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Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, and the Man

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Laurie Wilson (Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, NYU Medical Center, New York Center) has written the definitive biography of the skilled and talented artist Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, And The Man. Tracing Giacometti's roots from his imaginative childhood the traumas in his early life, to surviving the hardships of world wars, and the effects of his life experiences on the nature, theme, and interplay of his art, Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic, And The Man offers a excellent wealth of documented insights into the creation and message behind one man's great art. Alberto Giacometti is a meticulous, scholarly, seminal body of work which is especially recommended for academic library collections.

This biographical work is an exquisite study of the artist and of the vital necessity of his work to himself and to us, his audience. Wilson traces his life with a sensitivity that matches its history of loss and trauma while weaving it into an emotionally attuned connection to his work. The effect is an indelibly affecting portrait of this quintessential 20th century artist. This portrayal blends the best traditions of the psychoanalytic method of examining a life with appreciation of the artist's work on aesthetic and art historical grounds. The author brings to it a richly textured language, which avoids the possible pitfalls of formulaic interpreting, and instead brings to life the artist's personal and artistic existence. This feels particularly satisfying because it echoes Giacometti's own accomplishment: a rendering of human fragility and yet transcending it, and helping us transcend it through art.

I have been doing extensive research on Giacometti, and this is one of the worst books I have come across. The author clearly has done a good deal of research, and this book may be good for you if you can weed out her ridiculous leaps of logic. She seems almost obsessed with demonstrating his sexual deviancy, at times in excrutiating ways. Besides the absurd psychoanalytic portrait she portrays (which is probably the basis for her contrived leaps in logic), the writing is pompous and pretentiously self assured. Here are some gems:

"Head of a Man on a Rod is usually discussed in terms of the terror Giacometti felt when he saw the Dutchman die...but the cavernously open mouth of the work may also convey unconscious homoerotic longings to be orally penetrated."

"After the failure of Giacometti's much publicized attempt to develop a mutually satisfying loving relationship with a woman...he split all womankind into two. Women could either be idealized, untouchable figures with whom he could have intellectual exchanges on the model of his mother; or they could be subordinates who he could dominate..."

"Giacometti's uneasiness with touching could also help explain his artistic preferences...Giacometti had not been well held as an infant or young boy, and it might have been too painful to see hands holding children with loving gestures"

The author is an 'art historian and psychoanalyst.' That should make you suspicious immediately. Wilson ignores what Giacometti said about his work and his life and posits absurd Freudian mumbo-jumbo to explain this complex man of genius. For example, Giacometti told biographer James Lord that he did not have homosexual desires. Indeed, Lord (an openly gay man himself)found no evidence whatsoever that Giacometti was not hetrosexual. But Wilson manufactures absurd reasons to insist that he was, in line with Freudian doctrine: Freudians insist, of course, that someone like Giacometti (or you or me) does not really know himself -- only the analyst can uncover the unconscious drives behind our every thought and move. What is amazing is not that a small group of psychoanalysts survives, but that the Viennese quack's nonsense is believed at all today.

As another reviewer pointed out, Wilson's leaps of logic (illogic, really) make her case -- and her book -- ridiculous. There are fine books on Giacometti out there -- Lord's biography is a good starting point -- read those instead.