Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was born on this day in 1910 in Borgonovo, now part of the Swiss municipality of Stampa, near the Italian border. His father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a painter. Alberto attended the School of Fine Arts in Geneva. In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Auguste Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Balthus.

Between 1936 to 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the model's gaze, followed by a unique artistic phase in which his statues became stretched out; their limbs elongated. Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife." After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. Giacometti said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a woman.

His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated, are severely attenuated, and are the result of continuous reworking. Subjects were frequently revisited: one of his favorite models was his younger brother Diego Giacometti.

While the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast."

Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly devoid of meaning and empty. "All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces... So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."

Steven Meisel used an Alberto Giacometti as an accesory in the fall 2000 versace campaign, which was later exhibited as "Four Days in LA: The Versace Pictures" at White Cube Gallery in London .

Steven Meisel Untitled II , 2000C-type print,48 x 63 in.

Glamour in the Gallery

by Pernilla Holmes

"There's a glamour to it, too -- a sick glamour, but a glamour," says photographer Steven Meisel. He's discussing "Four Days in L.A.," his advertising campaign for Versace's Fall 2000 collection. A year later, these photographs were presented not as advertising but as high art, blown up to mural-size and hung on the walls of London's most avant-garde art gallery, the White Cube II, in an exhibition that garnered lots of fawning press attention, including a cover story in Art and Auction magazine.

In the high-gloss photos, nearly identical supermodels pose in palatial L.A. homes. Primped and preened within an inch of their lives, dripping in gems and gold, they are surrounded by orderly opulence from Old Master paintings to hyper-groomed poodles. In a magazine, they make a sharp contrast to the overused youth-obsessed vision that characterizes women's fashon.

Needless to say, these photos were commissioned to sell clothes and are, whatever their artistry, commercial advertisements. Yet the prints are selling quickly. With 15 photos in all, each in an edition of nine, priced at £12,000-£15,000 each, we're looking at a total value of around £2 million.

White Cube's owner, Jay Jopling, has been a key figure in the marketing of young British artists such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, who've since become celebrities in the same kind of fashion magazines that have christened Meisel as the genius of his profession. Jopling's decision to show "Four Days in L.A." as an art exhibition was fairly simple. A preferred Versace customer; he received the catalogue and was struck by its artistry and contacted Meisel's agent.

Meisel made his Versace photos over four days in two L.A. mansions. The models pose in interiors that demonstrate success of the most recognisable sort -- wealth. In the catalogue essay, this untouchable sumptuousness is compared to Italian Mannerist portraits by Bronzino and Pontormo.

At the same time, Meisel has given his subjects a shellacked and frightening emptiness. Their well-adorned conformity with their lavish surroundings makes them just another hieratic sign among the tapestries and objets d'art. In the hermetic fashion world, Meisel's photos are being cited for re-introducing the grown-up woman into a realm dominated by images of youth. But it is a mannered adulthood all the same, the return of The Valley of the Dolls and The Stepford Wives.

In terms of zeitgeist, Meisel clearly knows which buttons to push. "Four Days in L.A." reflects an approach that has become commonplace in fashion as well as art these days -- subverting ideals with a nihilistic attitude, which by extension makes the items they advertise seem "cool." Versace would not risk mocking its well-heeled customers were it not au courant to do so.
At present, Meisel's success proves that artistic irony is simply good advertising. And that in today's art world, commerce can be important as an esthetic component.