimate life of Giacometti, consisting of photographs that Scheidegger made over the course of two decades. Scheidegger opens Giacometti’s studio and house in Maloja, Switzerland, to readers, allowing them rare access to the most closely held aspects of the artist’s life. Sketching in his studio, having a cup of coffee, his works in progress, his art in installation views, even his sleeping cats—Scheidegger captures the essence of the artist's working life in images artful in their own right.

“Alberto Giacometti’s nature, work, and thoughts fascinated me and other friends tremendously,” wrote Scheidegger. “I was one of the lucky ones allowed to experience his life.” With Traces of a Friendship, Scheidegger expands that circle of the “lucky ones” to include all those equally fascinated by this modern master.

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A very good survey
Giacometti: Alienation and estrangement

Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti , and N. Y.) Museum of Modern Art (New York
Manufacturer: Museum of Modern Art
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0870703404

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Alberto Giacometti, the elegant catalog for a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, seeks to counter overly literary or psychological interpretations of an artist who has long been viewed as a poster boy for existentialism. The atmospheric black-and-white halftones and color plates are organized in closely interrelated, chronological groups to support texts by several experts, including Christian Klemm, curator of the Alberto Giacometti Foundation. By focusing on the work itself--which includes paintings and drawings as well as the famously slender, elongated sculptures--the authors emphasize his exquisitely calibrated response to the roles played by perception and memory. In the portraits, for example, networks of fine lines dematerialize a sitter's face yet preserve her essence. Anne Umland's intriguing discussion of the roles of photography and the fetish in Giacometti's surrealist-era sculpture is one of the many pleasures of this book. --Cathy Curtis

Book Description

This is the most comprehensive survey in many years of the work of one of the 20th century's greatest artists, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). Published to celebrate the centennial of his birth, the book accompanies an exhibition jointly organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Kunsthaus Zürich.

The Swiss-born Giacometti was a supremely inventive sculptor as well as a painter and draftsman of the highest distinction. This volume includes many of his early Cubist-influenced and Surrealist works, often slyly humorous and allusively erotic, as well as his masterful drawings and paintings, and the elongated sculptures of the human head and figure for which he is best known. Published with the full involvement of the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, this will become the standard reference on the artist. <BR>200 illustrations, 100 in full color and 100 duotone, 272 pages, 9 1/2 x 11 3/4" <BR>A Museum of Modern Art Book

Customer Reviews:

A very good survey.......2007-04-15

Surprisingly enough, there are comparatively few quality publications on Giacometti, one of the greatest artists in the XXth century. This catalogue for an exhibition that was held at the Moma and at the Kunsthaus Zurich, draws on the extensive Giacometti holdings of both museums for a comprehensive survey of his career. From his surrealist period to his trademark elongated figures, from his numerous drawings which served as studies both for his sculptures and his paintings, to his lesser-known oils, the whole career and output of the artist is very well illustrated in a book that I highly recommend.

Giacometti: Alienation and estrangement.......2004-03-23

Giacometti well expressed the alienation and estrangement of the human condition in his sculpture.

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an exceptional work of criticism
First Rate Study Of Alberto Giacometti
Portrait of an artist

Looking at Giacometti
David Sylvester
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 080504163X

Book Description

Winner of a Venice Bienniale Golden Lion Award, Looking at Giacometti is a compelling mixture of biography and criticism, including an extraordinary interview with Giacometti.

Written over a period of forty years, Looking at Giacometti is a profound response to the art of one of modernism’s greatest sculptors. It takes students from world-renowned art critic David Sylvester’s first visits to Giacometti’s studio in the late 1940s to the author’s prolonged sitting for the artist’s portrait of him in the 1960 and reflections on his complete oeuvre after Giacometti’s death. A compelling mixture of biography and criticism, and including a sixteen-page insert of black and white photographs by Patricia Matisse, this book sheds new light on twentieth-century art and thought.

Customer Reviews:

an exceptional work of criticism.......2002-05-12

This short volume betrays the late David Sylvester's masterful understanding not only of his subject, but of modernist aesthetics overall.

"Looking at Giacometti" documents the way an extraordinary analytical mind came to understand a critical modern artist. The book has a tripartite structure: the first five essays were written while its subject was living; the next five offer a retrospective view of the artist and his work; and the final chapter, written during the 1980s, offers yet another perspective. With each successive chapter, Sylvester's understanding of Giacometti's work deepens, and his passionate, probing curiosity leads him to greater insights.

Of course, Sylvester may be remembered most as a sensitive interviewer (cf. his brilliant interviews with Francis Bacon, his probing Duchamp interview, and his book of BBC interviews with American artists); but his criticism -- particularly on Giacometti and Bacon -- remains exemplary, and indispensible.

This brief but exceptionally insightful study of Giacometti's work is highly recommended to anyone interested in modern art -- and to anyone hoping to write precise, incisive art criticism.

First Rate Study Of Alberto Giacometti.......2000-12-03

One of the best studies of Giacometti available in English, written by a a professional critic who knew, interviewed, and even posed for a portrait by Giacometti. It covers all of Giacometti's artistic periods, his work as both painter and sculptor, and takes into account his writings, to produce a detailed and nuanced portrait of the artist and his work. And, it's especially refreshing to read a book about Giacometti that focuses more on his work than his personality.

As a general introduction to Giacometti, Sylvester's book is far superior to James Lord's overrated "A Giacometti Portrait," and is much more useful than Lord's biography, if you want to understand what Giacometti was trying to accomplish. This book is obviously not as exhaustive as Bonnefoy's enormous study on the subject (160 pages versus 574), but Sylvester's analysis is sharper and more hard-headed.

The photographs of Giacometti's work are limited and rather poor in quality, and none are in color. You'd have to go to the Scheider or Bonnefoy studies of Giacometti for reproductions. But for a serious analysis of Giacometti's work as it developed over his career, read Sylvester.

Portrait of an artist.......2000-12-02

This excellent volume offers an in-depth look at the evolution of Alberto Giacometti's sculpture and painting. Having often visited Giaometti's Paris studio during the last twelve years of the artist's life, the author is able to provide an intimate portrait of one of the major figures of 20th century art and presents a comprehensive, analytical survey of the artist's work. Included is an extensive interview with Giacometti from 1965 and sixteen of Patricia Matisse's black-and-white photographs of the artist's work and studio. The author explores the artist's interest in the process of objectifying reality, the question of how art is perceived, and how Giacometti's work is related to the work of other modern artists. In so doing, he has written a book that is valuable not only for the study of Giacometti's paintings and sculpture but also for a deeper understanding of modern art as a whole.

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