Giacometti’s Gaze

Giacometti, Exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York June 8-September 12, 2018

From 1956 until 1961 Isaku Yanaihara (1918-1989), the Japanese existentialist philosopher, sat for/with Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) 230 times. The sessions lasted between five to eight hours each, by all measures an extraordinary commitment to the process that had been constellated between them and betraying a remarkable level of intentionality by both. Intentionality for Giacometti meant the total dedication to his artistic pursuits; for Yanaihara it entailed ‘showing up’ for their meetings, thus allowing the process between them to unfold, not unlike what one might encounter in an analytic situation. Depending on how one averages out the hours, the time spent together, sitting still, at times conversing while Giacometti was drawing, painting and sculpting, roughly equals that of a three-times a week analytic undertaking spanning seven to eleven years.

The Giacometti retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City brings together six paintings and one bust that resulted from this collaboration and these pieces seem to perfectly capture the very essence of Giacometti’s creative trials and tribulations. For what else can we call this other than collaboration, a process to which both the artist and the model have to totally submit and succumb? As much as their starting or vantage points may differ, they coalesce/circumambulate (around) a shared experience. For Giacometti, it is the relentless pursuit of an ever-elusive goal: to represent what he sees and to create a visual equivalent for his perceptions and emotions. For his model, it means tolerating Giacometti’s scrutiny and gaze for hours on end, to be a motionless yet present and engaged participant.

Here A Giacometti Portrait (1980) by James Lord provides an invaluable window into Giacometti’s work habits and a glimpse of what transpired between him and his models. After looking at Lord for a minute during their