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Lot Essay
On an unassuming afternoon in 1945, Alberto Giacometti experienced a powerful revelation during a trip to the cinema that resulted in a ‘shock which upset my whole conception of space and set me definitely travelling along my present path’ (Giacometti, quoted in Y. Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of his Work, trans. J. Stewart, Paris, 1991, p. 298). Sitting in the darkened theatre, he suddenly became aware of the difference between the images conveyed in black and white on the screen and those experienced in real life, a sensation that intensified once he emerged into the busy light-filled street. ‘I remember very clearly coming out on to the Boulevard du Montparnasse and seeing the Boulevard as I had never seen it before,’ he later recalled. ‘Everything was different: depth, objects, colours and the silence… Everything seemed different to me and completely new’ (quoted in M. Peppiatt, Alberto Giacometti in Postwar Paris, exh. cat., New Haven & London, 2001, p. 7). This experience radically altered Giacometti’s sculptural practice, ushering in a period of creative experimentation and development in which he produced some of his most daring and best-known works, as he sought to imbue a sense of space, distance and presence into his depictions of the figure.
Central to this shift was a renewed focus on direct observation, as Giacometti became fixated upon translating his subjective vision of reality into his forms, aiming not at a mimetic, naturalistic reproduction, but rather a more profound distillation of the very kernel of human presence, as seen through the eyes of the artist. This approach required a certain degree of unlearning for Giacometti, pushing him to go against the conventions of form he had been taught, and instead rely on the pure sensations of perception. ‘Art is only a means of seeing,’ he said. ‘No matter what I look at, it all surprises and eludes me, and I am not too sure what I see. It is too complex… It’s as if reality were continually behind curtains that one tears away… but there is always another… always one more’ (quoted in P. Moorhouse, Giacometti: Pure Presence, exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, London, 2015, p. 15).
In Buste d’homme sur socle, conceived in 1947, Giacometti eschews the precise details of the man’s likeness in favour of a more abstracted impression of the sitter’s physicality, his strong shoulders, upright posture and slightly elongated neck vividly conveying a sense of power and poise within the figure, though only a small portion of the body is visible. In this way, Giacometti hoped to capture an impression of the split-second comprehension that takes place within the viewer’s mind when they see a figure in passing, or from afar. ‘I try to give a head its right dimension,’ he explained, ‘its true size, such as we see when we try to grasp its total appearance at a glance… What strikes us in its look requires a certain distance’ (quoted in Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., 1991, pp. 273-274).
The scale of Giacometti’s sculptures had dramatically reduced during the first half of the 1940s, leading him to create increasingly diminutive figures, sometimes no more than a few inches high. As a result, by the time he returned to Paris following the end of the Second World War, the entirety of his surviving wartime production reportedly fit into several matchboxes, which the artist carried in the pockets of his overcoat. Determined to move in the opposite direction, Giacometti sought different approaches to expanding and enlarging his sculptural explorations of the human figure during the latter half of the decade. While some works grew taller and thinner, others continued his practice of placing small, delicate figurative forms atop a heavy, monumental base, which served as a contrasting counterweight to their slight proportions.
Photographs of the artist’s studio from this period demonstrate how this dynamic visual device captured Giacometti’s imagination – on a worktable, a myriad of plasters are shown in-progress, each one using different variations of the idea, from double, stepped plinths, to thin, towering monoliths. In Buste d’homme sur socle, the male bust is mounted on a singular weighty, rectangular block that acts as a powerful anchor for the sculpture, its geometric form finished in a roughly-hewn texture that echoes the rippling, highly-worked surface of the figure. By marrying these two elements together, uniting them and treating them as a single entity, Giacometti forces a different reading of the sculpted bust, granting it a rich sense of monumentality and volumetric presence.
Central to this shift was a renewed focus on direct observation, as Giacometti became fixated upon translating his subjective vision of reality into his forms, aiming not at a mimetic, naturalistic reproduction, but rather a more profound distillation of the very kernel of human presence, as seen through the eyes of the artist. This approach required a certain degree of unlearning for Giacometti, pushing him to go against the conventions of form he had been taught, and instead rely on the pure sensations of perception. ‘Art is only a means of seeing,’ he said. ‘No matter what I look at, it all surprises and eludes me, and I am not too sure what I see. It is too complex… It’s as if reality were continually behind curtains that one tears away… but there is always another… always one more’ (quoted in P. Moorhouse, Giacometti: Pure Presence, exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery, London, 2015, p. 15).
In Buste d’homme sur socle, conceived in 1947, Giacometti eschews the precise details of the man’s likeness in favour of a more abstracted impression of the sitter’s physicality, his strong shoulders, upright posture and slightly elongated neck vividly conveying a sense of power and poise within the figure, though only a small portion of the body is visible. In this way, Giacometti hoped to capture an impression of the split-second comprehension that takes place within the viewer’s mind when they see a figure in passing, or from afar. ‘I try to give a head its right dimension,’ he explained, ‘its true size, such as we see when we try to grasp its total appearance at a glance… What strikes us in its look requires a certain distance’ (quoted in Y. Bonnefoy, op. cit., 1991, pp. 273-274).
The scale of Giacometti’s sculptures had dramatically reduced during the first half of the 1940s, leading him to create increasingly diminutive figures, sometimes no more than a few inches high. As a result, by the time he returned to Paris following the end of the Second World War, the entirety of his surviving wartime production reportedly fit into several matchboxes, which the artist carried in the pockets of his overcoat. Determined to move in the opposite direction, Giacometti sought different approaches to expanding and enlarging his sculptural explorations of the human figure during the latter half of the decade. While some works grew taller and thinner, others continued his practice of placing small, delicate figurative forms atop a heavy, monumental base, which served as a contrasting counterweight to their slight proportions.
Photographs of the artist’s studio from this period demonstrate how this dynamic visual device captured Giacometti’s imagination – on a worktable, a myriad of plasters are shown in-progress, each one using different variations of the idea, from double, stepped plinths, to thin, towering monoliths. In Buste d’homme sur socle, the male bust is mounted on a singular weighty, rectangular block that acts as a powerful anchor for the sculpture, its geometric form finished in a roughly-hewn texture that echoes the rippling, highly-worked surface of the figure. By marrying these two elements together, uniting them and treating them as a single entity, Giacometti forces a different reading of the sculpted bust, granting it a rich sense of monumentality and volumetric presence.