Stones and trees
Claudia Iddan
The Swiss painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti introduced a new perspective to the world of sculpture with his incomparable style. Several art critics consider his sculptures are the result of the aftermath of the war, of the existential crisis it created. The last period of his art reveals through the interweaving of his writings, notes and sculptures, the constant iteration of a trace that has become a body. The bodily effects of the language of a speaking being can manifest not only on his own body but also on the body of his artistic creation, here thin and stylized human bodies, almost erased by their lengthening. The figures become a flat, rough and skeletal surface through which he creates a singular conception of space. Giacometti said: “Any sculpture which starts from space as existing is false, there is only the illusion of space.”[1] This idea of illusion, of inability to describe and limit space, echoes what Jacques Lacan tells us about the fact that space is part of the real. Through these body-traces, the sculptor tries to circumscribe bodily space. This question is of considerable importance if we take into account what the sculptor recounts in one of his texts: as a child, he perceived only the objects that gave him pleasure, in particular stones and trees. He specifically mentions his encounter with a monolith opening at its base on a cave he considered a friend. Furthermore, he had found in the depths of it, a huge black stone that he had felt as “a living being, hostile and threatening” that he could only flee despite his desire to approach it. This experience had remained an intimate secret. In his account he adds that at the same time, he tried several times to dig a hole in the snow and put a bag in that hot, dark place. He would have liked to spend the whole winter there, alone and locked up. A sort of spatial Fort-Da, that encircles body writing, is established between attraction and flight in the face of threat. Its secret takes the form of stones and trees under the human silhouette.
These silhouettes are therefore the representation of trees and stones of his childhood consolidated by his writings. They bear the mark of an unforgettable encounter and reveal in-body the bone of their secret.
Translated by Peggy Papada
References
[[1] Giacometti, A., Ecrits, Hermann, Editeurs des sciences et des arts, 2001, p. 200.