Artist Anaysis
Alberto Giacometti
Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist art movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what Deleuze calls 'blocs of sensation' (as in Deleuze's analysis of Francis Bacon). Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group, while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast."
Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning. "All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces... So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."
A new exhibition in Paris, since September 2011, shows how Giacometti strongly drew his inspiration for his work from Ethruscan art.
In my opinion the artwork ‘Portrait of Jean Genet’ looks to be a man in distress, frozen, and isolated away, in a confined space. I believe the man is distressed and alone due to his posture being slightly tilted backwards giving it a feel of the man’s awkwardness. The use of shadow to me represents he is the only one in the room. It appears that the man is sitting inside a small dark room. It creates the feel of a dark room due to the limited palette of colour, and the negativity of the piece. I believe Alberto Giacometti was trying to show the emotions of one person through his drawings, rather than focusing on proportion. The man has an uncertainty to him, you can’t really see
Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist art movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what Deleuze calls 'blocs of sensation' (as in Deleuze's analysis of Francis Bacon). Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group, while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast."
Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning. "All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces... So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."
A new exhibition in Paris, since September 2011, shows how Giacometti strongly drew his inspiration for his work from Ethruscan art.
In my opinion the artwork ‘Portrait of Jean Genet’ looks to be a man in distress, frozen, and isolated away, in a confined space. I believe the man is distressed and alone due to his posture being slightly tilted backwards giving it a feel of the man’s awkwardness. The use of shadow to me represents he is the only one in the room. It appears that the man is sitting inside a small dark room. It creates the feel of a dark room due to the limited palette of colour, and the negativity of the piece. I believe Alberto Giacometti was trying to show the emotions of one person through his drawings, rather than focusing on proportion. The man has an uncertainty to him, you can’t really see