Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Figures stripped to bones, just signs and symbols – solitude, discomfort, incommunicability

2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17571472.2015.11493435

1757-1480

Francesco Carelli,

Visual Culture and Art Theory

Giacometti La Scultura Rome, Galleria Borghese 5 February – 25 May 2014 The Galleria Borghese, a shrine of priceless antique masterpieces, hosts for the very first time the tragic of modern sculpture embodied in the work of one of the greatest 20th century artists: Alberto Giacometti. The exhibition is an opportunity to explore the artist – a visionary, oneiric, surrealist figure that left an unforgettable mark in art – and above all to show his art ‘conversing’ with the masterpieces on display in the Galleria: the white, curvy shape of Femme couchee qui reve (1929) in which Canova's Paolina (1805/1808) can be glimpsed, whose face is mirrored by the Tete qui regarde (1928) on the other side; the heavy step of the Homme qui marche (1947), echoing Aeneas’ weary step under Anchises’ weight (1619); the Femme qui marche (1932/1936), as dark and mysterious as the basalt sphinxes in the Egyptian hall; the unstable balance of the Homme qui chavire (1950), off-axis and on the verge of losing its balance like Bernini's David (1623/1624). In the Galleria setting, the 40 exhibited works – bronzes, plaster works and drawings – release the burning energy of Giacometti's art, which investigates the lively depth of his subjects by carving their soul until the human figure is ‘stripped to the bone’. In sculpture, he developed a highly expressive form of modelling, continually whittling away forms in plaster or clay and building them up again to arrive at the fragile essence of the model that he thought to capture. His isolated, attenuated figures have a funerary resonance and the sense of alienation that they project made Giacometti the favoured artist of the French existentialist writers led by Jean Paul Sartre in the 1950s. We can see sculpture with fragile, totally skeletal individuals, walking in between from a surrealist studio or a concentration camp. Giacometti wrote: ‘I met a person and I went home, I managed to create him, I felt him as me, as myself, as my beliefs and I felt myself in that moment in a mirror’. These isolated, attenuated, introspective, spectral and ghostly figures mark Giacometti's sense of alienation and are a reflection of some of the patients we may encounter during our general practice. His figures are so corroded as to arrive at the essence, a step before annihilation, removing individual traits. They seem to stand as metaphors of the human condition, symbols of existentialism's problems linked with themes of discomfort, solitude and incommunicability. Surrounded by the visual celebration of Galleria Borghese, Giacometti's representation of humankind highlights the person and his or her fatal failure that becomes the tragic achievement of modernity. As opposed to the past, here, the greatness of humans throughout the centuries is glorified as the exhibition explores the boundless complexity of the human being – and also through the metamorphosis undergone by the Galleria. Canova Hall – Plastic perception The Canova Hall displays Reclining Woman who Dreams (1929), Man (Apollo) (1929) and Reclining Woman, (1929); these works, when compared with the organic fullness, the tense muscles and the purity of contours in Canova's work Paolina Borghese, highlight Giacometti's inclination to lightness and concave, hollow shapes – a rather unusual thing for a sculptor. David Hall – Sight In the David Hall, Bernini uses his art to ‘instruct’ us on how to perceive the intensity of Giacometti's sculptures: David's static energy contrasts with the swinging movement of the Swaying Man. What the modern artist perceives as something temporary because it is perpetually moving, for Bernini, can hold its position for a single instant. The rotating movement applied to a highly dramatic situation is radically transformed by the Swiss sculptor and shown as a universal condition of the human being. The surface of the object, full of marks that make the viewer's eye move along it, testifies to Giacometti's phenomenological research in his attempt to make the viewer perceive the process of sight. Apollo and Daphne Hall – Movement in stillness Evoking movement as a physical and psychic emotion in sculptures that stand still and motionless, this is Bernini's fundamental aspiration, and his best work in this sense is Apollo and Daphne. Giacometti was aware of this contradiction from an early age: in his 1921 great self-portrait after returning from Italy, he is still under the influence of tympana in classical temples and he represents himself in the running gait (with one knee bent and the other raised) of Medusa, whose gaze freezes whoever dares look at her. Giacometti changes perspective by resorting to perception: it is the ceaseless eye movements that are supposed to make the original creation alive by imagining the shapes. His first work along the same lines is Standing Woman (1948), sculpted in the aftermath of the Second World War when the Femmes Debouts increase in number. Similarly to Daphne turning into a tree, in Giacometti's women, the metamorphosis is linked to a universal presence: the tall and slim forms are anchored to the ground through huge feet, resembling roots, and surfaces are as rough as tree bark. The small heads are prospectively thoughtful; an uninterrupted flow pushes the whole shape upwards. Emperors Hall – Sculpture as a fragment The fact that representations of body parts can be considered fully accomplished works of art dates back to the discovery of some ancient sculptures among Rome's ruins. More specifically, a bust that, as per Michelangelo's instructions, was never completed but left in the Belvedere palace in the Vatican, where it became the favourite subject matter of research for budding sculptors. Later, from Rodin onwards, the expressive representation of the bust represented a peculiar challenge, so much so that Giacometti also exhibits a bust for the first time at the Salon des Independants in 1925; his first ‘abstract’ sculpture, so to speak. Shortly afterwards, he creates another composition reminiscent of cubism and clearly inspired by the fragment of a Sumerian sculpture with two clasped hands. Along these lines, in 1932, Giacometti executes Main prise – a wooden hand stuck in a gearwheel – whereas his work The Hand displayed in Rome dates back to 1947, when the artist resumes this topic with a sharper expressive drama following his return to figurative art and the experience of the war. As he later stated, the hand's splayed fingers reminded him of an arm detached from the body, which he saw in 1940 when he was fleeing from Paris. The Roman busts too were inspired by the cult of the dead: the myth of Pluto's abduction of Proserpina, the goddess of fertility, represented by Bernini in a dramatic group of sculptures, lies at the core of the Mysteries of Eleusis, in which the initiate can experience the overcoming of death. Hermaphrodite Hall – Spoon Woman and Woman With Her Throat Cut Female figures seem to always feature in the work of Giacometti, who in his first ‘grande femme’ creates a different and unique female shape, the Spoon Woman. In this first ‘grande femme’, which was followed by others marking one of the peaks of his career, the artist combines the two different sources of inspiration from his first period, the avant-garde: the formal rigour of cubism combined with the hieratic symmetry and bold expressive representation of African sculpture. In this work, the shape of the ‘spoon’ is used to effectively conjure the idea of a woman whose only presence is her trace left in the title. It is precisely the title that stirs a sense of initial bewilderment triggered by the contrast with the represented object; the lack of human traits turns the tortured human being into an instrument of torture. The concave lap reminds of a primitive goddess of fertility with its forward and backward movements, opening and closing in front of the viewer. The pure forms of life, breasts and head, break out upwards, floating like an apparition. The elusive concave emptiness and dominating oval pattern pushing in opposite directions seem to portray an almost erotic frustration, similar to the effect evoked by Hermaphrodite. Aeneas and Anchises Hall – The iconic condensation, The Walking Man The Walking Man was originally a sketch for a monument commemorating communist Member of Parliament Gabriel Peri, but it has become Alberto Giacometti's most famous sculpture, whose intent was to make the dead man's soul come back and enjoy the daylight. The man's hesitation in making the first step transforms this hieroglyphical figure, dating back to the origin of civilisation, into something subjective and precarious. Through his elusive and almost gravityless creations, Giacometti tells us of the ancient tradition of representing the human being: the anxious gait of the figure, its fragility and the humble matter it is made of resembles the condition of the human being itself. His transience, made of dignity and weakness, is the ‘unrelenting’ reality draining the human being, never conceding a final and total cancellation. As a matter of fact, his suspended figures always maintain a lowest common denominator, making them still recognisable as human features. They no longer represent anything physical; in other words, they are reduced to ‘signs’.