J a m e s L ord

a G i a c o me tt i p o rtra i t

Th e M useum of M o d ern Ar t , New Yor k

Ci t y N ew Yor k
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di st ri bu t e d by D o uble d a y Co m p a n y , G ar de n ,
 G x /J wé
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T R! STEES O F T HE M! SE! M O F M ODERN AR T

David Rockefeller Cha i rm an of t h e B oard ; H enry Allen Moe , ,

Vi c e —C h a i rm a n; William S Paley Vi c e C h a i rm an; M rs Bliss Park .

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inson Vi c e Ch ai rm an William A M Burden P resi d ent ; James

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Thrall S oby Vi c e P res i d ent ; R a lph F Colin Vi c e Pr es i d e nt ;

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Gardner Cowles Vi c e Pr es i d en t ; Willard C Butcher Tr e asure r;

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Walter Bareiss Alfred H Barr Jr Mrs Robert Woods Bliss ,

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W Murray Crane John De Menil René d Harno nc o urt

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Mrs C Douglas Dillon Mrs Edsel B Ford

. . S imon G u g g e n , . .
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heim Wallace ! Harrison Mrs Walter Hochschild James W

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Husted Philip Johnson Mrs Albert D Lasker John L Loeb

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Ramald H Macdonald Porter A M c C ray Mrs G Macculloch

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Miller Mrs Charles S Payson Duncan Phillips Mrs John D

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Rockefeller 3 rd Nelson A Rockefeller Mrs Wolfgang S choen ,

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born Mrs Donald B S traus G David Thompson Edward M
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M Warburg Monroe Wheeler John Hay Whitney

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f Ho n or r
y T r ust e a e

fro nt i p i P or t r i t f !
s ec e ! a o am e s L ord . 1 964 . O il on c a nv as ,

C o ll t i o n J m
ec L or d a es

The Museum of Modern Art

1 I West
5 3 S treet New York N Y 1 00 1 9 , ,
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Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 6 5 2 3 84 8 -

Cover designed by Joseph D elV alle ; book designed by Mary Ahern

Printed in the ! S A by Plantin Press New York .
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f o r A lbe rt o
 GI AC OME TT I had gone to London on Tuesday He was anxious

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to see the rooms at the Tate Gallery in which his retrospective

exhibition is to be held in the summer Although he likes Lon .

don and has friends there he always feels that he cannot spare
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much time from his work and consequently planned to be away

only a few days returning to Paris on Friday We had agreed that
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a s soon as he got back I would pose for him His idea was to do .

merely a quick portrait sketch on canvas It would take but an .

hour or two an afternoon at most

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S aturday was the twelfth of S eptember I went to the studio .

about three o clock It would have been no su rprise to discover

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that he hadn t returned yet His plans are always subj ect to u nex
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e c t e d cha nge But I found him sitting in the room where the tele
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phone is staring at the floor When I asked him how it had been i n
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London he said All right Then he looked at me curiously for a
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minute and said S hall we work for a little while ?
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We went down the open passageway to his studio He began at .

once to work with the clay of a slender female figure about two
feet tall which had been his constant preoccupation for the past
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weeks Occasionally he would murmur Merde ! and from time
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to time he reached out and tweaked the clay of a smaller figure on

the stand beside him
We ll work for a little while he said j ust f or a little while
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because later I want to work on the bust of Diego .

Diego Giacometti is Alberto s brother assistant model and ’

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closest friend His studio is only about twenty fi ve feet back along
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the passageway from Alberto s beyond the bedroom and the tele ’

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ph one room There he not only makes plaster casts of h i s brother s
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sculptures and patinates the bronzes but also designs and builds in
bronze some of the handsomest contemporary fu rniture The bust .

to which Alberto referred one of the scores he has done of h i s

brother wa s about ei ghteen inches high modeled directly from
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life and very little distorted It stood on the cluttered dust y table
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j ust below the large studio window .

 I sat down on a wicker chair and waited Alberto appeared t o .

be in one of his more somber moods S everal times he exclaimed .

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that nothing he did w as any good that he didn t know how to do ,

anything and that there was no hope of changing that Ten fif

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teen twenty minutes passed From time to time he glanced at me

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On one of the sculpture stands there was a large bust wrapped in

plastic Presently he began to remove this plastic uncovering the
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rags underneath which he carefully unwound one after another

and threw on the floor It was like seeing a mummy being un
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wound after thousands of y ears He was surprised and pleased to .

find that the rags were still damp for it had been three months ,

since he had worked on the bust a portrait from life of a friend ,

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He then began to gouge and press and squeeze the clay so vio
le nt ly that several lumps of it dropped off onto the floor After .

some fifteen minutes he went out into the passageway came back ,

with a bucket of water wet the rags and carefully wrapped them
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again around the bust Then he started to work on the tall figure
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again A few minutes passed Suddenly he turned went into the

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corner of the studio and started to rearrange the bronze figures

standing there which banged and clanged as they knocked against
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each other Nearly an hour passed He seemed to be avoiding

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desperately the moment when he would have to start work on

something new He is so poignantly aware of the difficulty of
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making visible to others his own vision of rea lity that he must be
unnerved by the necessity of having to try to do it once more .

Thus he would naturally delay as long as possible the decisive act

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of beginning .

At last however he pulled his easel into position and placed in

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front of it a small stool carefully adjusting the front legs to red

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marks painted on the concrete floor of the studio There were .

similar marks for the front legs of the model s chair which he ’

instructed me to set in place with equal precision Then .

came the moment for selecting a canvas Four or five fresh can .

vases were on hand and he examined each carefully Then he went .

on to inspect every single painting in the studio some twelve or ,

fifteen pictures muttering irritably complaining th at they took

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up too much room and pushing them about Finally however he

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selected a fresh canvas and placed it on the easel Beside his own .

stool he placed another stool which held a clutter of old brushes

and a small dish From a quart bottle he poured so much turpen
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tine into the little dish that it o ve rfl o w e d and some of the turpen
tine d ripped o nto the floor Then he took his palette and a bunch .

of ab out ten brushes and sat down .

He was seated so that his head was some four or four and a half - - -

fe et from mine and at a 45 angle to me with the canvas directly

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in front of him He did no r indicate what pose I should take but

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he did a sk me to face him directly head on eye to eye and f r e , , ,

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quently during the sittings he would say Look at me ! or Let s ,

s e e you ! or si m ply He y ! which meant that I was to look him

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straight in the eye I did not cross my legs as his models have.
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often done because I was afraid they might go to sleep I left them
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spread apart with my feet under the chair and my hands seemed
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nat urally to fall be t ween them .

He looked at me for a minute before beginning to paint then ,

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said You have the head of a b r ute
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S urprised and amused I replied Do you really think so ? , ,

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And how ! he exclaimed You look like a real thug If I could . .

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paint you a s I s e e you and a policeman saw the picture he d arrest
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you immediately !
I laughed but he said Don t laugh I m not supposed to make ’ ’
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my models laugh .

Then he began to paint holding his long fine brush by the end , ,
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and almost at arm s length dipping it first into the dish of turpen ,

tine ; touching it to one of the blobs of paint on his palette then ,

moving it O ver the canvas He painted only with black at first . .

As he worked he looked at me constantly and also at everything

around me What he w a s painting obviously included his entire
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field of vision He never made more than four or five strokes of

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the brush without looking at me and now and then he would lean ,

back from the canvas squinting through his glasses to study it , ,

for a moment A s h eworked h e lit cigarettes often holding them

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in hi s left hand whi ch also held the pa lette and brushes taking a
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puff only occasionally finally dropping the butts on the floor ,

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Whi le he painted he talked and h i s somber humor seemed to di sap

pe ar for a while .

We talked about hi s trip to London He mentioned how much .

he h a d enj oyed seeing h i s friend David S ylvester the critic and , ,

also Francis Bacon whose humor and intelligence he enj oyed

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But I only had t ime to go to the National Gallery for half an
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hour he remarked and I deliberately didn t look at the Rem
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brandts because if I had looked at them I wouldn t have been able
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to look at anythi ng else after ward But I looked at that portrait of .

 the old woman holding a rosary by Cézanne He i s the greatest . .

Also the van Eyck portrait of the man wearing a red turban .

When he painted that picture van Eyck must have been farther ,
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away from his model than I am .

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I d have thought j ust the contrary I said, because i t s so
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detailed .

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Not at all he replied If you were one foot farther away
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from me your head would seem four times smaller than it appears
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now .

After half an hour Diego came in to say that Alberto w as

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wanted on the telephone He went out and as soon a s he d gone .

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I j umped up to have a look at what he had done ! sing the fine .

brush and black paint as he would have used a heavy crayon he ,

had drawn the face head and shoulders arms torso hands and , , , , ,

legs Except for background details the portrait w as complete I t

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was only a sketch to be sure but a sketch w a s what he had plan

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ned to do nothing more A s such it w a s fini shed and I wondered

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whether he would leave it as it w a s .

When he came back however he sa t down and started to work , ,

again without comment Half an hour o r more passed T hen he . .

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said Now it s beginning to look like something only now
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In an effort to determine what he was doing and how the paint

ing might be taking shape I watched carefully the brushes he
used how he moved them on the canvas and what colors were
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employed ! black white an d a touch of ocher occasionally But

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despite the fact that through the years I had often seen G i ac o m
etti paint it was impossible to guess exactly what he wa s doing
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Presently he said We ll have to stop soon I want to work on

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that bust Then there are the figures too And toni ght I have to
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work on the portrait of Caroline .

Caroline is a young woman who h as for several years faithfully

posed for him every evening .

I said that I w a s willing to stop whenever he w a s but be re ,

plied that h e wanted to work j ust a little longer because it wa s ,

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beginning to go well But I wish I had someone else to paint the .

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clothes and backgrounds he said Like Rubens I hate having to , . .

cover the whole canvas Besides i t s impossible ever really to .

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fini sh anything .

A number of times he remarked that he w as hungry as he ,

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hadn t had anything but co ff ee since getting up several hours be
fore Again I suggested that we stop but he refus ed
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8 We can t stop now I thoug ht I d stop when 1t was going well .
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But now i t s going very badly It s too late We can t stop now
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Finally though he admitted that he w a s tired His back ached

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He had been working then for a little more than two hours .

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That s enough he said Taking the canvas from the easel he
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placed it at the back of t h e studio and moved away to st udy it .

He had completed the drawing of the figure and had also sketched
in the background ! a tall stool to the left the potbellied stove to ,

the right and behind me the outlines of canvases propped against

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the w all B ut he had also entirely painted the face and neck in
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black and gray After studying the picture for several minutes he
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sai d The head isn t too bad It ha s volume T his is a beginning
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a t least .
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A beginning ? I asked But I thought we were going to work ”
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only once .

I t s too late for that no w

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he said It s gone too far and at ,
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the same t ime not fa r enough We can t stop now . .

S o I agreed to come and pose again on Monday T hen we went .

to the nearby café where he ate what is hi s ritual lunch ! two hard ,

boiled eggs two slices of cold ham with a piece of bread two
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g lasses of Beauj olais and two large cups of co ff ee ,

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If o nly I could accomplish somethi ng in drawing or p ainting
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or sculpture he said it wouldn t be so bad I f I could j ust do a
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head one head j ust once then maybe I d have a chance of doing
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the rest a landscape 3 still life But i t s impo ssible

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I argued that what seemed im po ssible to him might se em to

other people not only to have been possible since after all it had —
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been done— but fine and satisfying as well That however was no .
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consolation to him The o pinions of other people concerning his .

work though of interest to him are naturally unrelated to his

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own feelings .

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I t s impossible to paint a portrait he said Ingres could do it
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He could finish a port rait It w as a substit ute for a photograph .

and had to be done by hand because there w as no other way of

doing it then But now that h a s no meaning The photograph exists
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and that s all there i s to it It s the same with novels because of the .
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newspape rs A novel like one of ! ola s would be absurd today

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because any daily paper i s infinitely more ali ve .

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But there have been portraits since Ingres I obj ecte d C éz , .

anne painted some pretty good ones of Gustave G e fi ro y and ,

Joachim G asquet for example ,

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But he never finished them he pointed out After V o llar d , .

had posed a hundred ti mes the most Cézanne could say was that
 the shirt front wasn t too bad And he w a s right I t s the best part
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of the picture Cézanne never really finished anything He went

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as far as he could then abandoned the j o b ( T h a t s the terrible

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1thing the more one works on a picture the more impossible it

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becomes to finish i nf}

Those were prophetic words But I didn t know it then I drank .
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my Coca Cola said goodby and went o ff

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ON MON DAY I arrived at the studio at about t wo thirty in

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the afternoon Giacometti had j ust gotten up He was on . .

his way to the café to have some coffee and I went with “
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him The café has come to be something of an adj unct to his

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stu dio and while we were there several people came to see him ,

an editor a S wiss dealer a photographer from Milan They r e

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turned with u s to the studio The S wiss dealer saw the paint ing .

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in progress and said he thought it superb Just wait Giacometti .
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warned I m going to wreck it now
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By the time we were alone it was four o clock The canvas was .

se t on the easel his stool and my chair were carefully placed in

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position and work began Before long he said It s impossible I
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don t know how to do anythi ng I ll tell you what ! I m going to .
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work on this picture for another day or two and then if it doesn t ,
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turn out to be any good I ll give up painting forever ’

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Often in the past I had heard him say such things I understood .

that in order for hi m to be able to se e what was before him vividly

and as though for the fi rSt time it was necessary at any given ,

moment for him to doubt his ability and to call into que stion not
lo nl what he was doing then but everything he had ever done
y .

Although I had known Giacometti for a long time and he had

in the past made a number of d rawings of me I realized that it ,

was essential for him now to be able to see me as as though I were

a total stranger .

S ome time passed He was called to the telephone While he . .

was gone I stood up to look at what he had done All the definition .

and volume of the head had disappeared ; it seemed to be lost in

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a sort of gray nimbus When he came back he said I t s going .
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badly but that doesn t matter since there s no question of fi ni sh

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ing it anyway .

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I m sorry to make you work so hard for nothing I said , ,

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Oh but it s useful to me he answered Anyway this i s what
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I deserve for thirty fi ve years of dishonesty -
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10 What do you mean ? I asked .
 Simply that all these years I ve exhibited things that weren t ’ ’

finished and never even should have been started But on the other .

hand if I hadn t ex h ibited at all it would have seemed cowardly

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as though I didn t dare to show what I d done which was not

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true S o I w a s caught bet ween the frying pan and the fire
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Not very pleasant I observed adding that many people ,
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might in similar circumstances have preferred some less difficult

way out This led us to talk of neuroses which reminded me of
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someone I knew who shortly before had tried to kill himself I .

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mentioned it then asked Have you ever thought of suicide ?
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I thi nk of it every day he replied adding hastily but not , , ,

because I find lif e intolerable not at all rather because I think , ,

death must be a fascina t ing experie nce and I m curious about it ’

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I m not t h a t curious I said
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Well I am he countered The most definitive courageous
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way of killing onesel f would be by cutting one s throat from ear ’

to ear with a kitchen knife That would really be taking things .

into one s own h a n cfi B u t I d never have the courage to do that

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Cutting one s wrists is nothing And taking sleeping pills is hardly

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killing oneself at all It s simply going to sleep But t h e thing t h e

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suicide that really fascinates me is burni ng oneself alive That .

would be something And I thought of it long before those Indo .

Chinese monks started to do it As a matter of fact for months I .

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was const antly talking about the possibili ty of burning myself

alive at four o clock in the morning on the sidewalk in front of
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the studio Annette finally became so ea p e r a t e d with such talk

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that she said Do it or shutup ! S o I had to stop talking about it

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he commented rather wistfully The terrible thing about dying .

is that you can only do it once I ve also been rather attracted by .

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the idea of being hanged A beautiful strong rope around the .

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neck that s attractive Or better still to be hung by a rope around
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one s wrist till one died That would be pre t ty good too V ery . .

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painful h e said with som e thing almost like relish How long
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do you think it would take to die that way ?
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Four or five days I said because you d really have to die of , ,
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thirst and hunger .

That left him pensive But I m not at all afraid of pain he .

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said after a moment However having one s fingernails ripped .
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o ff one by one w ould be pretty unpleasant But one would be sure .

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to faint after the first two or three or even after the very first ,
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But one would revive I said and then the process could be , ,

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resumed till all the fingernails were gone This idea did not ap .
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 peal to him at all which i s understandable enough if for no other
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reason than that his fingernails are very important to him in hi s

work scratching and gouging out g lobs of clay
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did not know Giacometti such talk might ,

or a ffected or both It is neither It is simply . .

far reachi ng curi osit y -

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In this particular instance he was deeply concerned about the

potentialities and significance of the physical facts of dying and
pain More than with most pe ople it is necessary to be face to face
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with Giacomett i in order fully to appreciate the tenor of his con

versation His extraordinarily mobile and expressive features add
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to what he says a subtlety that sometimes conveys more meaning

than the words themselves For instance while we were talking .
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about the possible ways of killing oneself he smiled qu 1zzi c a lly

now and then which I took to mean that although he was speak
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ing seriously at the same time he assumed that I understood the

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conversati on to be without any purpose beyond itself and c o nse

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quently an amusement
AFrom death to war was an easy obvious step and our conversa
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tion took it He began to tell me about his experiences at the b e

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ginning o f the second World War when the Germans had broken
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through the French lines and were approaching Paris It seems .

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incomprehensible now he said but as the Germans came nearer , ,

and nearer a great many people decided to flee toward the south .

There was an exodus The roads were clogged with pe ople using
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every imaginable sort of conveyance Diego and a friend of his .

and I set out on bicycles But there were German planes bombing .

and strafing the roads Now people had always thought of me as a .

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person who was easily frightened And I had always thought of .

myself that way too The first time the planes came over bomb
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ing and strafing and everybody j umped into the ditch I w as

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really frightened But the second time I wasn t frightened at all

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not at all It s rather strange It was a beautiful afternoon There

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had been a storm the sk y was still full of huge clouds though the
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sun had come out agai n and you could still hear occasional rum ,

bles of thunder in the distance And as I lay there looking up at .

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the sky with other people all around me in the ditch and a ma
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chine gun firing a t the planes from under a nearby treeg realized
that I wasn t afraid in the least It w a s the presence of the others
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in part and in part the beauty of the aftern oon that gave me cour
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age But I remember thi nking that if anyone were to be killed I d

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j ust as soon it should be me a s one of the othe
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But if you d actually had to choose I said you probably , ,
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would have chosen one of the others .

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Not at all he responded It made no diff erence to me at a l
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Anyway I didn t have to cho ose The German army caught 11

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with us at Moulins We sat in a café and watched the soldiers g .

by It was like a big party and everyone thought the Germ

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were very nice But I with my exceptional i nt e lli g e

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ironically realized that it was essential to get back to Pa
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soon as possible S o we pedaled furiously and made it in f our

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All al ong the way we passed advancing columns of German

I remember realizing then that the Germans had lost the war It .

seemed that th ey were winning at the moment but that they ,

could have won in the long run would have seemed to me no more
extraordinary than to se e a tree growing with its branches in the
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ground and its roots in the air ,
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At about si x o clock he asked if we couldn t st 0p for a few min

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utes At seven he explained he was expecting a dealer who had

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acquired some e arly drawings and watercolors and wanted to ex

change them for more recent more salable drawings In order to ,
.

have it off his mind he wanted to make the selection at once of

possible material for this exchange S o we looked through all of .

the portfolios and between us selected twelve or fifteen drawings .

He compl ained that it was a nuisance for him to have to Cope with
such matters At the same time however I felt that the prospect
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of what would undoubtedly turn out to be some rather mundane

haggling did appeal to him .

A s soon as the drawings had been selected we went back to ,

wo rk He announced almost at once that things were going badly

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It s going so badly that i t s not even going badly enough for
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there to be some hope But he continued ob stinately working ’

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till it w a s almost dark concentrating h i s attention ent irely on the

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head When he stopped at last and the lights were t urned on I

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s a w that the head had become more elongated and vaguer than

the day before crisscrossed by black and gray lines and sur
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rounded by a sort of halo of undefined space After the first sitting .

there had been some semblance of a likeness Now there w as none .

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at all Not that that w a s a criterion but I couldn t help feeling that
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the change had not been for the better though I supposed it w a s ,

only temporary .

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There s been progress he said But we have to go further ,
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We ll work tomorrow won t we ? ,
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S ure .
1 3
 Then the dealer arrived Giacometti had to go into hi s bed roo m.

to wash his hands and I went with him He smiled conspiratorially .

and seemed most amused by the coming interview While it went .

on I talked with Diego After half an hour or so Alberto a p

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e ar e d quite pleased with himself announcing that he had o b

p , ,

t ai n e d two early watercolors and two early drawings in exchange

for four recent drawings We went to his studio to look at them

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One of the drawings and both of the watercolors were landscapes ,

while the second drawing was a superb study o f a nude woman - .

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It s the only one I did from life in 1 9 3
’
said Alberto whereas -

the drawings I gave in exchange are j ust like hundreds of others

”
I ve done He was very amused by the idea that most dealers
’
.

are anxious to acquire only what will sell .

We went together to the café and I left him there sitt ing alone , ,

at a table on the terrace a solitary gray figure in t h e early evening

, .

S EV ERAL P E O P L E were in the studio when I arrived the fol

lowing afternoon Now that Giacometti h a s become f a
.

mous in the sense of being a celebrity he has far more

, ,

visitors than he used to have Ten years ago it was rare to find him .

busy with j ournalists foreign dealers museum curators critics

, , , ,

collectors and the curious Now it is commonplace He has ac

,
. .

c e t e d the change with calm though the continual demands on

p ,

his time must often exasperate him .

It was four thirty before we were able to start work As he b e

-
.

“
gan to paint he said I ve noticed that not only do you look like a
-
,
’

”
brute full face but your profile is a little degenerate He laughed .

“
broadly and added Full face you go to j ail and in profile you go
,

to the asylum .

We both laughed Although he was capable of making j okes

.
,

at the same time he seemed overcome with dismay at t h e magni

tude of the not a t all amusing task he had undertaken He kept
- - -
.

murmuring half to himself and half to me how impossible it w as .

“ ’ “ ”
I ve been wasting my time for thi rty years he said The ,
.

root of the nose is more than I can hope to manage .

However he kept on working The afternoon passed slowly

, . .

He smoked cigarettes and told stories of people he had known

and of incidents that had either amused or interested him But a l .

ways he returned to the intolerable diffi culty of the task at hand .

I t ried to deduce from the movements of hi s brushes what form

the painting might be taking but it w a s impossible .S ometimes he ,
would si t hunched over for a minute or more his head and hands ,

hanging to ward the floor in an attit ude of absolute dej ection as ,

though no hope whatever remained even for life itself .

“ “ ”
I t s impossible he murmured a gain and again I ll never find
’ ’
.
,

”
a way O nt .

At times his gloom was contagious S itting there in that gray .

,

cluttered dusty studio hour after hour one began to feel that
, , ,

indeed the entire future did depend on the po ssibility of repro

,

d u c i ng exactly by means of brushes and pigment the sensation of

vision caused by a particular aspect of realit y This of course is
”

.
, ,

by defini tion an impo ssibility and yet for that very reason i s end
l essly e nt 1 c 1ng and valid Added to the model s sense of helpless .
’

ness although of essential importance to the work w a s the r e

, ,

“
quest for relati ve immobility S ometimes he would say You v e .
,
’

”
moved Raise your head a lit tle And then sometimes after I d
. .
,
’

“
raised my head he would say No no you were all right before
, , , ,
.

”
Lower it again .

After about t wo hours of work that afternoon we had to stop

because a publisher came to see him The painting was removed .

from the easel All the vagueness of the day before had d i sa p
.

e ar e d The head w a s precise and st rongly modeled but quite

p .

black The body h ad acquired a greater feeling of volume and

.

so m e of the background had been painted in .

“ ”
Is it worth going on with ? Giacometti asked .

”
Of course I said ,
.

”
Is it out of charity you s a y that ? he half j okingly inquired -
.

If so i t s a lousy trick A real friend would tell me I ought to

,
’
.

give up painting forever .

’
The publisher who had been s tudying the pic ture said It s
, , ,

superb The way the image seems to come and go is really v e rt i g

.

1 nous .

“ ’
What s vertiginous Giacometti re s ponded i s that i t s not
’
, ,

”
even a beginning and never will be
’

“ “ ”
For you perhaps I said but not for u s , ,
.

”
Tomorrow we ll se e he replied ’
,
.

W HE
the next day he w a s working on a new
N I AR RI VE D ,

bust of Diego from memory now rather than from life ,

.

He said hello but continued to work hardly glancing at ,

“
me I sat down on my chair After a little while he asked What
. .
,
”
time i s it ? I S
 ’
Four o clock .

Damn ! Already ? I want to go to the café and drink something

”
before we start to work .

“ ”
All right .

He left the studio and went to speak to Diego for a moment ,

“
then came back and began to work on the bust again I said S hall .
,

we go to the café ?
“
Yes let s go Anyway we can t work for very long today
,
’
.
,
’
,

”
because someone is coming at six He continued to work on the .

bust .

“
Let s go then I said
’
,
.

All right All right Yes we ll go He took a rag and hurriedly

. .
,
’
.

wiped the clay from his hands turned round and began to work ,

on one of the tall figures I didn t say anything After a few min 1 .
’
.
-

“ ”
utes he said I can t tear myself away
,
’
.

“ ”
S o I notice !
But finally he stopped wiped his hands again and we started , ,

“ ”
out for the café I m not so t ired today he said in the street
.
’
, ,

“ ”
but I m in a foul humor I think I ll give up painting f er good
’
.
’
.

In the café however the j uke box and a c o nv e rsa t i o n a bout

, ,

politics cheered him somewhat .

We went back to the s t udio He at once began to work on the .

bust again I placed the easel the stools the chair in position put
.
, , ,

the canvas on the easel and sat down to wait He murmured irri ,
.

tably to himself Ten minutes passed At last with obvio us re lu c

. .
,
“ ’
tance he t urned away from the bust and sat on his stool I t s .

“ ”
impossible he declared particularly at this distance It s i m po s
, ,
.
’

sible But he began to paint nevertheless .

”
The funny thing is he remarked after a time that I simply , ,

’
can t seem to reproduce what I see To be able to do that one .

”
would have to die of it .

To him the predicament was not at all amus ing When he Spoke .

of dying it seemed that he actually believed it And yet he worked .

on This is the essential unbearable duality of his life

.
,
.

“ ” “
There he murmured presently the nose is in place now
, , .

’ ”
That s some progress .

Before long he complained that he was growing tired and that

there were pains in his back He had slept badl y the night before .
,

he said But he wouldn t stop He couldn t I know where I m

.
’
.
’
.
’

”
going now he said I see how I can advance things a bit
, . .

When he was finally willing to stop the painting had m ade a ,

1 6 real very perceptible progress though only the head had changed
, , .
 Of co urse Rodin did fantastic hands . .

“
Later he asked Do you mind doing this ? ,
“ ” “ ”
Not at all I replied In fact I like it
, .
,
.

S o do I When I was young I used to pose often for my father

.
,

and I liked it very much Besides you re free to stop whenever .

,
’

you want to .

“
S o are you .

Yes Both of us are free But it would be better if I knew how

. .

”
to do something .

This constant expression of self doubt i s neither an a ffectation

an appeal for reassurance on hi s part but simply the spontane
outpouring of his deep feelings of uncertainty as to the ulti
e quality of his achievement In order to go on to hope to .
, ,

that there i s some chanc e of his actually c re a t m g what he

c ally visualizes he i s obliged to feel that it is nec essary to start
,

3 entire career over again every day as it were from scratch He , ,

.

refuses to rely on past achievements or even to look at the world

in terms of what he himself h a s made of it This is one reason w h y .

he often feels that the particular scul pture or painting on which

he happens to be working at the moment is that one whi ch will
f or the very first time express what he subj ectively experiences in
to an obj ective realit y .

When he had painted for an hour or more we rested for a ,

while That is I stretched my legs while he immediately started

.
, ,

working again on one of his sculptures .

“ ” “
My taste gets worse every day he said I ve been looking at ,
.
’

a book in which paintings are reproduced next to photographs .

There w as a portrait by Fouquet next to a photo of a real person ,

”
and I preferred the photo by far Yet I like Fouquet very much . .

When he started to work again on the painting he talked for a ,

“
time about Cézanne He was the greatest of the nineteenth cen .

”
tury He w a s one of the greatest of all time
. .

“ ”
Yes I agreed But I wonder not that it matters— whether
, .
—

”
he was someone we d have liked to know I don t think so ’
.
’
.

“ “ ”
No he said He was bigoted bad tempered bourgeois Like
, .
,
-
,
.

Rodin Though the fact that he never finished h i s paintings or

.
,

considered them finished i s very appealing He abandoned them ,

. .

He ju5 t abandoned them And there s another thing about him I .

’

’
like In Cézanne s time the director of the Berlin museum a man
.
,

named von T sc h u di I think had to sub m it all his purchases for , ,

1 3 approval to the ! aiser Apparently the ! aiser automatically a p .

proved of e verything except impressionist pictures Cézanne — .

heard this and said The ! aiser is right Giacometti laughed

,
‘
.
’
.

“
After a time he said It s going very badly my friend But what
,
’

,
.

does it matter ? There s no hope of finishing it anyway ’

,
.

Dieg o came and called him to the telephone It was Annette .

,

calling from London where she had remained a few days long c i
, ,

to say she would be back the following day .

As the light faded in the studio he worked on and on It became .

grayer and grayer I could no longer clearly distinguish the details

.

of h i s head which w a s wreathed in whorls of cigarette smok e

, .

I remarked that with so little light he could hardly expect to see

very well .

“ ’
For what I m d oing he replied there s more than light
’

, ,
”
enough But at last he did stop When the electric lights were
.
‘
.

turned on and we looked at the paint ing he seemed pleased He .

“ ”
said I ve never made so much progre ss in a single sitting
,
’
.

Whether or not this was true I don t know but certainly he ’

had made more progress that day than on any of the preceding
days I had pos ed The face was less black now the features more
.
,

clearly drawn and vivid The sense of Space surrounding the head .

and shoulders had begun to acquire depth and expressiveness .

A L B ERTO was not at the studio when I arrived there the next
d a y Diego told me that he had gone to M o ur lo t s lithog
’
.

ra h plant to examine the proofs of lithographs for the

p y
large folio which Téri a d e i s to publish next year It was about half .

an hour before he came back He went directly into hi s studio .

without speaki ng to Dieg o or to me When I went in after him ‘

.
,

he wa s already in the far co m er busily going through the four or ,

five large portfolios of drawings that are kept there He paid no .

attention to me seemed unaware in fact that he w as not alone

, , ,
.

Impatiently he pulled from the portfolios a quantity of drawings

on lithographic transfer paper plus some blank transfer paper ,

and a number of drawing s on ordinary paper All these he threw .

on the floor .

“ ”
What in the world are you doi ng ? I finally asked .

“ ”
I m going to j unk this Stuff he said
’
,
.

No ! I protested .

”
Y es ! he exclaimed You ll s e e
’
. .

S natching the pile from the floor he went out with it into the ,
’
passageway where there i s a trash can near the door to Diego s
, I9
 studio He threw all the drawings to the ground took a handful
.
,

and began to tear them to pieces I caught his arm and tried to stop .

“ ” “ ”
him Wait a minute I argued Let s look them over first
.
,
.
’
.

“ ”
No no he cried taking another handful and tearing it up
, , ,
.

Obviously there was nothing I could do And after all the .

, ,

drawings were his to destroy if he wished However I know him .

,

and have had at least one similar experience with him in the past .

S o I snatched a couple of drawings from the top of the pile and

went back to the studio He did not return at once He was tal king . .

with Diego I set up the ease! placed the pai nti ng on it put the
.
, ,

stools and the chair in their respective places and waited Presently ,
.

why he had destroyed

all those drawings some twenty fi ve or th irt y at least He ex
,
-
.

plained that at M o urlo t s he had discovered that the lithographi c ’

transfer paper he d been using was too old and Would no longer
’

transfer to the Stones properly Consequently he had wanted to .

get rid of whatever drawings could not be transformed into the

lithographs he had intended them to be He was obviously very .

annoyed by this technical contretemps I protested that he need .

not have destroyed the drawings which had been valid as draw ,

ings whether t h e v were transformed into lithographs or not But .

he would hear none of that He had wanted to be rid of them and .

’
that s all there was to it His feeling seemed to be almost one of .

Spite as though the drawings themselves had o ff ended him and

,

he wanted to revenge himself on them I reminded him that h e .

“
had also destroyed a number of drawings on ordinary paper It .

’ “
doesn t matter he said They were no good anyway I m glad
, .
, .
’

”
to be rid of them Apparently it was neither here nor there that
.

he had barely glanced at them as he pulled them out of his port

’
folios I didn t insist but I was reminded of Cézanne s habit of
.
,
’

furiously and indiscriminately slashing his canvases when dis

satisfied with something he had done The gesture was general .
,

not specific .

He began to work As usual the head alone received his atten .

tion By this time I thought he must have done it over at least

.
, ,
“
twent y fi v e or thirty times But after a while he said Everything
-
.
,

”
must be destroyed I have to start all over again from zero
. .

Later he referred once more to the book he had mentioned the

day be f ore which contained comparisons of photographs a nd
p aint ings On one page there w as a Di i r e r he s aid also a portrait
.
, ,

20 of a cardinal by Raphael and a very academi c portrait of Marshal ,

 Foch He sai d h e preferred the portrait of Foch Anyway he
.
“
.
.
,
“ ”
added presently i t s impossible to reproduce what one sees
,
’
.

“
But i s even a p h ot o g r a p h re a lly a reproduction of what one '

”
sees ? I asked .

“
No A nd if a photo isn t a painting i s even less so What s best
.
’

,
.
’

is simply to look at people Besides it s impossible to achieve a like .

,
’

’
ness Fo r example when I made that sculp t ure of the cat I didn t
.
, ,

”
make it a likeness because I m incapable of doing that ’
.

“ ”
How did you happen to make the cat ? I asked .

“
I d See n that cat of Diego s so often coming across the bedroom
’ ’

toward my bed in the morning before I got up that I had it in my

mind exactly as it is All I had to do was make it But only the . .

head can even pretend to be a likeness because I a lways saw it ,

”
head on coming toward m y bed ,
.

“ ” “
The dog I said is much more of a likeness than the cat
, ,
.

The muzzle yes but not the back legs at all The back legs
, ,
.

are utterly false .

“
How did you happen to make the dog ?
For a long ti m e I d had in my mind the memory of a Chinese ’

dog I d seen somewhere And then one day I w a s walking along the
’
.

rue de V anves in the rain clo se to the walls of the buildings with , ,

my head down feeling a little sad perhaps and I felt like a dog
, , ,
.

j ust then S o I made that sculp

. t ure But 1 t S not really a likeness at .
’

all O nly the sa d muzzle I Sanything of a likeness Anyway p eople

. .
,

themselves are the only real likenesses I never get tired of looking
a t them W
.

hen I go to the Louvre if I look at the pe ople instead of

.
,

at the paintings or sculptures then I can t look at the works of art ,

’

at all and I have to leave .

”

A propos of Annette s impending return from London w ecame ’ -

to talk of geography Euro p e the si x continents a nd finally of , , , , ,

Japan I remarked that I had never known well either a Chinese or

.

a Japanese whereas he had been very friendly over a pe riod of sev

,

eral years with Isaku Yana i h ara the Japanese professor who had ,

posed during that time for a quantit y of paintings and sculpt ures .

I wondered whether he had ever felt aware of any di ff erence be

tween himself and Yanai h a ra any fundamental disparit y 1 n their ,

instinctive attitudes or reactions a disparity which might have ,

been due to the unlike background nationalit y and race , ,

.

“ “
Absolutely none he said He seemed just lik e me I n fact ,
. . .
,

I came to accept him a s the norm because I w a s with him so much .

We were always togethe r ! in the studio at the café at the D O m e , ,

2 1
 and the Coupole in night clubs We were together so much that
,
.

one day I had a curious experience because of it Ya na i h a ra was .

posing for me and suddenly Genet came into the St udio I thought .

he looked very strange with such a round very rosy face and , ,

pu ff ed lips But I didn t say anything about it Then Diego came

.
’
.

into the studio And I had the same feeling His face looked very
. .

rosy too and round and his lips looked very puffy I couldn t
, , ,
.
’

understand why Then suddenly I realized that I was seeing Diego

.

and G e ne t a s t h e y must have looked to Ya na i h a ra I had conce m

-

,
fi

t ra t e d S o long and so hard on Y a nai h a r a s face that it had become

’

the norm for me and during a brief moment i t was an impression —

th at lasted for only a very little while I could see white people —

”
the way they must look to pe ople who aren t white ’
.

When Giacometti told stories of this kind and others that were ,

sometimes much lo nger and far more personal he seemed com ,

let el absorbed in what he w a s saying he Spoke rapidly and

p y ,

forgot about the painting though he always continued

apparently
‘
,

to work on it He obviously enj oys

. talking with his model On n
o e .

occasion when he was talking so much that I thought it mi ght

,

interfere with the progress o f t h e painting I suggested that he keep ,

qui et for a while He said ! It s hard for me to Shut up I t s the

k

’ ’
. .
,

delirium that comes from the impossibility of really accomplish

”
ing anything When he is not painting however and for i n
.
, , ,

stance sitting with someone in a café it i s not at all unusual for hi m

, ,

to remain silent for long periods of time staring into spa ce But to ,
.

talk to his model while he is working distracts him I think from , ,

the constant anxiety which is a result of his conviction that he can

not hope to represent on the canvas what he sees before him This .

anxiety often bursts forth in the form of melancholy gasps furious ,

expletives and occasional loud cries of rage and /o r distress He

, .

suff ers There i s no doubt of i t !

.

Jean Genet h as written that Giacometti tends to develop emo

t i o nal relationships with hi s models almost romantic feelings for ,

them This may in part be a proj ection of Genet s singular sub

.
’

j e c t i vi s m yet I believe there is some truth i n it And in my case

, .
,

at least the feelings were reciprocal It i s not surprising that such

, .

feelings should exist Giacometti i s committed to hi s work in a par

.

t i c u la rl intense and total way The creative compulsion i s never

y .

wholly absent from him never leaves hi m a moment of complete ,

peace I remember hi s saying a number of times that when he

.

wakes up in the morning the very first thought that comes to hi s

22 mind i s of the work waiti ng to be done the paintings and sculp ,
t ures that he may have en route to use hi s o wn expression at the — —

moment With this thought he says always comes a ni ghtmarish

.
, ,

i
sensation of hopelessness of having his face pressed aga nst a wall ,

and being unable to bre a t he f n the same spiri t he sometimes talks s

wistfully of the tim e when he wi ll be able to stop working forever ,

when j ust once he will have succeeded 1 n representi ng what he

sees in conveying tangibly the intangible sensation of a visual per
,

course impossible and he must cer , ,

creative drive is that he

should l ongingly dream of someday being free of it Thi s intensity .

naturally communi cates itself to those around him and most i m ,

m ediately to those closest to his work who are at any given mo ,

ment hi s models That they should almost always have been people
.

close to him hi s wife hi s brother and personal friends of long

—
,
-
,

standing — i s no accident I think The experience of posing for Gia

,
.

c o m e t t i i s deeply personal For one thing he talks so much not .

, ,

only about hi s work but also about himself and his personal rela
-

t i o ns hi s that the model i s naturally impelled to do likewise S uch

p ,
.

talk may easily produce a sense of exceptional intimacy in the

almost supernatural atmosphere of give and take that is inherent
“

in the acts of posing and pai nting The reciprocity at times seems ‘

almost unbearable There i s an identification between the model

.

and the artist via the painting which gradually seems to become
, ,

an independent autonomous entity served by them both each in

, ,

hi s o wn w a y and oddly enough equall y } , ,

Thi s sense of identit y i s illustrated by t wo incidents that o c

curred while I was posing One day h i s foot accident ally struck .
!

the catch that holds the easel shelf at the proper level causing the ,
”
canvas to fall abruptly a foot or two Oh excuse me ! he said I .
, .

laughed and observed t h afi h e d excused himself as though he d ’ ’

'

“
caused me to fall instead of the paint ing That s exactly what I .
’

”
did feel he answered
, .

Another time the left side of my face began to itch violently .

S ince he desired complete immobility I tried to relieve the itch by ,

'

twitching my cheek and nose instead of raising a hand t o s c r at c h .

“ ’ ”
What s the matter with you ? he asked .

”
My face itches I explained , .

Why ? ”
“
Because of all the litt le Strokes of your brush on my cheek .

“ ”
He laughed V ery pretty he said
.
,
.

I laughed too and scratched my face But what I had said w as

, , .

absolutely spontaneous and unpremeditated not at all an e ff ort to , 2

3
 make a pretty phrase I told him this and he said that he under .

stood perfectly the sense o f transmutat ion my remark implied .

It i s often said that artists of great talent are able and seek to
.

, ,

convey not only the external appearance but also the inner nature
of their models I do not know whether this i s so but it would not
.

seem surprising that ai portrait should

macy that may grow b etween an a rt lst and
instinct after all acts at the bidding of the unconscious which
, , ,

also decides to a considerable degree the exact n ature of human

relationships B ut G iacometti did not f e el t h a t any rapport what
.
.
_ _

ever existed between a portrait and the i ndividua l nature o f the

model Not in his work in any case I have enough trouble with
.
, .
-

the outside witho ut bothering about said

Whil e I was poSi ng he occasionally asked me whether I was
.

,
“ ”
tired of 1 t Is this getting on your nerves ? he would 1 u quire I
. .

don t think he meant the physical act of posing but rather the
’

entire experience and in particular my inevitable though indirect , ,

participa tion in his moments of doubt and despair In answer to .

such questions I always said no which was in substance a truthful ,

answer for the entire experience was an exhilarating one Yet

, .

there were moments when I found it psychologically exhausting

to be the pretext as it were for an eff ort that acknowledged in
, ,

advance its own futility but which at the same time insisted that
nothing was more valid than to make the effort anyway This .

fundamental contradiction arising from the hopeless discre pancy ,

between conception and realization is at the root of all artistic ,

creation and it helps to explain the anguish which seems to b e

,

“ ”
an unavoidable component of that experience Even as happy .

an artist as Renoir was not immune to it But it has seldom been .

expressed with as much lucid and unrelenting singleness of pur

p ose —
both in his life and in his work as by Giacometti This is — .

in part what has prompted some critics to describe him as an

“ ”
existential artist .

There are certain images that recur regularly throughout Gia

’
c o m e tt i s wo rk Of these the most salient has certainly been the
.
,

head o fEDi eg o which has come to seem almost an archetypal vi s

,
“
age o f m an} I mentioned this to Alberto and he rep lied That S , ,
’

normal Diego s head 13 the one I know best He s posed for me

.
’
.
’

over a longer period of time and more often than anyone else .

From 1 9 3 5 to 1 940 he posed for me every day and again after the ,

war for years S o when I draw or sculpt or paint a head from mem
.

24 ory it always turns out to be more or less Diego s head because ’

,
 to give you something because the po rtrait will never be good ,
”
enough to give you .

I said nothing .

He smiled slyly and a f t er a moment added You must be think '

‘
ing What a dirty trick !
,
’

” “
No I said that s not what I m think ing at all I ll tell you
, ,
’ ’
.
’

”
later what I m thinking ’
.

What I was thinking was that this was the first time in all the
years I d kno wn Giacome t ti that I had ever had the feeling of
’

being able really to do something for him of be1 ng able to demon ,

strate in a tangible way my esteem and affection He had been .

exceedingly generous to me but I had never been able to give ,

him anything that to me was an adequate expression of my friend

shi p Now I could And miraculously enough I even seemed use
. .
, ,

ful to him in hi s work which was an unhoped f o r satisfaction ,

-
.

When I tried to tell him these things however he would not , ,

listen He is a person to whom anything even bordering on the

.

e ff usive is distasteful He expresses what he feels by doing some .

thing not by talking about it .

After working for an hour and a half we decided to take a break .

“
He said I stopped five minutes too late A little while ago 1 t w a s
, .

o o df
’

g
It was in any case beter that it had been at the end of the pre
, ,

v i o u s day s sitting The face was criss crossed with black lines but
’
-
.
,

it had a fresh precision and solidi t y .

When we started work again he kept insisting that my head ,

was too far to the right or to the left too high or too low No mat , .

ter how I moved it it seemed to be wrong Finally we looked at , .

the legs of the chair and found that they were about half an inch
o ff the red marks painted on the floor But that made all the differ .

ence he said From that time o n he himself always carefully

.

checked the position of the chair before he began to work .

Presently he started gasping aloud with his mouth open and , ,

“ “ ” ’
stamping his foot Your head s going away ! he exclaimed It s
.
’
.

”
going away completely .

“
It will come back again I said ,
.

“
He Shook his head Not necessarily Maybe the canvas will . .

become completely empty And then what will become of me ? .

”
I ll die of it !
’

There was nothing I could say or do To be present but helpless ,

.
,

to be involved but removed made me uneasy .

26 He reached into h i s po cket pulled out h i s handkerchief stared , ,

at it for a moment as though he didn t know what it w as then ,
’
,

with a moan threw it onto the floor S uddenly he shouted very .

lo udly I shriek ! I scream !

,
“”

S tartled embarrassed I l aughe d awkwardly

, , _
-
.

I t s not very nice to laugh at the misery of others he said

’
,

grimly .

“
That s true I said Excuse me ’
,
. .

_ For a time he wor k ed on in silence T hen abruptly he asked .

,
”
Have you ever killed anyone ?
“ “
No I replied Why do you ask me that ?
,
'

’
Because I believe you re capable of anythi ng he said smiling , ,
.

”
That s a compliment ’
.

“
Thanks And you ? Have you ever k illed anyone ?
.

”
Never .

Annette had returned from London the eveni ng before S he .

came into the studio looking very prett y in a mustard colored ,

-

“ ’ ”
coat It s very nice that you re po sing in my place She said to me
.
’
,
.

“ “ ’
The painting i s going worse and worse he announced It s ,
.

’
impossible to do it Maybe I d better give up painting forever But . .

the trouble i s that i ftI can t do a painting I can t do a sculpture ’

,
’

either It s the same t hi ng Well i t s no r exactly the same thing

_
_

’ ’
. . .
, ,

but i t s close to being the same t h i ngj

’

“ ’
Why don t you work on the body or the backg round I asked , ,
’
if you re having trouble with the head ?
“ ” “
No no he said Everything h as to come in i t s own ti me
“

. .
, ,

If I paint in the body or the background j ust to be doing some

thing to fill in space that would be obvious it would be false
, .
, , ,
’
and I d have to a bandon the picture completely No Tomorrow . .

’
it will come I ve reached the worst now T omorrow is S unday
. . .

’ ”
T hat s fine The worst will be f o r tomorrow . .

Toward the end of the Sitting a s it began to get dark he took , ,

o ff h i s glasses sever al t imes and st a red away toward the other Side

of the s tudio a s at nothing I suggested that we stop for the day . .

“ ” “ ”
No he said I m j ust resting my eyes
, ,
’
.

Finally it had grown so dark that we had to stop and t urn on the
lights The portrait had progressed noticeably Or so it seemed
. - . .

To be certain from day to day of exactly what had happened and ,

to decide whether or not it really represented a pro g ress was ,

sometimes very diff icult for me But Giacometti in any case wa s .

, ,
“ ’ ”
pleased He said It did advance in spite o f everything didn t it ?
.
'

,
“ ”
Ye s I said it did , ,
.

Annette too felt that the work w a s progressing well

, ,
. 2
7
 Giacometti had to g o to meet a j ournalist at the café I stayed .

behind to talk for a while with Annette .

“ ”
How do you like posing ? she asked .

” “
V ery much I said But so m etimes Alberto almost scares me
,
.
,
”
the way he yells when things aren t going well Annette laughed ’
.

“ ” “
at that But I added what really disturbs me is the way the
.
, ,

painting seems to come and go as though Alberto himself had no ,

control over it And sometimes it disappears altogether

. .

“ ” “
Annette laughed again Oh she said I ve become so used to .
, ,
’

”
that that I Simply don t notice it anymore ’
.

“ ”
But it could go on f o r months .

S ometimes it does .

And there s nothing anyone can do

’
.

No .

Not even Alberto himself I suppose ,

.

” “
No Sh e said not even Alberto
, ,
.

Of course It s strange this feeling of fatality

.
’

,
.

“ ”
Annette shrugged Yo u llg e t used to it ’
'

. .

“ ” ”
Yes I said I suppose I will
, ,
.

A C OMETTI loo ked forward to working on S unday because

GI

the chances of being disturbed then by visitors were less

than during the week As soon as I arrived at the studio he .
,

told me that he hadn t gone to bed till five and had slept very bad
’

Iy But he denied feeling at all tired and we began work at once

.
,
.

“ ’
It s going to go well today he said There s an opening I ve
’

,
.
’
.

got to make a success of the head I didn t answer and after a f e w ” ’ '

.
,
“
minutes he added This morning when Diego came into my room
,

I was overcome by the construction of hi s head It was as though .

’ ”
I d never seen a head before .

For some time he worked on I inferred that the painting might .

be going well for once Then he said 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 I d like to be able to paint like a machine
.
’
.

We began to talk about painting in general and once again I ,

was struck by the detailed intimacy and great breadth of his

knowledge The pic t ures in the Louvre a r e as familiar to him as
.

those in his own bedroom and he remembers with precision paint ,

ings that he hasn t seen for thirty or forty years On this particular
’
.

28 day he mentioned Le Nain es pecially saying that the paintings ,

b him in t h e Louvre W ere to him among the most beautiful works
y “ ” “
there The figures in them express human feelings he said and
.
, ,

that becomes rarer and rarer in painting } as we approach the

”
present I observed that Cézanne expressed much human feeling
.

in certain of his pictures

‘

“ ” “
Maybe so he said but he does it in spite of himself whereas
, , ,

Le Nain does it deliberately That makes all the difference As for . .

me I m incapable of expressing any human feelings at all in my

,
’

”
work I j ust try to construct a head nothing more
.
,
.

“
” “
t —isn t everybody s opinion said In some of your
T h
’ ’

(
a I ,
.

”
sculp t ures and paintings I find a great deal of feeling .

“ “
You may find 1 t he said but I didn t put it there It s com , ,
’
.
’

S
w

p e
Iéf i fi pi t e of me .

B ut What yo u may think of your work I said while it s i m

“ '
’
, ,

portant to you is not necessarily important to other people or

, ,
”
even necessarily the truth .

He shr ugged He was painting S peculation meant nothing . .

then though at other times he indulges in it with relish

,
.

T oward Si x o clock we stopped for a rest The portrait looked

’
.

“ ”
fine I thought and said so It will be even better later on he
, ,
.
,

said He worked at his slender figure while I walked up and down

.

and rubbed my behind Nodding at the sculpture he said I m .

, ,
“ ’

doing something here that I ve never done before It may not be ’

.

apparent to you but I am , .

It was not apparent to me The figure looked very much like a .

number he had done in the past But the point I thought was that .
, ,

his feelings i n relation to it were unlike any he had had before To .

him the plastic problem the visual response to reality was utterly ,

new because he possesses t h e rare capac ity of seeing a familiar

,

thing with the i ntense vividness of a completely new sight And .

it i s this extraordinary though taxing ability which enables him , ,

to imbue with fresh vitality subj ects he has treated numerous times
b e f o re a n d which enabled him to paint my head over and over
'

in the fervent hope that he would eventually be able to reproduce

it exactlyas he saw i t .

After a time he transferred hi s attention to the bust of Diego .

He remarked that recently h e had somewhere run into Malraux ,

“
who asked him what he w as doing Alberto had replied I m doing .
,
’

”
a head .

“ ”
What monstrous pride ! said Malraux who went on to remark ,

that there were to be sure Egyptian heads S umerian heads C hi

, , , ,
29
 nese heads Romanesque heads And Gothic heads Malraux had
,
.
,

mused aloud were there really any Goth ic heads ? But j ust then
,

someone had come along and drawn him aside .

“
S o we ll never know if there are really any Gothic heads
’
,
“
Giacometti observed But for me anyway the best c o nt em p or .
, ,

ary heads are painted by the people who do those huge heads for
movie posters They must work from photographs though
.
,
.

”
Otherwise they could never accomplish what they do .

When we resumed work on the p ai nting he immediately a n ,

n o u n c e d that it was again going very badly indeed He said that .

that morning as usual he had had his familiar nightmarish awaken

, ,

ing accompanied by the realization that he couldn t ever possibly

,
’

hope to achieve h i s ambition ! to paint what he saw If only some .

” “
one else could paint what I see he said it would be marvelous , , ,
”
because then I could stop painting for good .

“
Considering the low opinion you re always expressing of your ’

“ ”
own work I said it would interest me to know what you think
, ,
”
of all the people who admire it Like me for instance .
,
.

“ ”
When I se e an exhibition of my own things he replied as , ,

at the M a eg h t Foundation f o r instance I m the first to think that , ,

’

they re better than what anyone else does But then I realize that
’
.

that has absolutely no relation to what I hope to be able to do so ,

I conclude that really they re no good at all

’
.

“ “ ”
Well I s aid i t s a good thing that everyone doesn t see them
, ,
’ ’

the way you do .

“ ’
I couldn t care less he responded ,
.

The work continued to go badly He gasped and muttered t o .

“
himself Finally I said Why don t we stop for the day ? S hall I
.
,
’

”
stand up ?
“ ”
Yes he replied and put me out of my misery But he qu ickly, .

”
added Don t move ! I w as only j oking S o I Stayed where I w a s
,
’
. .

”
Presently he asked You aren t leaving tomorrow are you ?
,
’
,

Then once again he said that he would pay me to stay on And .

when I answered that any such arrangement w a s out of the ques

“ ”
tion he said Anyw ay the p ai nting i s yours
, , , .

I tried to thank him but he impatiently dismissed my e ff orts ,

.

It began to get dark S everal times I suggested that we should .

stop B u t he always insisted that he needed a few more minut es of

.

work Annette had come into the studio a little while before and
.
,
“ ”
0 s h e said He always likes to work a little while in the dark
3 , .
 Then Diego came in . He said to Alberto ,
What are you do
ing
“
working Alberto replied
Im
’
,
.

“
Diego laughed It s dark You can t se e a damn thing.
’
.
’
.

I stood up then The lights were turned on Half of the after. .

’
noon s work had disappeared into a gray vagu eness It was some .

what discouraging I had by then become so involved in the meta .

morphoses of the painting and so identified with it not only as ,

my port rait but also a s the focus of my daily life and my sole
reason for remaining in Paris that I felt rather depressed to have it ,

apparently retrogress B ri t Giacometti insisted that real progress .

had nevertheless been made and that even more progress would ,

surely be made the next day And after all I thought he saw it in .
, , ,

a truer way than I could because he saw not only where it was ,

but also where it was going .

OL L OW I N G DAY was the ni nth on which I had posed I

T HE F .

w a s beginni ng to be able to determine what Giacometti

w a s doing while he worked by observing the way in which
he used h i s different brushes and by watching which colors he
used and when Although he always held a bunch of about eight
.

or nine brushes he never used more than three ! two fine ones with
,

long thin supple tips of sable hair and one larger one with a much
, ,

thicker shorter and st i ff er tip One of the two fine brushes w a s

, ,
.

“ ”
used with black to construct the head b uilding it up gradually ,

by means of many small strokes on top of each other After work .

ing for a time in this way he would dip the brush 1 nto his dish of ,

turpentine and Squeeze the tip between hi s fingers Then he would .

begin to work with the same brush again but using white or gray
pigment From this I deducted that he w a s beginning to develop
.

the contours and volume of the head and to add highlights Before .

long he would take the other fine brush and begin to work over
what h e had already painted but using white pigment only When “
“

-
.

thi s happened I knew that the head would soon enter the d i si nt e
,
”
ra t i o n phase Then after a time the large brush would b e
g .
, ,

brought into play handled in a much more free and sweeping way
,

than the fine ones It served to f orm the space behind and around
.

the head to develop the contour of shoulders and arms and fi nal
, , ,

ly to c o mplet e the gra d ual process of disintegration by p a 1 nt 1 ng

“ ”
,

out deta i ls Then with the first of the fine brushes he would begin
.
,

once more with black pigment to try to draw from the void as it , , 3 1
 were some semblance of what he sa w before him S o it went o n
,
.
,

over and over again .

“
That day after he had worked for a time he said I v e got to
, , ,
’

square everything Everything is a sphere a cone or a cylinder .

, , ,

it s true Too bad I m not the first to have made that observation
’

’
.
’
.

Céz anne w a s right But the cubists were stupid enough to take him .

literally For me cubism was a perfectly stupid undertaking

.

“
And yet the cubists produced some very pretty things I said , .

” “
Yes he agreed prett y is j ust the word Anyway they quick
, ,
.
,
”
ly realized that it was a dead end and gave up .

“
Later he said If only I could find someone to do this in my ,
” “
place ! And when I didn t answer he added The way I want it ’
, ,
.

” “
Laughing I said That s not asking much , ,
’
.

“
He laughed too If I could find someone else he said to do it .
, ,

exactly the way I want it then I d be able to stop forever ,

’
.

“
But would you be satisfied to have it done by someone else ,

assuming of course you found someone to do it j ust the way you

, ,

”
want it ?
“
I d be delighted
’
.

After working for a little while in silence he suddenly said , ,

The head isn t going well at all It s lopsided now Merde ! And I
’
.
’
.

don t seem to be able to get it straight again Besides t h e surface i s

’
.
,

”
s o shi ny with turpentine that I can t see a thing
’
.

“ ”
Well why don t you work a little on the rest of the pic t ure ?
,
’

I suggested Though realizing perfectly well that it w a s alien to

.

“ ”
the spirit of hi s enterprise to expect him to finish the p a1 nt 1ng i n
a convent ional sense I nevertheless felt that if the rest of the pi c ,

ture were more fully realized then the head in relation to it m ight ,

seem to him less diffi cult to represent .

’
But he didn t feel that way at all It would be filling in for the .

”
sake of filling in he said You can t fake a pictu re like that , .
’
.

Everything must come of itself and in i t s own time Otherwise it .

becomes superficial As a matter of fact we ll have to stop soon .

,
’
,

because the head i s beginning to be a little superficial right now .

’
I m tired too I have no reflexes left at all But there s an openi ng
,
. .
’

in sight There s hope That s why I m so tired

.
’
.
’ ’
.

“ ’
I d have expected it to be the other way around I said If , .

”
there were no h O pe I d expect you to be t ired ,
’
.

“
Not a t all It s like a person who s in great danger and h as to
.
’ ’

exert an excep t ional amount of physical strength to save himself .

’
That s when the pic t ure i s going badly But a s soon as he h a s saved .

32 himself or even sees a way out h e s utterly exhausted I remember

, ,
’
.
there w as a man from S tampa who w a s climbing in the high moun
tains near there and fell onto a very narrow ledge He managed to .

i
’
hold on unti l the rescue party w a s l terally withi n arm s reach .

Then he fell and w as killed N o t that 1t 3 quite the same thing for .
’

me I m 1n no danger of dying after all

.
’

,
.
”

Prese ntly we stopped to rest I w as very tired too more so than .

, ,

usual after only an hour and three quarters of posing Added to the .

ordinary fatigue of remaining immobile for long periods of time ,

however w a s the tension of the work itself in which I seemed to

, ,

participate more actively each day Before we could start to work .

again someone came to call This particular vi si t O r had a rather .

“ ”
poetic turn of phrase and referred to the portrait a s inspired .

Giacometti visibly found this adj ective most inappropriate ,

though he w as too polite to say so I left shortly . .

S E P T EM B ER w a s in its third week but the weather w a s ,

mid July S ometi mes I went swimming in the morn

-
.

ings after whi ch I d lunch outside and then go to the

,
’

s t udio The afternoons were clear and pale blue perfect Ile de
.
,
-

France afternoons but the exhilaration of the weather more often

,

than not died in the gray Studio which h a s always seemed i nd i f ,

f e r e nt to such minor eventualities .

When Giacomet ti isn t at the studio he usually leaves a note ’

“
on the door saying where he i s It usually says S uis au café tabac .
,
-
,

”
rue Didot And that w a s where I found him the afterno o n o f S ep
.

tember 2 2 He was seated in the back at the table he habitually

.

occupies hi s head in h i s hands looking glum

, ,
.

“ ”
You don t look ve ry cheerful I said sitting down
’

, ,
.

He didn t answer Then I told him about having been to the

’
.

Opéra the day before to se e Chagall s new ceiling That interested ’

.

him He w a s very curious to se e i t himself and had an invitation

.
,

to the gala openi ng the next day .

“ ’ ”
Let s go and work I suggested He agreed so I stood up and ,
.
,
.

’
walked outside But he didn t follow Looking back I could se e
. .
,

him st ill sit ting inside hi s head in hi s hands, star ing at nothing
,
.

Finally though after I had waited about five minutes he did

, , ,

come out He looked down the rue d A lési a where the leaves of
.
’

,
“
the acacia trees were fluttering in the sun It s beautiful he said .
’

, ,
“ ”
nodding Then he murmured One should be a tree For another
.
, .

five minutes at least we stood there while he gazed down the

, , ,

long vista of trees nodding hi s head slightly seeming physically

, ,
“
to absorb the scene Then we cross ed the street I d like to do
. .
’

33
 ’
so me landscape s he said But I can t do everythi ng Besides i t s
, . .
,
’

imp o ssible to do landscapes in Paris because people gather round ,

to watch you and I find that intolerable Of course I could do

,
.
,
”
them at five in the morni ng But I m always too tired by that time .
’
.

In the studio everything was j ust as we had left it the previous

’
afternoon since for once he hadn t worked with Caroline the
,

night before .

A s soon a s we had s tarted to work he said It seems impossible , , .

r How can you hope to do a nose in relief on a flat canvas ? It s an ’

”
abominable undertak ing .

I didn t say anything I simply sat there in what I had come to

’
.

think of as a state of active passivity Through the large studio .

window I could see the sun in the treetops above the low roof line
on the other side of the passageway Inside the studio there was .

Giacometti directly in front of me with the c anvas j ust to the ,

left of him between me and the door Behind him and below the
, .

window stood a large table covered with empty turpentine bottles ,

heaps of papers dried paint tubes discarded brushes and plaster

, , ,

casts of small sculptures To the right were several sculpture stands .

holding works in progress In the corner stood a number of t a ll .

plaster figures and on the wall behind them a large black head had
,

been painted long ago .

Presently he remarked It isn t desirable to do large things ,

’

,
”
either in painting or in sculpture .

“ ’
But you ve done some quite large things yourself in your
”
time I observed There s the M an P oi nt i ng That s a big piece
,
“
.
” ’
.
’
.

“ ’
Yes It s the maximum size I did that piece in one ni ght be
. .

tween midnight and nine the next morning That is I d already .

,
’

done it but I demolished it and did it all over again because the
,

men from the foundry were coming to take it away And when .

”
they got here the plaster was sti ll wet
, .

He worked for a time then said Everything h a s to come ,

through the drawing After that the colors will be inevitable In . .

”
two days I ll know whether there s any possibility of going on
’ ’
.

Annette came in We talked j oked but he kept on working .

, ,
.

“ ’ ” “
I m in fighting form he said I m in real fighting form because , .
’

I didn t work last ni ght

’
.

The Sitt ing lasted for more than an hour and three quar ters
without a rest When we Stoppe d the picture looked very stro ng
.
, ,

starkly delineated though of course only the head had changed

, .

34 But I no longer watched the day to day va ri at lo ns as closely a s I

had at first Now I felt almost physically helpless in the grip as it
.
,

were of the painting s interminable transformations

,
’
.

“
After we started to work once more he said I have to destroy , ,

everythi ng again There s nothing else to be done His mood b e

.
’
.

“ “ ”
gan to gro w s o mber Anyway he said it s impo ssible really to .
, ,
’

accomplish anything I ll j ust have to acknowledge that I m not a .

’ ’

”
painter that s all He sighed and let his head hang
,
’
. .

“ ”
Oh , Alberto ! exclaimed Annette protesting gently Don t ,
.
’

”
be like that .

“
Drawing i s the basis of everything he said But the B yza n ,
.

tines were the only ones who knew how to draw And then C é .

”
zanne That s all
.
’
.

’
Apparently the work was going from bad to worse It s abom .

” “ ”
inable he moaned It s unbearable I ll die of it ! He stood up
,
.
’
.
’

and steppe d back to look at the picture from a distance which he ,

“ “ ”
had never done before during a sitting Merde ! he cried The . .

”
head is st i ll lopsided What am I going to do ? He let out a loud .
,

hoarse scream .

“ ”
Oh Alberto ! protested Annette again
, .

Maybe we d better stop for today I sugg ested since it s not

’

, ,
’

”
g oing s o well .

“ ”
No no he insisted And for a time he kept on working But
, , . .

finally in a tone of complete despair he said We might as w ell ,

s top S t and up It s no use I ll accomplish more tomorrow in five

’ ’
‘

. . .

”
minutes than now in half an hour .

I stood up while he took the painting off the easel and put it on
,

the floor under the light The head certainly was askew It s hope . .
’

“
less he muttered At that distance 1t 5 hopeless How can I make
’
.
’
.

a nose really perpendicular 1 n relation to the body ? The simple

fact 13 that I don t know how to do anything People think I m ’
.
’

’ ”
affected when I say that but it s Simply the truth ,
.

I tried to cheer him up by saying that progress had nevertheless

been made on the picture as a whole But it was no use . .

“ ”
S hall I give up ? he sighed Maybe I should give up . .

”
No no I said, , .

Well maybe not We ll se e what happens tomorrow

, .
’
.

I went out into the passageway and back to Diego s St udio It s ’

.
‘
’

”
not going very well I told him ,
.

“
Tomo rrow it will go better he replied dispassionately ,
.

We talked of other th ings S uddenly I heard Alberto Shout ing .

,

”
Lord ! Lord ! I went back down the passageway to h i s studio .
35
 Let s work a little longer be sai d I can t leave it li ke that
’

,
.
’
.

“ ” ”
All right I said sitting down But it wi ll be dark soon
, ,
. .

Is this beginni ng to get on your nerves ? he asked .

”
No I said
,
.

You must hate me .

That s absurd Why should I ?

’
.

Because I force you to go through all thi s .

”
Don t be crazy I said
’

,
.

And yet inasmuch as it w as then expressed in the particular acts

,

of pai nting and posing there were elements of the sado m aso c hi s ,
—

tic in our relationship At moments it seemed d i fii c ult to determine

.

which one of us was resp o nsible for the aura of anxiety that su r
rounded our mut ual work in progress I as the model though a .
,

fortuitous element w as nevertheless one without which the work

,

could not proceed Consequently it was sometimes easy to confuse

.

my appearance with my person as a source of his dismay On the .

other hand if he could not work without me the painting c ould

, ,

not exi st with o ut him He had absolute control over it and by .

,

extension taking into account its nature my admiration for him

—
, ,

my desire to po ssess the finishe d product and the fact that I w a s ,

remaining in Paris only to pose— control over me too T he painting .

seemed at times to exist both physically and imaginati vely be

tween us as a bond and a barrier at once However in a si t uation of .
,

which the ramifications were inevitably complex not to say a m ,

bi g u o us it would have been diffi cult to determine exactly what

,

acts were sadistic and or masochistic on whose side and why .

“
He worked for a few minutes using the large brush 1 have to ,
.

“ ”
obliterate everything he said Then tomorrow I can start out in , .

the right direction It may not look like progress but it i s

. .

“ “ ” ’
Besides I said i t s better to work a little more if for no other
,
”
reason than not to Stop with such a terrible impression .

“ ’ “
That s true he s ai d Everything s disappearing now I must
, .
’
.

be crazy even to try to do what I m trying to do Nobody el se i s ’

.

”
ai nting frontal portraits like this
p .

“ ’ ”
Haven t you ever done profiles ? I asked .

Yes One or t wo But a profile isn t half as diffi cult The center
. .
’
.

of it i s the ear and ears don t interest me When you look at a

,
’
.

”
person or think of how he looks i t s always full face
, ,
’
.

Before long some people a rrived to talk to him and we had to

stop I turned on the li ghts The po rtrait looked better The head
. . .

36 had come back more or less into line with the body but it w as ,
great to be aff ected by someone else s deli ght in a lovely after
'

“ ”
noon He sai d I m so nervous I could explode ! He kept rubbing
.
,
’

“ ”
hi s hands together Don t you feel cold ? he asked
’
. .

“ ” ”
No not at all I said It s a beautiful day
, , .
’
.

But he insisted that it w a s very cold and that he wo uld have to

turn on the electric heater in the Studio S uddenly he made several .

hideous grimaces and held his face in his hands Then he said quiet .

“ ”
ly You se e what a miserable creature I am ?
,
“ “ ” ”
Yes I said I se e And indeed miserable w a s what he did
,
. .
, ,

seem to be This I thought was the true Giacometti sitting alone

.
, , ,

at the back of a café oblivious to the admiration and recogni tion ,

of the world staring into a void from which no solace could come
, ,

tormented by the hopeless dichotomy of hi s ideal yet condemned

by that very hopelessness to struggle as long as he lived to try to
overcome it And what consolation was it that t h enewspapers of
.

many countries spoke of him that museums everywhere exhibited ,

his works that people he would never know knew and admired
,

him None None at all

. . .

Presently we walked back to the studio He plugged in the elec .

tric heater Since to me it was already quite warm I decided to

.
,

take o ff my undershi rt and began to do so .

“ ”
What are you doing ? he asked .

I thought it might be more amusing if I were to pose in the

nude for a change .

He was not amused Your head I Swork enough he grumbled .

, ,

without bothering about your body ’

“
When he sat down to start work he murmured , I ll never find ,
’

”
a way out And a little later nodding toward the canvas he said
.
, , ,

“ ”
Hell is right there .

“ ”
Where ? I asked On the ti p of my nose ? .

”
No It s your whole face
.
’
.

I laughed but he didn t ,

’
.

This ought to be forbidden, h e said after a time a s it i s among ,

”
the Jews .

He was referring I realized to the fact that they di sc o u nt e , ,

“
nance the representation of the human figure and I said But , ,

maybe that makes painting more difficult .

“ ” “ ’
No he said The most difficult thing to do well i s what s
, .

”
most familiar .

At one moment while he w as working hi s cigarette slipped , ,

from hi s fingers He moaned he whined he almost sobbed Then

.
, ,
.

“ ” ’
he picked it up I m becoming seni le he said with a sigh
.
,
.
 Not at all I protested though I knew he realized perfectly
, ,

well I didn t take him seriously And yet at times I wondere d to

’
.

what extent he hi mse lf might take seriously remarks which even

as he made them were intended to suggest a state of m ind that Wa s
’

very di ff er ent and far more complex .

“ ” ’
Don t sa y no out of charity he s aid It s nice of you though
’
,
.
, .

you and everybody else Besides you probably say to yourself .

, ,

‘
It doesn t matter since h e s going to croak soon anyw ay
’

,
’
.
’

“ ”
Don t talk nonsense I said
’
, .

“
I m no t I won t be able to go on much longer like this
’
.
’
.

”
I don t want to li sten to that ki nd of talk I said
’
, .

Then we remained silent for some time He worked steadily .

,

while I watched hi s movements and concentrated on trying to

remain motionless .

“ ’
I t s impo ssible to do what I m trying to do he said after a ’
,
“
wh ile No one else could do it Moreover no one else is even
. .
,
”
trying to do it .

Before long he said that he would have to rest for a few minutes .

“ ”
He took the canvas from the easel to study it It s coming along .
’
,

“
he said It s reached a po int now where in five minutes it could
.
’

”
go very far .

The head was narrower and longer than the day before with ,

more precisely defined feat ures But it was st i ll a little lopsided . .

He complained of feeling tired and cold He had had an attack .

of the flu j ust before going to London so I suggested that he lie ,

down and rest for a little while After an hour I went into hi s bed .

room He was in bed with all hi s clothes on reading T h e Sp y Wh o

.
,
’
Cam e i n fr om t h e C old In bed he felt fine he said but he wasn t .
, ,

sure he would feel like working again that day I waited another .

half an hour talking with Diego then went back to th e bedroom

, ,
.

Alberto w a s enj oying T h e Sp y but feared he m ight have a fever .

’
However he didn t want to take his temperature because he had
,
!
,
’
promised to go with Annette that evening to the gala s oi r e e at the
Opéra for the inauguration of Chagall s new ceiling If he had a ’
.

’
fever he wouldn t be able to go which would disappoint her I
, ,
.

insisted h e take his temperature all t h e same It was exactly

-
.

“ ”
No Opéra I said , .

“ “
Annette will be disappo inted he said I ll have to c all h e r ’ '

. .
,

“
When he had done that he undressed and got into bed The ,
.

” “ ”
p ortrait i s coming along he said I m not giving up ,
.
’
.

“ ”
Of course not I said , .

He mentioned that hi s dealer w as coming to the studio soon and 39

 that it would be necessary to make a selection of b ronzes paint '

ings and drawings for him Giacom etti was particularly con
,
.

cerned about what his dealer would think of the bronzes that had
“
been cast He said I only had them cast to see what they would
.
,

look like In bronze a thing looks so di ff erent It helps me in my

. .

”
work to be able to see things differently .

“ ”
Of course I said ,
.

You talk to me as though I were senile he protested irritably ,

.

” “
Not at all I said You don t expect me to d isagree with you
,
.
’

”
just to prove that I m paying attention do you ? ’
,

“ ” “
No no he murmured But I m angry to be sick It s so stu
, ,
.
’
.
’

P id .

After a time he became more cheerful laughed and recited ,

some bawdy poems that he knows by heart I telephoned the doc .

tor who promised to come to the studio later Annette so on ar

, ,

rived S he w as less disappointed not to go to the Opéra than con

.

“
cerned about Alberto As I prepared to leave he said Be sure to .
,

come around tomorrow anyway Maybe we can work This i s . .

”
forced labor .

“
We ll see I said ’
,
.

In the morni ng I learned that Giacometti was better that the fever ,

had gone but that probably he wouldn t feel much like working ’

that afternoon However as I had promised I went to the st udio.

, ,

about four 0 clock ’

.

He w as in be d Still reading T h e Spy Wh o Cam e m Fr om t h e ,

C old He felt fine he said and found staying in b ed and not work
.
, ,

ing so enj oyable that he was tempted never to get up again I .

stayed for a couple of hours We talked about a quantity of things .

,

ranging from Mallarm e w h o m h e thought an affected poet and a

'

detestable person to the opera which h e had once enj oyed but , ,

which he now found too complex a form to be aesthetically satis

f yi ng though he still felt a particular fondness for Fi d e li o We
,
.

didn t mention the portrait at all But as I wa s leaving he said that

’
.

we would certainly work the following day .

ARR I V ED at about three in the afterno on he was

W HEN I ,

asleep It was my knock on the bedroom door that wak .

ened him He looked very rested extraordinarily young .

, ,

boyish even I remarked on that He laughed and said that he felt

. .

very well .

40 We we nt into the studio where for a time he worked on the ,

bust from memory of Dieg o It had gradually come to replace the .

tall figure as h i s principal sculptural preoccupation .

Giacometti h a s a habit not only o f drawing on the newspapers -

or magazines which he always carries with him but also of s c ri b

bling o n them notes to himself which are reminders of what c o n
cerns him most at the moment and of what he must not and indeed ,

cannot forget For instance on the front page of Franc e Soi r for
,
.
,
-

“
Thursday S eptember 2 4 he wrote in Italian Everything fine if
, , ,

And then in a box were list ed the names Lord Caroline , ,

Diego Annette They were hi s models of the m oment though

,
.
,
’
Annette s portrait in progress had not then been worked on for
some weeks .

“
I finished that book he said a s he sa t down to begin work on ,

the painting For some t 1m e he talked about Th e Spy analyzing

.
,

the plot and pointing out what seemed to him to have been its con
t ra di c t o r and illogical d e t a i ls A ll of these arose from the natures
y J

and personalities of the characters not from the situation Ane c ,

.

dotes are less interesting by far to him than human nature of ,

which he i s a lucid and dispassionate j udge .

It wasn t long before he annou nced that the pic t ure was going
’ “

“ ”
very badly Things look bla ck my poor friend he murmured
.
, ,
.

And he went on to say a s so often before that the entire enterprise, ,

w as abominable i mpos sible absurd doomed He wanted to paint

, , ,
.

still lifes he sai d only sti ll lifes But a m oment later he added
,
.
,

“ ”
They would be j ust as difficult as portraits
. .

He w as working on the head doing it over and over and over

‘

painting a few strokes looking at me painting a few more strokes , ,

lo oking at me again puffing on a cigarette from time to time mur

'

, ,

muring exclamations of disgust and despair I sa t there immobile .

, ,

silent perspiring staring him in the eye a s he occasionally said

, , ,
“
Hey look here ! or Don t move ! o r Sh o w m e And at mo
“ “ ” ’ ” '

ments it seemed that the situation had become utterly unreal The .

portrait qua po rtrait no longer had any meaning Even as a paint .

ing it didn t seem to mean much What meant something what

’
.
,

alone existed with a life of i t s own w as his indefatigable i nt er m i ,

nable Struggle via the act of painting to express in visual terms a

perception of reality that had happened to coincide momentarily
with my head To achieve this w as of course i mpossible because
.
,

what i s essentially abstract can never be made concrete without

altering i t s essence .But he w a s committed h e wa s in fact con
'

, ,

d e m n e d to the attempt which at times seemed rather like the t ask ,

O f S isyphus And I w a s tempo rarily involved in that attempt But

. .

41
 sometimes I forgot the temporary nature of my involvement And .

then what was happening to us both through and because of the

painting became Strangely unreal yet more than real in a way , ,

since at the very root of the situation lay the nature of reality
itself Thus our presence and our relationship occasionally seemed
.

to proceed from and to partake of the absurd to be at once both , , ,

ridiculous and sublime .

A young man came to the door and asked Giacometti to auto

graph a book which he did very amiably ,
.

“
He worked on for a time then said There s still the entire body , ,
’

to be done But as soon as I have the neck in place the rest will
.

come of itself By tomorrow evening I ll have it One must strike

.
’
.

”
out boldly .

Later it appeared that the work was again g oing less well I .

’ “ ”
don t know how to do anything at all he said If only Cézanne , .

”
were here he would se t everything right with two brush strokes
,
.

“ ’ ” “
I m not so sure about that I said After all Cézanne had , .
,

plenty of trouble painting too He was always complaining bit , .

”
t e r l about it
y .

“ ”
True he murmured Even he had tr ouble
,
. .

The light in the studio gradually began to fade But he worked .

on It seemed to me that we d been alone there forever like pre

.
’

historic insects caught i n the j ewel glue of some extinct conifer .

“ ’ “ ” ”
I ve got you he said You can t escape me now I wondered
, .
’
.

exactly what he meant But it didn t matter Whatever he meant .

’
.
,

i t was true .

At last it had become so dark that we had to stop When he took .

the painting o ff the easel and put it under the light at the back of
“
the studio he seemed almost surprised Now we re get ting some
, .
’

“
where he said He w a s evidently very pleased You see ? The
, . .

space around the head h as become much more precise And the re .

lation of the body to the head i s stronger because the head itself ,

i s stronger It s not lopsided anymore He touched the painting

’
. .

in several places with h i s fingertip modifying a line here a shadow , ,

there and I remembered that Titian i s said to have finished his pic
,

tures more with h i s fi ng e rs than with his brushes For once Gia ‘

”
c o m e t t i seemed almost satisfied But not altogether Tomorrow . .
,
“
he said it will go even better
, .

“ “
Yes I said And that reminds me that we have something to
, .

talk over .

“
What ?
42 When am I going to leave ?
 Whenever you want to .

Yes But there s the painting to think of

.
’
.

”
It mustn t interfere with y our life he said
’
,
.

No But now that w e ve g 0ne so far it seems too bad not to go

.
’

further I don t mean you should fi nish it I know there s no ques

’ ’
’

. .

tion of that But I m sure you could go further and I don t want
.
’

,
’

”
to prevent that by going away .

“
One can always go further You ll have to leave when you .
’

”
have to that s all
,
’
.

S hall we say next week then ? Today is Friday S hall we say

“
.

next Wednesday ? That gives us four more sittings of three or

four hours each In four sittings we should be able to go far
. .
”

He nodded One s h ou ld be able to go far in one sitting Next

. .

Wednesday is all right then .

ANNE TTE AND A L B ERTO were in the bedroom where they ,

had just fini shed eating lunch a very unusual event and —
,

due only to Alberto s recent fever when I arrived the ’

—

x t day He was sitting on the bed s t udying the color r e ro d u c

.

p ,

tions in two large art books one of paintings by Jan van Eyck the , ,

’
other of Byzantine mosaics On the blank page opposite van Eyck s .

M an i n a R e d Tur ban he had made a detailed copy with his blue

ballpoint pen After a few minutes he closed the books with a bang
.

and suggested that the three of us go to the café for some coffee
before he and I started to work .

In the Street as we walked along he suddenly started to sing in a

loud raucous voice Coming from the O pposite direction were
,
.

two prim bourgeois ladies with flowered hats They stared at him
, .

in amazement and after we had passed turned r o u nd t o gaze after ,

u s with expressions of incredulity and indignation They them .

selves appeared to me such caricat ures of what they obviously

were that I shouted with laughter Annette and Alberto were also .

highly amused And in the ru e d A lési a after we had turned the

.
’

,
“
corner Alberto began to sing again I laughed Between your
,
. .

“ ”
laughing and my singing he said we re liable to be arrested for , ,
’

”
disturbing the peace Then we walked on a little way and he said .

“
Everything looks diff erent today Everything is more beautiful . .

“
In front of the café he stopped to gaze at t h e trees I ve never seen .
’

”
them like that before he murmured I nside the café when we ,
.
,

“
were seated at the table he said again I ve never seen the trees , ,
’

”
like that before .

Annette stayed with us only a short time drank her co ff ee then , , 43

 went o ff to do some errands After sh e had gone he began to draw .

on the fly leaf of a book he d had in hi s pocket It w a s a V iew O f the ’

.

café and it took shape quickly with nervous incisive st rokes of hi s ,

ballpo int pen which he hardly raised from the page as he drew
, ,

glancing up constantly at the scene before him When he had .

“
finished I sai d It s di fli cult for me to imagine how things must
,
’

appear to you .

“
That s exactly what I m trying to do he s aid to Show how
’ ’

, ,

things appear to me .

“
But what I asked is the relation between your vision the
, , ,

way thi ngs appear to you and the technique that you have at ,

your disposal to translate that vision into something which is

visible to others ?
“
That s the whole drama he said I don t have such a tech
’

, .
’

”
ni que .

“
I understand what you mean I said shaking my head That s , ,
.
’

relative to what you consider the absolute But you d o ha ve a tech .

”
nique after all ,
.

“
S o little When I was a young man I thought I could do any
.
,

thing And that feeling lasted until I w as about seventeen or eight

.
“

een Then I suddenly realized that I could do not h ing and I won
.
,

dered why I wanted to work to find out why That i s what s kept
. .
’

me working ever since moreover that desire to find out why I , ,

’
can t Simply reproduce what I see I started out with the techni que .

that w a s available at hand which was more or less the impression ,

i st technique and I worked with it until about 1 9 2 5 Then su d

,
.

d e nly whi le I w a s trying to paint my mother from life I found

, ,

that it w as impossible S o I had to start all over again from scratch .

,

searching And it seemed to me that I d made some progress a little

.
’
,

progress till I began to work with Yanai h ara That was about
, .

”
1 5 6 S ince then things have been going from bad to worse He
9 . .

sighed glanced at the drawing he d j ust done and closed the book
,
’

, .

“
We went back to the studio and at once started to work Four .

” “
more sittings he said That s plenty of time to open the door or
, .
’

to close it for good I n any c ase the picture will be yours If i t s .

,
.
’

bad I ll give it to y u with indiff erence If i t s good I ll give it to

’ ’ ’

”o
, .
,

you with pleasure

w
.

“
T hank you I said I mean I don t kno how to thank you
, .
,
’
.

’
I t s unnece ssary We ve worked on it together and I d rather
’ ’
.
,
”
you had it than a st ranger .

“
44 Well i t s true that I feel my part icipat ion h as been an active
,
’
 dream It is very very important to avoid all preconception to
.
, ,

try to see only what exi sts Cézanne discovered that i t s impossible .
’

to copy n ature You can t do it But one must try all the same try
‘

.
’
.
,

”
— like Cézanne to translate one s sensation
—
’
.

After working in silence for a while he began to moan and

“ ”
swear again It s abominable he said It s hopeles s
.
’
, .
’
.

By then I was becoming accustomed to such exclamations ,

though I certainly did not imagine his angui sh to be any the less
intense simply because I d grown used to it H o wever I was able ’
.
,

at the same time to thi nk of other things And I happened j ust then .

to be remembering the ladies in the stre et who had looked so aston

i s h e d at his singing I laughed . .

“
Do you think thi s is funny ? he demanded When I explained .

“ ’
why I d been laughing he said I d have made a better clown
’

, ,

than painter It would have been easier and funn1 er

. .

S oon we stopped for a rest I went into the telephone room to .

make notes When I returned from thi s clandestine acti vity Al

.
,

berto immediately stopped working on the bust of Diego a nd we

began again with the painting .

“ ” “
Merde ! he cried You don t look at all the way you di d be .
’

f or c f
’

“
But I am I said , .

”
I don t see it he insi sted Now what am I going to do ? But
’

, .

“
he worked on resolutely After a little while he said I m dest roy .
,
’

”
ing everything with great bravery And indeed from the way .
, ,

he appe ared to be painting I inferred that he was .

A Slong as things seemed to be going so badly anyway I thought ,

I m ight try to take advantage of the moment to procure a minor

satisfaction From the very beginning I had been bothered by the
.

presence in the painting of the tall stool that he had sketched in at

the left during the first sitting I d mentioned this once or twice .
’
.

Now seei ng that he was once more using the large brush I men
, ,

“
t i o n e d i t again He said All right I ll take out the Stool to please ’
.
, ,
”
you And he gave a few Strokes of his brush across that area of the
.

canvas The stool did not disappear completely but it became

.
,

less important It was not touched again

. .

Darkness gathered lit tle by li t tle in the studio At last I could .

“
barely make out the feat ures of hi s face He said I like work ing .
,
”
in the dark Finally though he did have to Stop
.
, ,
.

He was not pleased with that day s work The shadow beneath ’
.

the chin was too dark the highlights on the forehead too light and , ,

46 the space around the head was interlaced with gray lines which
 made it appear that my head was inside a small cage But all this .

i s necessary for tomorrow he insisted ,

.

“ ’
There s been some progress though I said hasn t there ?
’
, , ,

f
Oh yes There i s alw ays some pro g ress even when things are
i at their worst because then you don t have to do over again all the
.

’
,

i i g g anve t hlng s you ve already done ,

g .

AC OMETTI had a visitor when I arrived the following

GI

day It was almost five before he left But even then Al

. .

berto was in no hurry to begin work on the painting .

Instead he Started modeling the bust of Dieg o To get him to the .

easel after I had put everything in place I had to pull on the Sleeve
, ,

of his j acket .

“
I m very tired today h e said I was up ti ll five and then I
’

,
.
,

”
didn t sleep very well
’
.

“
Once having started to work he soon said I ve got to dest roy , ,
’

”
everything again .

“
That w a s to be foreseen I said ,
.

Not to this extent he said L ook at me ! Merde ! I m right

“
,
”
.
’

back where I was in 1 9 2 5 It S absolutely impossible to reproduce .

’

on a canvas what I see .

“ ”
Of course I said Which si mply brings us back again to the
,
.

'
”
fact that one cannot hope to copy nature .

“ ’
But that s the only thing worth doing he said It s the only
’
, .

l
t tlun
'

g I m intere sted in
’
.

He told me a little later that he had gone over all the drawings
in his po rtfolios and that hi s dealer was going to take a consider
a ble number o f them But he had not given him he said a drawing .
, ,

of me that he had d 0ne j ust before going to London because he ,

thought that maybe I d want it ’

.

“ “
Well I said of course I d like to have i t f but I can t take ’ ’
'

, ,

”
everythi ng Maybe too you d like to keep it for yourself
.
, ,
’
.

“ ’ “ ”
I couldn t care less ! he said Then he added Between now .
,

and Wednesday evening we ll se e I f the pa inting turns out well ’

.
,

o u lltake the painting and the drawing If it doesn t turn out well
’ ’

y .
,
’
you ll get nothing Because i t s T hursday that you re leaving .
’ ’
,
”
isn t it ?’

I didn t reply Since I realized pe rfectly well that h e knew it

’

,
-

w a s Wednesday .

S miling mi schievously he said It i s T hursday you re leaving , ,

’

”
isn t it ?’

“ ’
You re not suppo s ed to make the model laugh I said , .
47
 Then we both laughed .

Presently there was a knock at the door and he went to open it ,

.

Outside was a woman who asked in a very pronounced American

accent whether a painter named Haydon lived nearby He said he - .

didn t know Then the woman having observed the name on the
’
.
,

Studio door asked whether he happened to be t h e Giacometti He

,
.

replied that he was and she went on to say how much Sh e ad m ired ,

hi s work which she had seen in various American museums He

,
.

thanked her When he had returned to hi s easel and started work

.
“

“
aga in I said T h e Giacometti ! S o you d o know who you are ! You
, ,

know that you re famous and that people admi re your work ’
.

“
He smiled I m always sur pr1 se d when I realize that Strangers
.
’

”
have heard of me .

“ ’
It s not at all surprising After all your name is often in the .
,
”
newspapers .

“
Oh not so often ,
.

”
Yes it is ,
.

Not as often as General de Gaulle s ! he said smiling ’

,
.

But how do you feel about having become so famous and

”
h a v1 ng achieved so much ? I asked .

“
_
I feel different things at di fferent times I resisted the intrusion .

of success a ndfre c o g ni t i o n as long as I could But maybe the best

'

way to obtain success is to run away from it Anyway Since the .

,

Biennale it s been much harder to resist I ve refused a lot of ex hi bi

’
.
’

tions but one can t go on refusing forever That wouldn t make

,
’
.
’

”
any sense .

“
But doesn t all this force you to reali ze that you h av e achi eved
’

something no matter what you may think when the work i s going
”
badly ? I asked .

He Shook hi s head When I w a s a boy I felt that I could devour .

,

the world and accomplish anything That w a s when I w a s four .

teen But little by little I realized that that w as absurd By the t im e I

. .

w a s twent y—fi v e I no longer expected to ac hi eve anything s t upe n

'

dous And how ri g h t l w as ! Yet in the surrealist group I did have

.

some reputation as an avant garde sculptor Of the work of all -

.

those years I can say only that I did it because it was so easy The .

sculptures used to come to me complete in my mi nd Then the .

only problem w a s executing them and that was a mechanical mat

ter no more than that with wh ich Diego helpe d me But I was
, ,
.

expelled from the surrea list group because I wanted to work from
a live model That w a s a relief I hated the feeling of competi tion
. .
,

of one artist worki ng against another and even exploit ing ideas
 that were some t imes not originally his own I w as happy when I .

started to work in complete isolation I even regret those years .

now because then I was able to work for months and months on
'

the same t hing without interruption Now i t s no longer possible .

’
.

There are t oo many outside demands During those early years I .

earned my living by making obj ects lamps vases and such things
'

, , ,

for the decorator Jean Michel Frank Other artists did the same
,
-
.

thing and most of them seemed to think it was shameful in some

,

1 way But I never felt that I devoted a s much care to making a lamp
. .

a s I did to making a sculpture because I felt that if I could make a ,

lamp that w a s a rea lly good lamp that would help me with every ,

thing else And it did By making those obj ects I realized the limi
. .

”
t a t i o ns of some o f my earlier work -
.

“ “ ”
Maybe I s aid that s why your lamps are true obj ects of art
, ,
’

”
rather than merely lamps .

“ ”
Maybe .

Have you ever m ade a sculpture that w a s really abstract ? ”

Never with the exception of the big cube I did in

,
‘

and in
fact I considered that one as a head S o I ve never done anything .
’

that was really abstract .

’

“
Later I asked Do you ever think of your youth with nostalgia ?
,
“ “
No he replied It s impossible because my youth is now
,
.
’
,
.

S ometimes I used to think of 1t but now I never do except when ,

I m talking about it I should say that n0w i s my childhood be

’
.
,

’
cause I m j ust learning how to d o what I want to do
’
.

The work w a s app arently not going well however He w a s ,

.

once more pa nting out or over the head I remarked that I would
i , ,
.

be very curious on Tuesday to se e whether he Stopped work at a

particular moment when he might presumably feel that the paint ,
“ ”
i ng w a s at i t s best or whether he would work till the very last
,

minute of daylight .

“ ’
I ll work till the v e ry last m i nute he said Or no Maybe not , . . .

’ ”
We ll se e .

The light of that day had already begun to fade in t he studio .

He observed that during the past t wo weeks it had begun to get

“
dark per ceptibly earlier I said that I liked the long nig hts S o do . .

” “
I he ag reed But I like the short o nes even more I love goi ng to
, . .

’
bed when i t s already daylight and I almost always do except in , ,

the middle of the winter I like hearing the bir ds wake up in t h e .

morning There are blackbirds in the trees here near the studio
. .

They must always have been there but 1t S o ly ln the past t wo ’

n
years that I ve he ar d them T hat S St i ang e isn t it ? And it 5 only
’ ’
,

' ’ ’

49
.
,
 in the pa st two years that I ve come to enj oy the noises of aut o m o ’

biles too
,
.

“
Do you even enj oy the noises of the cars and trucks that pass
”
right under your bedroom window at S tampa ?
“ ”
I adore it .

Before long it w as almost dark I said You can t possibly see .

,
’

”
anythi ng now .

“ ”
Ye s I can he insisted I t s very good to work in the last light
’
.
, , ,

because then you can see clearly the things that catch the light
”
most .

At last however he Stopped I turned on the lights and we

, ,
.

Studied the pic t ure examining it almo st as though it were an obj ect ,

that we had j ust discovered and were anxious to identify The .

cage like e ff ect around the head had d i sa pe a re d but the face itself
—
,

appeared to me more blurred and vague than the day before Yet .

the total e ffect seemed nevertheless to be one of positive change .

He was pleased .

“
There s an openi ng for tomorrow he said
’

, .

A visitor arrived then and I left ,

.

W OR !
went badly almost from the outset the fol
T HE

lowing afternoon He announced that he was making .

everything disappear Fl have to make a little hole in .

nature he declared ,
.

“
And pass through it I said ,
.

t Yes I ve made a little hole but it s too small to pass through

‘
.
’

,
’
.

“
Then after working for a time in Silence he said It S curious
, , ,
’
.

Everything is shrinking It looks big enough but there s no more .

,
’

place for everything .

’
And a little later he said If someone else tried to do what I m ,
’ ”
doing he d have the same difficulties I m having
,
’
.

“ ” “ ’
But I asked is anyone else trying to do what you re trying
, ,
”
to do ?
“ ’ ’
I can t think of anyone And yet it seems Simple What I m . .

”
trying to do is j ust to reproduce on canvas or in clay what I se e .

“
S ure But the point i s that you see things in a diff erent way
.

from others because you see them exactly as they appear to you
,

”
and not at all a s others have already seen them .

“
It s true that people s e e thi ngs very much in terms of what
’

” “
others have seen he said It s simply a question of the originality , .
’

5 0 of a person s vision which is to see for example and rea lly to s e e

’

, , , ,
a lands c ape instead of seeing a Pissarro That s not as easy as it .
’

”
sounds either ,
.

The work continued to go badly He said It s more difficult “

.
,
’

”
than the first day We ll have to rest a little He took the painting
.
’
.

o ff the easel and Stood it at the back of the Studio .

It had never looked so well The head was no longer at all lop .

sided and the feat ures were vividly delineated and realized in
relation to each other Moreover it wasn t a bad likeness I was de .
,
’
.

li ghted and said so .

“
There s an opening he said Then he went o ff to make some
’

,
.
'

telephone calls .

A Ssoon as he came back ten minutes later we began work again ,

.

“ ”
He said I m demolishing everything
,
’
.

“ ”
What a dirty trick ! I exclaimed .

“ ’
He laughed You should talk ! Just when everything s begin
.

”
ning to go well you leave A n d why ? For no good reason
,
. .

“ “
The reason is good enough for me I said I have my life in , .

”
New York .

Alberto smiled almost Sheepi shly I was only j oking You ,

.

”
mustn t take me seriously
’
.

Before long he said that he was tired and hungry and wanted to
go to the café for something to eat I stood up and went behind .

him to look at the painting “

“ ”
Are you disappointed ? he asked
'

”
Not at all I said And I wasn t Though not perhaps as
,
.
’
.
, ,

intense and fully developed as half an hour before the picture , ,

both as a painting and as a po rtrait still appeared to me at its ,

best I felt elated The next day was to be the last Si t ting and
. .

although I knew that the picture could change radically for better
or for worse in a Short time this seemed very promising I had
—

,
.

”
never exp ected that he would in any conventional sense finish
the portrait My only concern was that on his own terms he should
.

“ ”
leave it or abandon it as Cézanne would have said in a condi
, , ,

t ion that would represent as nearly as possible the fullest realiza

tion of i t s innumerable metamorphoses Gone now was any trace .

of the depression I had at times experienced of the feeling that I ,

w a s in my own way as bereft of hope as he in his and that the po r ,

t rait had so mehow become for me a s well as for him the rock of
‘

Sisyphus .

On the way to the café he said The painting looks flat It ,

.

”
ought to be in depth .

5 1
 But is i s in depth I protested ,
.

“ ”
Not enough ! he exclaimed Then as we went along the ru e .
,
“
d A léSi a he l o oked up at the Sky which w a s bright and said I v e
’ ’

, , , ,
”
never seen the sk y that way before It s so high He went to buy .
’
.

the newspapers whi le I waited inside the café and when he came ,

“
back he said The painting is flat One must do somethi ng which
,
.

’
i s like a relief on the canvas even behind the canvas It isn t enough
,
.

”
that it should se e m to be in relief .

“ ”
But it can t really be in relief I obj ected
’
,
.

”
No And yet it must be
. .

S o once more we were confronted by the utter impossibili t y

of what Giacometti is attempting to do A semblance an illusion .
,

i s in any case obviously all that can be attained and he knows it

, , ,
.

But an illusion is not enough Thi s inadequacy be comes literally .

day by day I think less acceptable less tolerable almost in a

, , ,
—

physical sense even as he Strives to go on to go further There i s

—
,
.

always perhaps a possibili ty of going a little further not very far

, , ,

but a little further and in the realm of the absolute a litt le i s limit
,

less Ir i s this possibility I think that gives to Giacometti s work

.
, ,
’

such arresting intensit y an intensity that has increased with t1me

, .

But it may also be that it i s just this possibilit y which h a s made it

more and more d i fli c ult for him to produce work that seems con
“ ”
ve n t i o na ll finished This is appa rent more in the paintings than
y .

in the sculptures for a sculpture by i t s thr ee dimensional existence

,
-

inevitably compels accept ance more immediately than does a two

dimensional painting which is obliged to make a correspondingly
,

greater concession to the conventions of illusion ; And one of the

/
most rig i dly established of these convent ions has been that a re p
res e nt a t i o na l image however remote from actua l realit y must
, ,

nevertheless in i t s own terms appear complete and homogeneous .

Like so many other visual habits however and like so many , ,

conventions this at titude constitutes a limitat i on What is impor

,
.

tant is t h e acuit y of the artist s vision and the degree of realization

’

of that vision nothing more And Giacometti s visual acuity h as

,
.
’

not I believe been equaled Since Cézanne s Hi s ability to realize

, ,
’
.

that vision i s by definit ion unique but it i s also uni quely hi s own ,

and h a s attained a degree of obj ective accomplishment in k eeping

with the comparison to Cézann e Moreover this realization so me .
,

times unquestionably depends for i ts fullest eff ect upon the unfin
i s h e d appearance of an individual work It w as obvious even as .

52 long ago as Michelangelo that the n on fini t o quality of certain

 the most recent work he d produced The latest possible date for ’
.

delivering the painting happe ned to be that coming Friday O c ,

tober 2 Therefore Thursday w as in any case the last day it would

.
,

be possible to work on it I said I d certainly be glad to stay on for .

’

’
two extra days if he wished me to He replied that we d see about .

it the next day .

N ow I
S! P P O S E you re going to demolish everyt h ing ’
,

I said as we began to work .

”
Exactly ! he replied .

And that of course i s what he began to do He seemed at first

, ,
.

to be in an excellent humor laughing and j oking about the con ,

stant State of flux of my features But gradually inevitably his .

,
“
mood became more somber as the work progressed It stinks .
,
’ ” “ ”
what I m doing h e said Or maybe I shouldn t say that he
, .
’

“
added smiling at me Maybe it isn t polite to you I Should simply
,
.
’
.

say that i t s very bad But there s no question of my giving up

’
.
’

painting now not when things are going so badly or sculptu re

, , ,
”
either A S long as there s the slightest chance I ve got to go on
.
’
,
’
.

For some time he worked in silence gasping occasionally and ,

Shaking his head smoking cigarettes pai nting over and over again
, ,

the same part of the canvas looking at me constantly as he did so ,

.

“ ”
I m demolishing you with j oy he remarked after a while
’

,
.

“
An hour and a half or more passed Then he said We ll have .
,
’

to rest a little He Stood up and immediately began to work on

.

the bust of Diego .

I looked at the painting The head was in the midst of a t ra nsi .

tion and my disconnected features appeared to float vaguely in a

gray cloud .

“
The moment of truth has come I said ,
.

”
Why ? he asked .

We have to decide whether or not I m leaving tomorrow ’

.

”
I t s up to you
’
.

No It s up to you You re the painter after all

.
’
.
’

,
.

“ ”
But you re the one who s leaving he said I don t want to
’ ’
, .
’

”
influence you .

“ ’ ’
I ve told you I said that if you want me to I ll be happy to
, , ,
”
stay the two extra days .

“
Well if you put it that way he said of course I want you to
, , , .

”
Two more days could make all the diff erence .

S o I telephoned to change my airplane reservation Having done .

54 so I felt delighted and relieved Despite moments of fatigue the

,
.
,
 experience had become for me a more and more vital one as time
went on To h a ve put o ff the end of it made me for my own
'

.
,

reasons certainly a s happy as he could have been I told him this

,
.

when we Started work again He sa i d I m very glad too .

'

,
“ ’
,
.
”

“
He worked for a whil e then said I d give absolutely anything , ,
’

for someone else to paint you I d give everything I have and keep .
’

’
only enough so that I could end my days in an old pe ople s home .

”
I don t care about money anyway
’

,
.

“
I ve never known anyone so indi ff erent to m aterial things I
’
,

“ ”
said a nd to money in general
,
.

“
I spend a hell of a lot of it though he remarked , ,
.

But not on yourself .

Well I d be glad to give everything I ve got for someone else

,
’ ’

”
to paint your head .

“
You wouldn t have any trouble finding a taker for that offer
’
,

I said .

“
To paint your head j ust the way I want it he specified
’

.
,

In that case there d be no one ,

’
.

Ri ght .

Annette came in and talked to us The work had begun to go .

very badly Or so he said He moaned Stamped his foot exclaimed

. .
, , ,
“ ’ “ ” “ ”
I t s abominable ! or I m so nervous I could explode ! or I ’

do nt know how to do anything Both Annette and I tried to

’
.
” -

persuade hi m to relax a little or to rest but without success How ,

.

“
ever finally he said I don t even know how to hold the brush
, ,
’

anymore We ll have to St 0p .
’
.

I Stood up He took the painting from the easel and Stood it a s

.
,

usual under the light where we could st udy it from a distance It

, .

w a s superb It had never been nearly a s good I thought The head

.
,
.

Stood exactly in the axi s of the body which though still primarily , ,

a sketch had acquired a new tension and solidity The features

,
.

were vivid and finely realized and the likeness I thought was ex , , ,

c e lle nt thoug h idealized S o after all a s I had suspected it w as

, .
, , ,

indeed when the work might seem to him to be at i t s worst that to

t h eobj ective observer I t might Seem best I told him I thou g ht the .

ai nt i n had never been bet t er He agreed

k
’
p g . .

“
c

Then I w as suddenly overcome with regret at having changed

the date of my departure because I realized perfectly after sixteen , ,

sittings that without doubt he would pai nt over the head if he

,

were to work on the picture again And perhaps it would never .

afterward be as fi ne a s it w as at that moment In fact the chances .

,

seemed to me Slight that it would for he w as not concerned with , 55

 the painting as a single obj ective work to be appreciated a s such ,
.

That w a s m y concern alone He would naturally regard the pic .

ture almost as a by product so to speak of hi s endless struggle to

-
, ,

portray not merely an individual but reality .

“ ”
I m leaving tomorrow I said
’

,
.

”
The hell you are !
Well if you ruin the picture now I ll kill you I said
, ,
’
, .

“
He laughed I ll certainly do it all over again from nothing
.
’
.

This i s only the beginning But to have made a Start that s not .
,
’

”
bad .

Annette and Diego also agreed that the p a1 nt 1ng had never
before been better .

“
Tomorrow we ll se e said Alberto ’
, .

” “
Tomorrow I said you ll be walki ng a tightrope But I felt
, ,
’
.

that it was I in a way who would actually be on the tightrope ,

because having once seen how beautiful the pa inting could be I

, ,

felt desperately anxious that it should not ultimately remain less

s o And yet I was powerless to a ff ect i t s final S
. tate Or w a s I ? I .

began to wonder .

“ “
Oh ti ghtropes he said shrugging I ve got plenty of those
, , ,
.
’
.

AS I left he came out into the passageway and called after

“ ”
me Thank you thank you for everything
, ,
.

S! P P O S E there s no u se in my saying a thing I said

1
’
,

when we started work together the following afternoon .

“ ” “
About what ? he asked then added at once Oh about , , ,

”
leaving the picture as it is That Sout ! .
’

“ “ ”
All right I said go ahead and demoli sh 1t
, ,
.

He began to paint At the beginning he seemed very optimistic . .

“ ” “
He said It s really rolling along today And a li ttle later Now
,
’
.
,
’
I m d oing something that I ve never done before I have a very ’
. ,

’
large opening in front of me I t s the first t ime in my li fe th at I ve .
’

”
ever had such an opening .

Anyone who knows Giacometti at all well h a s certainly heard

him sa y that he h a s j ust then for the first ti me in h i s life come to
feel that he i s on the verge of actually achi eving something And .

no doubt that i s hi s sincere conviction at the moment But to a .

detached observer it may Seem that the particular piece of work

that provokes this reacti on i s not radically diff erent from those
which have preceded 1t Moreover it will I n all likeliho od not seem .
,

radically di ff erent from those that follow some of which will ,

56 certainly provoke the same reaction In short the reaction i s .

,
far more an expressi on of his total creative attitude than of his
momentary relation to any single work in progress He might .

deny this but I believe that it i s true Probably a s a matter of fact

,
.
, ,

it would be V ital for him t o deny it because in the earnest sincerity '

of the Spe cific reaction dwells the decisive strength of all the
others past and to come If Giacometti cannot feel that something
, .

ex ists truly for the first time then it will not re ally exist for him at ,

all From th is almost childlike and obsessive response to the nature

.

and the appearance of reality Springs true originality of vision .

“
I t s possible for me now to undo the whole thi ng very quick
’

“ ”
ly he said That s good
’
. .
,
“ ”
Why ? I asked .

’
Because I m beginning to know what it s all about
’
.

”
What ?
A head he replied simply ,

Before long of course the work began to go less well He

, , .

moaned gasped and at last uttered a loud scream of exasperation

, , .

“ ’ ”
I m not afraid I said , .

”
Of what ? he asked .

Of you Because you re roari ng like a wild ani m al

.
’
.

”“ ”
Yes ! he cried And I m a wild animal that s sure of i t s prey !
’ ’
.

S ome time passed S uddenly there w as a knock at the door He . .

opened it and outside stood a small man who quickly explained

that he w a s a representative of the Indonesian Embassy in Paris ,

that Giacometti s work w a s well known and admired in Indonesia

’

and that the Foreign Mini ster of that country who w as coming ,

to Paris th ree weeks later requested the privilege of being per ,

m i tt e d to come and call on Giacometti in hi s st udio He replied .

that he would be happy to receive the diplomat When he returned

to hi s stool and started to work again he said Diego was outside , , ,

too He w as very impressed that the Minist er wanted to come and

.

”
s e e me .

“ ”
And you ? I inqui r ed .

“ ’
Oh I m impressed too he admitt ed smiling broadly
, , , , .

“
Presently he announced I m making everything disappear ,
’

again .

“
That s noS n
’

’
u r ri s e I said and perhaps I i voluntarily n o con
p , , ,

sc i o u sl a dded a Sigh
y ,
.

“
Are you angry ? he asked .

“ ”
O f course not ! I exclaimed Why Should I be ? .

“
Because I m r uining everyth ing ’
.
”

“ ’ ”
Don t be ridiculous .
57
 But I wouldn t want to lose your friendship ’
.

No w you re really talking nonsense I said

’

,
”
.

“
He Shrugged Well at least I have the courage not to be pru
.
,

dent I dare to give that one final b r ush Stroke which abolishes
.

”
everythi ng .

“
But why do you have to do it ?
Because there s no other way out ’
.

I know It w as a st upid question wasn t it ?

.
,
’

’
He didn t reply He worked on for a time Then he said It s . .
,
’

a good th ing for me to have a deadline I m working against like ’

this It adds tension But we ll have to rest for a little wh ile now
. .
’
.

The paint isn t g oing onto the canvas at all well The soup s too
’
.
’

thick too much turpentine I Shouldn t let so much paint a c c um u

,
.
’

late o n the canvas this way It makes the work harder From now . .

on I ll scrape it o ff with a palette knife But for your picture it s

’
.
’

too late to do that The surface is so shiny I can t see a thing We .

’
.

can go to the café for half an hour The paint isn t going on at all .
’
.

filt s the revenge of the brush on the painter who doesn t know how
f
‘ ’ ’
I

tt o use it
”
.

“
Well I said standing up the brush Still needs the painter all
, , ,

the same .

“
The painter needs the brush even more he remarked ,
.

The painting was very gray uncer tain dislocated a grave di s , , ,

appointment compared to its appearance an hour and a half before .

But I knew that that was only temporary in any case and that , ,

once again from the constant flux of layer upon layer of p aint it
could emerge admirable and stark But would it ?
’ ’
On the way to the café he said There s an opening That s sure ,
. .

’
This is the first ti me in my life I ve had such an opening It s the ’
.

’
very first time You se e you ve done me a tremendous favor I ve
.
,
’
.

”
never had an opening li ke this before .

In the café we talked little read the papers and drank co ff ee , ,

.

Half an hour later we were back at work in the Studio And at once .

things seemed to go very badly He began to gasp and murmur .

“ ’
insults to hi mself ! You don t know how to do anyt h ing You re ’
.

”
a damn fool ! It Sabominable ! etc I said nothing When the work
’
. .

w a s s o obviously diffi cult and p ainful it seemed that to si t Still and ,

keep qui e t w a s the least I co uld do and the most Despite the ve ry ,
.

apparent anguish of it he kept worki ng till the light began to go ,

.

Then he said we d have to stop ’

.

We inspected the results of the day s wor k f I had inferred from ’

hi s constant groaning that the pictur e might look quite good And .
I w a s right Though certainly not as clear and intense as it had been
.

the day before Still it was no longer the amorphous thing we had
,

left when we went to the café .

It s come back since a n hou r ago I said

’
.
,

” “
I t s begin ni ng he admitted There s an o pe ning It s not bad
’ ’ ’
, . . .

S omething can be done But it wobbles It s uneven . .

’
.
’

“ ”
We ll s e t it right tomorrow I said
’
,
.

”
Oh tomorrow tomorrow he murmured Who knows ?
, , , .

OC T OB ER 1 was the eighteenth day on which I posed and ,

it w a s the last And this time I really believed that it .

would be the last I felt elated and alarmed If the work . .

went badly that afternoon there would b e no changing it after-

ward The picture would remain forever a s it was I couldn t help

. .
’

feeling afraid that my permanent image so to Speak might turn , ,

o ut to be a gray and inconclusive shape But I had thought of a .

way in which I might perhaps influence the final State of it , ,

.

Before he began to work that day he stared at the pa inting and

“ ’ ”
s aid It s terrifying The whole thing is lopsided again
, . .

However with a sigh he started to work g r1m ac 1ng as he did so

, , ,

constantly looking from the canvas to me and then back at the

canvas a g aI n .

“
I don t mind telling you th at I m demolishing everything he
’ ’
,

soon declared .

“
Of course I said , .

After working for a time and when everything was apparently ,

at its worst he suddenly uttered a loud cry let his arms fall and
, , ,

“
said I m gi vin g up painting for good It s horrible I m right back
,
’
.
’
.
’

where I was in
I said nothi ng A minute two minutes passed then b e began to
.
, ,

“
paint again He said When I was forced to give up working from
.
,

nature in 1 9 2 5 I began to make obj ects— like the P a la c e in New

,

York— which had primarily an emotional reality But they were .

j ust stopgaps All during the surrealist period I was haunted by the
.

realizati on that sooner or later I would have to go back to nature '

.

And that w as terrifying because I kne w at the same time that it ,

”
w a s impossible .

The work continued and seemed to go no better which I how , ,

“ ”
ever took as a promising Sign One might imagine he said that
, .
, ,
’
in order to make a painting i t s Simply a que stion of placing one
detail next to another But that s not it That s not it at all It s a .
’
.
’
.
’

”
question of creating a complete enti t y all at once .
59
 IS that,
asked why Cézanne said that it was impossible to
I ,

add a Single brush Stroke to a painting without changing the whole

”
thing ?
“
Exactly .

A s so often he presently said Let s have a look at you young

’
, , ,
”
man .

“ ’
I m not really a young man I said but I m a man who s st ill , ,
’ ’

”
young .

’
He shrugged Youth he said doesn t necessarily mean much .
, ,
.

I m very young whereas all my contemporaries in S tampa are

’
,

old men because they ve accepted old age Their lives are already
,
’
.

in the past But mine i s st ill in the future I t s only now that I can
. .
’

’
envisage the possibilit y of trying to start on my life s work But .

if one could ever really begin if one could have m a d e a Start then , ,

i t would be unnecessary to go any further because the end is

'

”
implicit in the realization of the beginning .
“
And after a little while he said It s not a bad thing at all this ,
’

pressure of having to deliver the painting tomorrow for the Car

n e i e exhibition It makes me much more audacious I m willing
’

g . .

to risk everyt hing And I m glad to send the very last thing I ve .
’ ’

worked on So people can see precisely the point I ve reached

.
-
’
.

’
There ll be no cheating If the picture i s no good that s just too
’
.
,

bad At least I m being honest And for a sculpture I m going to

.
’
.
’

send a plaster cast of that bust of Diego that I ve been working ’

on from memory I worked on it last night and Dieg o made the .

,

cast this morning .

A few minutes later Dieg o brought the fresh white cast of the
bust into the studio and s et it down on the table behind Alberto ,

“ ”
who turned to look at it murmuring What an odd thing ! And , ,

he suggested to Diego that it would look better if the base were

rectangular rather than uneven and roughly oval a s it was Diego ,
.

took the bust away ag a in Alberto began to paint once more but .
,

after a few minutes he t urned round to where the bust had been ,

“ ’
as though to re examine it and exclaimed Oh it s gone ! I -
, , ,

”
thought it was Still there but i t s gone ! Although I remi nded him ,
’

“
that Diego had taken it away he said Ye s but I thought it w as , , ,

there I looked and suddenly I saw emptiness I saw the empti ness
.
,
. .

”
I t s the first time in my life that that s happened to me
’ ’
.

“
Later he said You look like an Egyp t ian sculpture but more
, ,

”
handsome .

“ ”
Why more handsome ? I asked Because I m alive ? .
’
 being motivated in my attitude toward art in general and toward
this painting in particular by other criteria and other obj ectives ,

felt considerably less fatalistic I had made up my mind that I .

would do what I could to St0 p his work when the positive element ,

s o to Speak of the creative impulse was at its peak and j ust before
,

the negative element began to act S ince I could not see the picture .
,

however I would have to guess when that crucial moment had

,

come S o I observed with scrupulous care which brushes and

.

colors he was using .

He groaned he sighed he made all the self deprecating and

, ,
-

exasperated remarks to which I had become so accustomed At .

“
length he said Are you angry ? ,
“ ” “
No I said of course not How could I be ?
, ,
.

”
Because I m ruining everything ’
.

”
Don t be absurd’
.

”
But it s true ’
.

’
That s only your opinion I said The artist isn t supposed to , .
’

be able to j udge his own work Anyway you can t possibly se e it .

,
’

in the same way I do and it may be beautiful to me but ru ined to

you at the same time .

“ ’ ”
We ll se e , he said .

He had begun to work with one of the fine brushes using gray ,

i s h and white paint working on the head only Then after a time
,
.

he began to use the large brush with white painting the area ,

around the head and shoulders and finally part of the face too ,
.

This led me infer that little by little he was pai nting out what he
had previ ously done undoing it as he said Presently he took one , ,
.

of the fine brushes again and began to paint with black con e en ,

t ra t i n
g on the head He was constructing it all over again
. from
nothing and for the hundredth time at least I knew that when he
,
.

“
had reworked the entire head he would finish it by adding high
lights and defining the contours with white At that point he .

would normally have begun to u se the other of the fine brushes

with the mixt ure of grayish and white pigments which would i n ,

d i c a t e that he w a s yet again Starting to undo what he had done It .

w as exactly at this point that I meant to try to Stop him .

Although he believed in the active participation of the model in

hi s work I m not sure that he would have liked the idea of a ny
’
,

thi ng quite so arbitrary and calculated as my plan Consequent ly I .

took care that he Should not notice how closely I was watching
every move he made But I observed him with painstaki ng atten .

“ ’
62 t ion and when the moment I had foreseen came I said
,
I m very , ,
 ”
tired Do you mind if I have a little rest ? It w a s the first time in all
.

the sittings that I had made such a request and I didn t think he ,
’

would refuse .

“
Wait a minute he Said He painted a few more strokes using ,
.
,
“
only white pigment then said All right You can stand up I j ust ,
. . .

”
had to do the eyes .

I Stood up went behind him and looked at the painting It was

, ,
.

superb The awkward vagueness of forty fi ve minutes before had

.
-

completely disappeared Never before had the pic t ure looked j ust .

“
as i t di d then and it had never looked be t ter I said I t looks fine
‘

. .
-
, ,
.

Why not leave it a s it i s now ? ”

“ ’ ”
He sighed It s too bad he said We could have gone so much
.
, .

farther There s an opening There s a real opening It s the first

.
’
.
’
.
’

”
“

time in my life that I ve had an opening like this ’

.

He took the painting from the easel and stood it at the back of
the Studio then went out into the passageway to look at it from a
,

distance Well he Said we ve gone far We could have gone

.
“ “
,
”
,
’
.

further Still but we have gone far It s only the beginning of what
,
.
’

it could be But that s something anyway

.
’
,
.

“ ”
I thi nk i t s admirable I said ’

,
.

That s another matter he replied

’
, .

Diego brought in the bust with i t s new base whi ch Alberto ,

li ked but found a little too wide He took a knife and hacked away .

the damp plaster at either side till he w as satisfied The bust was .

one of the more exaggerated and distorted of the innumerable ver

sions of Diego s head that Alberto h as done To compare with it
’
.
,

he brought out two other busts which he had recently sculpted

from life .

“ ”
Which do you prefer he asked me
? .

”
The last I replied without hesitation the o n e from mem
, ,
”
ory .

“ ”
Why ? he asked .

Because it makes the other two though they were done from ,
”
life look dead
, .

“ ’ ’ ’
Exactly It s strange isn t it ? It s because in the busts from life
.
,
”
everything i s false .

“
But why should that be ?
“
Because the element of illusion in the busts from life i s not
great enough It s the same thing that makes a Cycladic head so
.
’

much more alive and convincing than a Roman portrait bust To .

make a head really lifelike i s impo ssible and the more you strugg le ,

to make it lifelike the less like life it becom es But Since a work of .
63
 art i s an illusion anyway if you heighten the illusory quali ty then , ,

you come closer to the e ff ect of life .

“ ”
But how do you do that ? I asked .

That s the whole drama he answered

’

,
.

We went to the café In the Street he said There h as been after . .

,

all a sli ght progress There s a very sm a ll openi ng In two or three

, .
’
.

weeks I ll have an idea if there s any h 0pe any chance of going on

’ ’

,
.

Two or three weeks maybe less I have the portrait of Car oline to , .

do then there s the one of Annette And I want t o do some draw

,
’
.

ings too I never have time for drawings anymore Drawing is the
,
. .

basis for everything though I d like to do so me still lifes But we ,

.
’
.

did make a little progress didn t we ? ,

’

” “ ”
Yes I said We went quite far
, . .

In the café however he quickly seemed to forget that there had

, ,

been any progress at all He gasped and pounded his fist on the .

table which caused the pe ople sitting nearby to stare a fact of

, ,

whi ch he remained unaware He shook his head and exclaimed .

,

“ ”
Nothing is the way I want it to be nothing at all ,
.

“ ”
But there has been progress I insisted , .

” “
No no he said Maybe i n two or three weeks I ll work f o t
, , . .
’

two or three weeks more and then if there s no opening at all per ’

”
haps I ll have to give up for good
’
.

’
He made several drawings on the cover of a magazine he d
brought with him and ate the usual hard boiled eggs and barn with -
,

two glasses o f Beauj olais and two large cups of coff ee Then we
‘

.
“

returned to the studio He said that he wanted to come with me the .

next day to the airport so we made arrangements to meet It was ,

.

strange and sad to realize that this was the last day
, ,
.
‘

The following afternoon at about t wo thirty I went to the Studio —

in a taxi Alberto was there but the painting had already been
.
,

taken away still wet to be packed for shipment along with the
, , ,

bust .

“
It s gone he said
’
, .

“
I m gone I said and I m leaving It seems very Strange
’
, ,
’
.
,

”
doesn t it ? ’

“‘
I t Stoo bad We d only Started We could have gone on for a
’ ’
. .

”
long time .

“
I know I said It s very Strange to be here in this place where
, .
’

I ve really lived more than anywhere else in the past weeks and to
’

”
64 know that i t s for the last time ’
.
 ’
You won t be gone so long he said And when you come ,

back we ll begin again We ll go further

’
.
’
.

“ ”
Ye s I said
,
.

We went out and got in to the tax1 It w as a gray cold day .

, .

At the airport when my ba ggage had been checked ln he sug

, ,

gested that we go to the bar and have a coffee He had not seen the .

new terminal building and was very interested in it He enj oyed .

observing the travelers of different nationalities But he could not .

for very long if at all forget the urgent things he had to do

, ,
.

During the next ten days he said he would work on another bust , ,

of Diego from memory and on the portrait of Caroline And pe r .

haps he added he would have time to do a few drawings He

, ,
.

wanted to do some drawings .

“ “
At the end of the month he said I ll go to S tampa And , ,
’
.

there I can do some drawings I can do Still lifes and some figures . .

The woman who keeps house for me there will pose S he h as .

”
posed before I want to do some drawings
. .

A S he Spoke he gazed across the crowded w aiting room of the

ai rport terminal On the surface of the table his index finger as
.
,

though it were a pencil moved back and forth across the shiny ,

formica with the insistent gesture of drawing His eyes no longer .

appeared to focus upon any particular obj ect but rather to se e ,

beyond the present place and time Through his finger as it moved .
,

hi s ent i re being seemed to flow from him into the ideal void where
reali t y untouched and unknown is always waiting to be d i sc o v
, ,

ered by reality .

Then it w a s t ime for us to say goodby I tried yet again to thank .

him for everything But he refused to listen We went together t o

. .

the to p of the stairway and there Shook hands twice .

“ ’ ”
You ll come back next year he said ,
.

Yes .

We made progress together We ll do it again won t we ? .

’

,
’

Ye s I hope so
,
.

You ll come back and we ll start all over again And you ll
’ ’
.
’

”
write often .

We looked each other in the eyes a s we had so often done —

during the past weeks but di fferently Then he turned and Start
—
.

ed down the stairway I went in the other dire ction toward the
.
,

dep artu re gates But we both looked back and waved twice
.
,
.

“
I wrote to him When he answered he said I ve been in S tampa
.
, ,
’
 for a week now and I m worki ng a lot I m Sleeping a lot too I
,
’
.
’
,
.

continue with the same things Always those heads ! I cert ai nly
.

hope I can do yours agai n someday I enj oyed very much all the
.

”
time when you were posing for me .

S o did I
.

66
NOTE

Though I have known Giacometti for a long time and have writ
ten several articles about him i t had never occurred to me before
,

to make detailed notes describing our meet ings And I t would never .

have occurred to me this time either except for the fact that all
summer I had been writing long detai led letters to a friend in New
York about what I w a s doing And because Giacometti i s of great
.

interest to both of us I had related my meetings with him in par

,

t i c ular detail From S tampa I had in August writ ten a letter of

.

fort y pages and from Paris t h ree equally a s long before I began
, ,

to pose When the sitti ngs began however it w a s obvious that

.
, ,

letters couldn t keep pace with the rhythm of what w a s happening

’

and that I would be reduced to the -expedient of notes I mention .

thi s only in order to emphasize that even before the day of the first
Sitting I had formed the habit of pay ing scrupulous attention to
what Giacometti said in order to remember it and write it down
,

later And from the beginning I felt that notes relating to the par
.

t i c u la r c 1rc u m st a n c e s surrounding the creation of a par t icular

work of art mi ght later be used to write j ust such a text as this one .

Most of these notes were written in the evenings immediately

following t h e afternoons du ring which I had posed But many of .

them were made on the spot in a pocket notebook whenever I had

an opportunity to write without being observed by Giacomet ti
himself He fo und me at it only once when he retur ned sooner
.
,

than I had expected from talking on the telephone When he saw .

“ ”
me writing he asked What are you doing ?
, ,
“ ”
Just making a note I replied and that seemed to satisfy him
, ,
.

The so mewhat surreptitious character of my note taking w a s -

not motivated by a fear that he would disapprove of what I w a s

doing In fact I think he will be very c u ri O u S and perhaps sur
.
, ,

prised to learn what the experience of posing for hi m can be like

,
.

But I felt that it might inhibit the spontaneity of hi s work and of

our talk if he knew that I intended to describe it all in writing .

Moreover I did not want hi m to be able to feel in any way that I

,
’
thought of him a s a Specimen under observation I didn t And . . 67
 yet somehow I did To me Alberto i s of course first of all a friend
.
, ,

for whom I feel great aff ection and esteem But he i s also a great .

artis t It i s sometimes difficult to take account of both men at the

.

same tim e However they bo t h exist simultaneously and I have

.
,

tried here as much a s possible to do justice to both .

Needless to say there are many remarks and references which

,

for the sake of discretion I have had to delete If the account .

seems at ti mes uneven it i s in part for this reason

,
.

After the first Sitting when I realized that the portrait was to
,

exi st in more than one state it occurred to me that a photographic

,

record of i t s metamorphoses might in addition to my notes prove , _ ,

interesting S o I left my old camera at the studio and every after

.

noon before the work began I would take the painting out into
the passageway and photograph it Giacometti considered this .
-

“ ’
activity with apparent indi ff erence But one day he said It s not .
,

”
worthwhi le to photograph that picture every day .

“ ” “
Now that I ve Started I replied I m going to keep it up
’
, ,
’
.

He did not protest further But unfort unately I am at be st a

.
,

poor amateur photographer and mo st of the photographs did not

turn out very well .

A S for the wr1 tten portrait it s a paltry thing compared to the

’

real person But Giacometti i s after all the first to understand

.
, ,

that a po rtrait can achieve only a semblance of reality Therefore .

,

I hope that he will consider this one with indulgence And I ho pe .

that others may see in it a small part of what makes h i m such a

remarkable man and such a supreme artist To se e even so littl e .

will be to se e very much .

68