Lot Essay
In 1962, Giacometti executed eight bronze busts of his wife, Annette, adding a ninth to the series in 1964 and a tenth in 1965. In his monograph of Giacometti's work, Yves Bonnefoy calls Annette VIII the masterpiece of this series. (Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., p. 509) With its strained pose and violent modeling, Annette VIII exemplifies the overtly expressionist style of Giacometti's late years, forming a striking contrast to the relatively restrained bronzes of his brother Diego which the artist executed in the preceding decade.
The narrowness of the head which characterizes Giacometti's sculptures of Diego in the 1950's gives way in the series of Annette to a dramatic broadening of the face, a change which has been attributed to the diminished distance from the model at which the artist worked in his late years. In Annette VIII, the slender neck surges upward from the gouged, rocky torso as if to channel all the sculpture's energy into this newly widened head. Analyzing the significance of this shift in Giacometti's treatment of the head, Bonnefoy wrote,
What a difference between these faces and the busts made between 1950 and 1959, in which Alberto reduced the volume of Diego's head...to a knife-edge or a lightning flash, as though his
impression of his brother was immediately and only metaphysical
intuition, a pure presence and not the body! An end, now, to that
approach which was already a metaphysical interpretation, for
Annette is recognized 'as she is'...and the miracle is that the more freely she can be herself in those minor spheres where metaphysical inquiry is not concerned, the more conscious we are of the mystery
of her presence on earth, here and now. (Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., pp. 510-511)
The pure physicality which Bonnefoy feels in the bust of Annette derives in large part from the subject's unwavering, almost hypnotic, gaze. Staring straight back at the viewer with a life-like intensity, Giacometti's Annette VIII recalls a statement which the artist himself made, discussing the contrast between drawing a living head and drawing a skull: "What made the difference between the dead man and the person was her gaze..." (exh. cat., Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, 1913-1965, Tate Gallery, London, 1965, n.p.) So strong is Annette's stare in Giacometti's late sculptures that the spectator finds himself drawn into a reciprocal relationship with the bronze subject. As David Sylvester explains,
It is clear in all his work that when Giacometti talks about the
gaze as the very sign of life he is talking about a gaze directed straight back at the beholder, mirroring his gaze... Face to face
with a Giacometti image...I feel within my muscles the stance of the figure, feel I am adopting the same stance, feel this so strongly
that sometimes I find myself doing so in reality... But, however
strongly I feel the figure's action within myself, I never -- as one normally does when one feels this -- feel myself identified with the figure, never have the sensation of losing myself in it... [This] confrontation seems to say that the reality of a person is only
established through his relation to another but that this relation
reveals the solitude of each, the intraversible distance between
them, recognizes that this other is no projection or extension of
oneself or creature subject to oneself but a being separate from
oneself... (Ibid., n.p.)
With their inescapable feeling of anxiety and their poignant acknowledgement of man's essential solitude, the busts of his wife which Giacometti executed in the 1960's may be read as the works of a man grappling with his own impending death. Recounting Giacometti's estrangement even from Annette in these late years, James Lord concludes, "One thinks of Balzac, dead at fifty-one; of Beethoven, dead at fifty-seven; Rembrandt, dead at sixty-three... [Giacometti] had entered the company of men of genius grown old before their time but was able to find at the end renewed resources of expression." (J. Lord, Alberto Giacometti, Boston, 1983, p. 472
(no fig. #) Franco Cianetti, Alberto Giacometti modeling a bust of Annette, circa 1962
The narrowness of the head which characterizes Giacometti's sculptures of Diego in the 1950's gives way in the series of Annette to a dramatic broadening of the face, a change which has been attributed to the diminished distance from the model at which the artist worked in his late years. In Annette VIII, the slender neck surges upward from the gouged, rocky torso as if to channel all the sculpture's energy into this newly widened head. Analyzing the significance of this shift in Giacometti's treatment of the head, Bonnefoy wrote,
What a difference between these faces and the busts made between 1950 and 1959, in which Alberto reduced the volume of Diego's head...to a knife-edge or a lightning flash, as though his
impression of his brother was immediately and only metaphysical
intuition, a pure presence and not the body! An end, now, to that
approach which was already a metaphysical interpretation, for
Annette is recognized 'as she is'...and the miracle is that the more freely she can be herself in those minor spheres where metaphysical inquiry is not concerned, the more conscious we are of the mystery
of her presence on earth, here and now. (Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., pp. 510-511)
The pure physicality which Bonnefoy feels in the bust of Annette derives in large part from the subject's unwavering, almost hypnotic, gaze. Staring straight back at the viewer with a life-like intensity, Giacometti's Annette VIII recalls a statement which the artist himself made, discussing the contrast between drawing a living head and drawing a skull: "What made the difference between the dead man and the person was her gaze..." (exh. cat., Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, 1913-1965, Tate Gallery, London, 1965, n.p.) So strong is Annette's stare in Giacometti's late sculptures that the spectator finds himself drawn into a reciprocal relationship with the bronze subject. As David Sylvester explains,
It is clear in all his work that when Giacometti talks about the
gaze as the very sign of life he is talking about a gaze directed straight back at the beholder, mirroring his gaze... Face to face
with a Giacometti image...I feel within my muscles the stance of the figure, feel I am adopting the same stance, feel this so strongly
that sometimes I find myself doing so in reality... But, however
strongly I feel the figure's action within myself, I never -- as one normally does when one feels this -- feel myself identified with the figure, never have the sensation of losing myself in it... [This] confrontation seems to say that the reality of a person is only
established through his relation to another but that this relation
reveals the solitude of each, the intraversible distance between
them, recognizes that this other is no projection or extension of
oneself or creature subject to oneself but a being separate from
oneself... (Ibid., n.p.)
With their inescapable feeling of anxiety and their poignant acknowledgement of man's essential solitude, the busts of his wife which Giacometti executed in the 1960's may be read as the works of a man grappling with his own impending death. Recounting Giacometti's estrangement even from Annette in these late years, James Lord concludes, "One thinks of Balzac, dead at fifty-one; of Beethoven, dead at fifty-seven; Rembrandt, dead at sixty-three... [Giacometti] had entered the company of men of genius grown old before their time but was able to find at the end renewed resources of expression." (J. Lord, Alberto Giacometti, Boston, 1983, p. 472
(no fig. #) Franco Cianetti, Alberto Giacometti modeling a bust of Annette, circa 1962