Special envoy to Toulouse
Giacometti, inhabited genius, alone until death, in his small workshop in Montparnasse? The barely 23 m workshop, located at 46, rue Hippolyte-Maindron, is so legendary that it is recreated, almost identically, at the Giacometti Institute (Paris, 14th century) with more than 70 sculptures – bronzes, plasters and even his last works in clay -, his furniture and the walls painted by the artist. Even his ashtray and his cigarette butts, like in a “Memorabilia” auction. The impression is so strong given the simplicity of the place and the creative profusion that emerges from it that it is tempting to lock up all of Giacometti (1901-1966), like Tutankhamun in his vault. This marvelous workshop is often recreated in volume and photos in the major Giacometti exhibitions, at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, at the Tate Modern in London or at the Forum Grimaldi in Monaco. The legend of the lone wolf follows naturally from this.
And yet, upon returning from the war, which kept him in Geneva, the Swiss artist, born in Borgonovo, in Val Bregaglia, on October 10, 1901, was not a hermit. A hard worker, he is also so outside the workshop where he pursues his work, discusses it with his gallery owners, defends it in interviews, the scenography with a very singular sense of space in his exhibitions, as at the Gallery Maeght in 1951 (hanging recreated here as a “period room”) or at the Venice Biennale in 1956 and 1962. He embodies it by posing in front of the greatest photographers who follow one another, fascinated, at the door of his studio.
Giacometti is a beautiful character, surrounded by his works like so many creatures. From Cartier-Bresson, who captured him in the rain, rue d’Alésia, in 1961, to the young Sabine Weiss, who painted his portrait in the studio in 1954, while he was painting Annette’s portrait; from Richard Avedon, who captured the sculptor in movement, on March 6, 1958, to Graham Keen, who photographed him ravished and in profile, like an antique medal, in front of a chubby and taken aback Francis Bacon, in 1965, at the Tate Gallery in London . He does not photograph himself, but understands the importance of the medium for documenting, disseminating, sharing.
The man with the rebellious mane, the artist who paints in a threadbare suit jacket, vaguely ironed white shirt and a crooked black tie, is neither antisocial nor misanthropic. “He frequents the Paris of his time – artists, writers, philosophers, theater personalities and photographers -, exchanges with all generations, from ending surrealism to nascent existentialism,” underline Émilie Bouvard and Annabelle Ténèze, curators of this exhibition in form of counter-portrait (explicit quotes on the picture rails).
This Giacometti with emaciated sculptures, sacred portraits painted as on the mummies of Fayoum, is also a “night owl, accustomed to cafes and their marginality, exhibiting in the 1960s with young painting, receiving and inspiring still emerging artists”. He was a friend of the artists and authors of pre-war modernity: André Masson, Meret Oppenheim, Picasso, Derain, Balthus, Breton, Leiris. He became that of the existentialist writers of a damaged post-war period: Sartre, who published a striking essay on him, The Search for the Absolute, in 1948, Beauvoir, Genet, Isaku Yanaihara. Poets, like Prévert or Bonnefoy.
Also read: Alberto Giacometti and ancient Egypt, mad love
Playwrights, like the Irishman Samuel Beckett, for whom this theater enthusiast imagined a white tree as the only setting for Waiting for Godot, at the Odéon in 1961 (here it is reconstituted, with, in voice-over, the reciter of this theater of the absurd). But also artists from other worlds, such as the Danish Sonja Ferlov, the South African Ernest Mancoba, the Portuguese Maria Helena Vieira da Silva. Each of his friendships finds here the work of Giacometti which corresponds intimately to him. Thus, the women, “hieratic like goddesses” by Jean Genet (Femme Debout, 1957, Grande Figure II, 1949, Femme de Venise V, 1956).
When he is not working in his studio or chatting with people in cafes, Giacometti “reads newspapers, magazines, art books, “Série Noire” on which he pencils or draws with bright blue Bic or graphite pencil. Here, from the first room of the Abattoirs, behind the famous Tête sur STEM, 1947, is a complete wall of these random supports, from the magazines Les Temps Modernes, founded in 1945 by Sartre and Beauvoir, Critique or the Nouvelle Revue française. On it he traces a universe of heads, bodies, walking figures, portraits of loved ones, from the fanciful patron Marie-Laure de Noailles to the communist activist and great resistance fighter, Rol-Tanguy, from Simone de Beauvoir to the anonymous people who embody the ‘humanity. He makes his time his own, from the crowds of his meetings to his countless readings.
“The time of Giacometti, 1946-1966”, until January 21 at Abattoirs, Musée-Frac Occitanie Toulouse. Gallimard-Les Abattoirs-Giacometti Foundation catalog, 220 p., €35.
