Dr. Ulf Süster

New view of Alberto Giacometti

Hans-Joachim Müller, renowned artist, led the interview with Dr. med. Ulf Coaster, Curator of Fondation Beyeler, about the great summer exhibition Giacometti.

There were great Giacometti exhibitions in recent years - the retrospective in the Kunsthaus Zurich, Giacometti, the Egyptian in Berlin, Giacometti and Cézanne in Louisiana. What can you still show from Giacometti, which was not possible yet?

Giacometti plays a very special role in the collection of fondation. Ernst Beyeler knew the artist, he has initiated the Giacometti Foundation, and with him we have discussed the plan of an exhibition years ago. The idea was from the beginning to show the work of the sculptor and painter in the environment of his artistic family. That too was already. Only sick earlier attempts to make sure that you have to be able to exit Diego, Alberto, Giovanni and Augusto equivalent. Just remember quickly, if you are busy with the works that no one can really keep up compared to the central figure Alberto and you do not like the Brother Diego if you put it on a level with Alberto. What has always fascinated me to Alberto Giacometti, that is his idea to be the center of a system, as he has formulated it in his late urban text »Le Rêve, Le Sphinx et la Mort de T.«, a midpoint that all Obtain events around him. I think that this is a very important key to understanding his work. That's why I suggested that we have the exhibition around Alberto - as the EGO Center in the best sense - and concentrate within the family history, especially on the relationship Albertos to his father Giovanni. That does not mean that the brother Diego does not do, but so that the differences become clear. The focus is very clear at Alberto. He shows him as a highly gifted child, which also dominated his family in a certain way. And we show him in the midst of the people who were important to him and without whom he could not exist. First of all, the father, to whom he had a very close relationship, tighter than the mother.

But not exactly the artistic weight differences in comparison with the Father?

The father is a very interesting artist who somehow failed the problem of modernity when thinking of the arbitrariness of his late mountain landscapes. But just that should be of great importance for the son, which is always reflected on the problem of failure and the experience of failure.

How was the relationship between father and son and son and father? Could the figurative theme Albertos also describe as a kind of emancipation of the father's landscape painting, as an attempt to emerge from the shadow of the father and to assert himself independently against him?

I do not know if the development was really directed against the father. Exactly, it has been the opposite that the father has shown the son areas in which he could unfold. For example, when he bought him Plastic and Alberto started to model, and automatically came to the figure. Also, the father Giovanni has never been a landscape painter. There is about a self-portrait of the father, where he paints as a bust in a frame. You can certainly not say that Alberto has taken this picture-in-picture theme directly, but certainly have been such problems of the picturesque reality presentation, he has discussed with his father. But other questions such as the ground distribution in the pictures, the relationship of foreground and background, the spatiality, the size ratios in the room, which has played a role in the confrontation of both artists. If you see how the father painted a slope with goats, then you can also see where the son derives his near-and-distance or big and small topic. I think it's not so much in the relationship between son and father.

How agree were son and father in their relationship to modern age? Not for nothing, the father had tested his modern affiliation on the landscape because the example of Cézanne had shown him that the figure is not so readily declining. Only the son has discovered then how modern it may be the figure subject.

That's true, but also the question is to what extent Alberto was a modern one. He never completed the step into abstraction, all aware. On the other hand, its serial and series formations, this never-end-want and may, are quite the conceptual basic idea of ​​modernity. That makes his work so much for our time so interesting.

The painter Giacometti usually acts some brittle compared to the almost popular work of the sculptor. What are the weightings in your exhibition?

Purely numerically, we will show more sculptures as pictures. But I find that this strict separation between painting and sculpture does not really make sense. Giacometti has understood painting and sculpture very similarly. This condense and push through, the physical effort to see the pictures is also the way the sculptures have emerged. That Alberto as a sculptor basically comes from painting, that's hard to deny. If we think of the roughened surfaces of late sculptures, to the refusal of solid outline lines, to the meant movement intentions, then you can already describe that as a "picturesque" technique. And wrong is not to recognize the distant influence of the father here. That's why the painter and the sculptor should be able to be experienced equally in the exhibition.

Once again to the father Giovanni Giacometti: How attentive did he pursue the development of his son?

From the letters he wrote to Alberto, one knows that he not only granted his son, but recognized the great talent and has noticed abilities he missed with himself. He certainly did not understand everything the son did, and do not want to understand. But he has pursued his development with great curiosity. In Alberto he saw his own dream realized: I wanted to conquer Paris, I did not succeed, but you will succeed. The father was a reluctant sponsor of the son, which also recognized the son. He was probably aware that he would go beyond the Father. There is also a conflict even in the whole traditional family-art history, when Alberto began to draw his characters and drag his characters smaller and drought, and the father said, like you see, and he got to answer, I draw, like me It see.

How would the father react well if he who died in 1933 had seen the surrealistic world of his son?

He has seen the beginnings yet. But he did not comment on it, when Alberto acquainted, he could no longer represent the reality as she has always been portrayed, he had to avoid the reality of his emotional world. For the father that was probably incomprehensible. And I also think that the decrease in the father's creative power is related to that he himself came across insurmountable limits. In Paris, Alberto took him to the cinema. Later he wrote that he wanted to paint kinematographic landscapes now. Whatever he imagined. You can see how the experience of modernity, which was not possible in the mountainll, which could not give him the son in Paris, barely detachable problems.

Has the father collected the son?

The early works, which are in the Giacometti Foundation in Zurich, almost all come from the possession of the parents. It certainly has been that way that many early works by Alberto have simply remained in the house of the parents in Stampa. If the father has collected you, you can hard to say. But the other way around it was: Alberto has collected his father and just not the typical segantinesque Giovanni Giacomettis. This is an interesting aspect that will become clear only in comparison. But there are still some questions that have not been answered by the great Giacometti exhibitions of recent years. It's not just about recalling the factory. I think our exhibition will give the Giacometti reception a powerful thrust.

Can you already reveal something from the construction of the exhibition?

The concept of our exhibition met with much encouragement, and we got all the important loans. After an entrance with selected works from the father's work, Alberto Giacometti will have a big appearance. Next to it and around him there are smaller cabinets - for the furniture sculptures of Diego for example. The whole thing will be much more open this time, and the visitor to the fondation can experience the house completely new. That's our goal.

31.03.2009