Alberto Giacometti

Product Description

Alberto Giacometti's attenuated figures of the human form are among the most significant artistic images of the 20th century. Sartre, Breton, & Winnicott are just some of the great thinkers who have drawn upon the graceful, harrowing work of Giacometti, which has continued to resonate with artists, writers, & audiences. In this book, Timothy Mathews explores the themes of fragility, trauma, space, & relationality in Giacometti's art & the texts that respond or refer to them: the novels of W.G. Sebald, Samuel Beckett & Cees Nooteboom, & the theories of Bertolt Brecht, which recasts the iconic L' Homme qui marche as Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. During his lifelong quest to represent the human form, & to locate the humanity at the heart of conflicting conceptions of modernity, Giacometti returned to the key notions of depth & flatness, memory & attachment, through his sculptures & writings. Both a critical study of Giacometti's life & work, & an investigation of their affective power, this book asks what encounters with Giacometti's pieces can tell us about the history of our own time, & our ways of looking; about the nature of human attachment, & the humility of relating to art.