Curator's Column: Joachim Pissarro on Alberto Giacometti/ Yves Klein: In Search of the Absolute
The exhibition presently on view at Gagosian Gallery, Grosvenor Hill brings together two giant heads of post-war art in Europe. These two artists- one predominantly a sculptor the other predominantly a painter; both engage interactively in a constant dialogue between painting and sculpture. Both artists lived within a square mile of each in Saint-Germain the trendy post-war meeting point of the intellectual, philosophical, artistic avant-garde. Within this context, Giacometti and Klein both appeared as beacons of this rich and fermenting scene- both of them frequenting the same cafes, the same friends, on the left bank of Paris. This exhibition brings together these two creators whose creative imaginations crossed over in many different and surprising ways. This present exhibition and its voluminous catalogue explore this silent dialogue between those two major figures of Post War Art in Europe- which in some eerie ways, powerfully resonate with us today.
Setting these two artists in dialogue has taken us two years of solid research. For all the contrasts between them, these two the figureheads of the post-war era, created veins of art that carried deep resonances and connections between them: this becomes increasingly clear as you look at the cluster of works brought together in this exhibition.
The exhibition’s title, In Search of the Absolute is a concise nod to both of these artists. Giacometti’s first solo show in New York was held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in 1948 and the accompanying catalogue contained a text by Jean-Paul Sartre entitled, The Quest for the Absolute, which contextualised Giacometti’s work by writing in admiration of his ‘forever beginning anew’ and ‘meditating between nothingness and being’. This endorsement, by Sartre, of Giacometti’s work - having the ability to realize, in sculptural form, an active, subjective presence of man in the world - was announcing a strong link with Klein’s plastic search through similar forms of creative and spiritual distillation. Klein enforces human will on colour, inventing his own (International Klein Blue) and experimenting with ways to best show the power and gravitas of intense pigments. The abstract freedom of the Anthropometries works underline the human element – literally imprinting both the transience and permanence of a human body on the surface of his work. The writing of Sartre, and our subsequent allusion to it in the title of the exhibition pull these two artists together on the same imaginary path.
Giacometti and Klein worked within a mile of each other in Paris, both grappling with the cultural inheritance of France and the daunting task of reinventing a culture after the utter devastation of World War II. What strikes me in particular is the uncanny visual correspondences between the two artists’s figurative works in spite of the two being thought of so differently; Giacometti, an unparalleled master in the late 1950’s and the younger, but no less intense, Klein a quasi-conceptual prophet of a new-age.
It is exciting to see the visual analogies, and visual dialogues emerge between Klein’s anthropometry works with the reductions and repetitions of Giacometti’s Femme de Venise (1958) for example. Beyond that, however, what I find fascinating is the comparison of two very vivid but divergent representations of similar conceptual ideas. Klein is probably most famous for reducing his palette to one colour, International Klein Blue. Giacometti is famous for his emaciated, abbreviated figures, with bodies reduced to their graceful minimum. Particular features are absent; it is humanity, remote and unmasked in its purest form. Both artists, to the end, remain haunted by their interests in what Klein calls the “immateriel.”
Small and intimate discoveries have held a special place to me in the process of working on this show. The strongest physical evidence we have of the fact Giacometti was aware of the presence of the young Klein in Paris is piece of newspaper on which Giacometti made studies for a portrait of his friend, the Japanese philosopher Isaku Yanaihara. On the newspaper that he used is a review of an exhibition of Klein’s work. This wonderful biographical scrap will be included in the exhibition along with a finished portrait of Yanaihara, by Giacometti- bringing the dialogue live for us, between these two artists.
Joachim Pissarro
In Search of the Absolute runs from April 27 - June 11, 2016 at the Gagosian Gallery 20 Grosvenor Hill
W1K 3QD
