📚 A Giacometti Portrait, James Lord

Superb chronicle of Giacometti’s work process. Lord was supposed to sit for a single session, for his portrait, but Giacometti kept asking him for more sessions; They ended up having eighteen sessions. The dialogue and moods described give us a window into the painter and sculpturer.

Giacometti kept undoing what he had done (quote), painting Lord’s head only to destroy it, again and again. “Now I’ve got to undo everything. One should try to succeed in undoing everything and then doing it all over again very quickly, several times in the same sitting.” Lord tells us that this must have happened hundreds of times. The artist talks of “looking for an opening” that would allow him to express how he sees reality. Only when a deadline is imposed externally, and Lord himself interrupts the process of destruction, does Giacometti finish or abandon his work.

Giacometti is fully dedicated to his work. His perceived inability to produce good art pains him. He laments this authentically.

Giacometti doesn’t shy away from challenges, from the struggle; doesn’t procrastinate by focusing temporarily on easier, less essential aspects. On one of the many occasions when Giacometti says that the head isn’t going well, Lord suggests focusing on the background; Giacometti flatly rejects this. “It would be filling in for the sake of filling in,” he says. “You can’t fake a picture like that. Everything must come of itself and in its own time. Otherwise it becomes superficial.”

We see a great example of how Giacometti operats far above low-level details yet is incredibly atuned to them. At some point, he comments that there’s something wrong with the position of Lord’s head in the room. Lord moves in various directions but it takes them a while to figure out that the problem is that Lord’s chair is slightly misplaced (quote).

The model can’t remain neutral; he forms great bonds with the artist, the process, and the object. Lord details how psychologically exhausting this was at times.

There’s also a reflection about how a work of art has to abandon reality (“heighten the illusory quality”) in order to become closer to life, which I found interesting.

I appreciate that Lord’s writing is sharp and direct, just gets to the point.

Disclaimer: I am probably biased; I chose this book because I find Giacometti incredibly interesting.

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