Lot 54

Throughout his life, Alberto Giacometti supplied vases, furnishings, lamps and other creations for selected decorators, architects and friends. Although these commissions were initially accepted for reasons of economic necessity, Giacometti's conception of these utilitarian objects was delivered with no less honesty than he would apply to any other artwork. As he noted to the critic André Parinaud in 1962: "in order to survive I accepted to make utilitarian anonymous objects for a decorator of the period. (...) I had tried as well as possible to make, for example, vases, and I was conscious that to work on a vase as if a sculpture, then there was no difference between what I would call a sculpture, and what was, in fact, an object - a vase !" This vision was to guide the sculptor throughout the 1930s as he increasingly sought to negotiate the question of what could constitute art. Generally overlooked by subsequent art historians as representing only the trivial works of a great artist, it was exactly these 'crumbs' - to use the words of Louis Aragon - that truly defined the artistic substance of their creator. It was in his collaboration with Jean-Michel Frank that Giacometti's output was to be the most fruitful, yielding over fifty objects throughout the 1930s. For Frank, Giacometti delivered many of his most iconic objects, to include the vase -- featuring an androgynous portrait modeled after an ancient Egyptian oil lamp discovered by Howard Carter in the tomb of Tutankhamen -- and also the model Etoile, Osselet, Grande Feuille and Pilastre floor lamps. These creations, and also more modest commissions to include door handles and furniture hardware, facilitated Giacometti's integration into the broader artistic and intellectual avant-garde. Regarding Frank in high esteem, Giacometti strove to deliver an aesthetic that was grounded in a historicism that was archaic, yet also fantastic, and that would complement Frank's own predilection for straw, vellum and plaster surfaces. As noted by Jean Cocteau, the artists with whom Frank collaborated "sought to submit their style towards the greater brilliance of the whole interior as the star," yet without the loss of the individual creator's personalities. When considering utilitarian objects, Giacometti chose not to be distracted by individual issues of functionalism, preferring to regard the separate elements as part of an overall and sculptural whole. As he noted in his writings on Chaldean sculpture, "even if a sculpture is broken in four, then those four elements are each vital sculptures in their own right".

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI (1901-1966) FOR JEAN-MICHEL FRANK (1895-1941)

A 'TREPIED A FEUILLES' TABLE LAMP, 1939

Details

ALBERTO GIACOMETTI (1901-1966) FOR JEAN-MICHEL FRANK (1895-1941)
A 'TREPIED A FEUILLES' TABLE LAMP, 1939
gilt-bronze, with paper shade
base: 15 3/8 in. (39 cm.) high
stamped AG 06, 601 and Made in France

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Lot Essay

cf. P.-E. Martin-Vivier, Jean-Michel Frank, New York, 2006, p. 347 for a period photo of a lamp of the same model.
This lot is accompanied with a certificate of authenticity from the Giacometti Committee. Additionally, the piece is registered in the Alberto Giacometti Database as number 2191.

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