What Were Alberto And Diego Giacometti Looking For in Their Sculptures- - Sothebys -

People often ask, what is the significance of Giacometti? Why is it that he's so influential on the trajectory of Western sculpture? Resonates not just the distortion, but the challenging way in which he depicts the human form. Giacometti had an extraordinarily distinctive sculptural language. Like all great modern artists, he is obsessive. He is wrestling with what the point of life is, not to sound too trite. And for him, it is the essential, the elemental, the standing figure, the walking figure, the face. These are what humanity is made out of. The Wingate Collection includes works by both brothers, Alberto and Diego Giacometti, exemplifying the best work of each artist. This work is a bronze by Alberto Giacometti, entitled La Clairere, which means the clearing or the glade in English. It's also been called nine figures on a pedestal, and that is because there are indeed nine figures here. There's a lot to unravel in this extraordinary, enigmatic sculpture. It's a work that he conceived in 1950. And like so many artistic productions, this came about almost by chance. He saw these figures disparately arranged on the floor, and it reminded him of an encounter that he had had close to the edge of a forest, of a glade, of smaller-scale trees. And this was precisely the marriage that he wanted to recreate in La Clairere. Looking at this Giacometti, like any Giacometti, you notice two things. The first is that his figures are impossibly elongated, and the second is that they are extremely thin. Why does he do this? Giacometti's main focus throughout his life was one of perception. From a distance, a human form is almost flickering. Think about seeing someone far away against the light. You can't even see the bounds of their figure, and they might seem taller and out of proportion. This was all about trying to capture sensation. And his figures just kept getting cut back more and more and more, and taller and taller and taller. He made female figures in 1960 that were so tall they couldn't fit into his studio. This was a lifelong obsession for his lifelong passion. He would create faces that were so skinny they are called knife blades. All of this cutting back, cutting back, cutting back. He's looking for something by trying to strip them back as much as possible. He's looking for their essence. The Wingate Collection also holds one of his other most famed depictions, that of his brother Diego. I think you can see Alberto really challenging the material to bring out aspects of Diego's character. He wasn't looking specifically for Diego's character. He was simply a means by which he could convey human character and convey his reality, a hyper-reality, through the medium of modeling that plaster. Alberto Giacometti's sculpture is so fascinating because despite the fact that when you look at it in person, it isn't a realistic portrayal of anyone. It is immediately recognizable and familiar. There is something, especially in his portrait bust, that conveys a sense of humanity. When he's looking at his brother, he's looking at almost a reflection of himself. They know each other so well. It is essentially as closely as one can know another. Both Alberto and his younger brother Diego were sculptors, but they differed quite dramatically. Alberto was principally a figurative sculptor. Diego Giacometti, who is principally a crafter of items that, generally speaking, are things that you can live with and use. Diego took more inspiration and had a more direct fixation on depicting actual objects he saw and animals, whether it was the leaf of a tree, a small mouse, a very beautiful cat, or a beautiful pair of andirons. The andirons, which depict the insides, the bones of a creature, are incredibly clever in that you place wood on it that you will burn and the insides of an animal will end up supporting the insides of the wood. They had a coexistence. Alberto's works could not have been as successful as they were or indeed have met the quality control had it not been for Diego's supervision. Vice versa, being the somewhat younger brother to Alberto, he learned a lot from his older brother and actually managed his studio, so there is a sort of symbiotic relationship that happens there.