Sunday Evening Reflection – With Alberto Giacometti

Posted byRebecca BuddPosted inAlberto Giacometti, LadyBudd, Surrealism, Vancouver Art GalleryTags:, ,

“It is impossible to do a thing the way I see it because the closer I get the more differently I see.” Alberto Giacometti

Vancouver Art Gallery is my “go-to” place for creative inspiration. Last year, I recorded my walk from the Vancouver Seawall by Cambie Bridge to the Art Galley located in Vancouver Centre. I wanted to document my visit to an extraordinary exhibition: Alberto Giacometti – a line through time.

Alberto Giacometti is considered one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century, which was dramatically evidenced by this extraordinary exhibition. Influenced by the Cubism, Surrealism and Expressionism movements, his work was a search into the human condition.

“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.” Alberto Giacometti

“Once the object has been constructed, I have a tendency to discover in it, transformed and displaced, images, impressions, facts which have deeply moved me.” Alberto Giacometti

https://vimeo.com/369687443

Please join me on my walk to the Vancouver Art Gallery. For more photos check out my SmugMug portfolio link: Alberto Giacometti

Published by Rebecca Budd

Blogger, Visual Storyteller, Podcaster, Traveler and Life-long Learner

23 thoughts on “Sunday Evening Reflection – With Alberto Giacometti”

    1. Vancouver Art Gallery is closed for the foreseeable future, so I am glad that I was able to look back at photos and remember this extraordinary exhibition through photography. Thank you for stopping by, especially during this very busy time for professors. Simon Fraser University and UBC have gone on-line. We live in very interesting times.

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      2. I was thinking of this quote by Anais Nin especially these past days: “In chaos, there is fertility.” This is the time to be our most creative for we will be living in extraordinary circumstances in the coming months!! Please take care of yourself! 🤗🤗🤗

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      3. I’ve been focusing on writing poetry for the last week. I’m finding it helps because focusing on lines and individual word choice takes so much concentration. You take care of yourself as well, Rebecca..

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  3. We saw a wonderful and comprehensive exhibit of his work at the Guggenheim in New York in June of 2018.

    Sent from my iPhone

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    1. That must have been a wonderful experience for you. It was a profound moment for me as I watched the video of Alberto Giacometti work. What intensity, focus and determination. Thank you so much for stopping by…

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  4. I became acquainted with Giacometti’s work through reading and studying existentialist writers, in particular Simone de Beauvoir. She and Sartre were good friends with Alberto and his wife, Annette. Giacometti was compassionate and like a big brother to her. I’ve always found his sculptures rather a bleak but necessary reflection of his and our own times. Giacometti’s mission to “charge every particle of matter with life” is one which you seem to naturally perceive in nearly all your encounters with art. I appreciate this.

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    1. I did not know that Simone, Sartre, Alberto and Annette were good friends, but I am not surprised. The way and life of an artist is not for the faint of heart, for they are the ones who see what is unseen and feel the emotional span of the human condition. This is why I believe that we MUST support creative endeavour in our community and within ourselves. When we do, we embrace empathy, hope and resilience – redemption. I have read a few of his quotes that bring out this thought: “I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality ….to protect myself.” & “The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.” Hugs!!

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  5. A treasure to say the least, and a source of ultra memorable experiences, in this magnificent sculptor artist, that I discovered in depth in the early 2000’s when living in Vence and Grasse, France, just a short distance from Saint Paul de Vence where Alberto Giaocometti is on permanent exhibition in the museum of La Fondation Maeght de (St-Paul-de-Vence) and here is their internet site ,well worth a peek…
    https://www.fondation-maeght.com/en/
    Alas… one of the places I miss, since having left France in 2010.
    Great choice Rebecca!

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    1. What a wonderful link! Thank you, Jean-Jacques. This is the first time I had ever heard of Alberto Giacometti. And now I found that he had a brother, Diego and a father, Giovanni, who were artists. Can you imagine their conversations around a dinner table. Ah, Jean-Jacques, I can only imagine how much you miss Vence and Grasse. Life gives us so many wonderful memories. One of my favourite quotes is: “We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.” Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon. I liked this quote so much that I read the book, which was a profound insight into living boldly, courageously. I love our conversations!

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      1. By the way, my admiration of Giacometti does not dismiss the bleak aspect of his sculptures, as Mary Jo so correctly suggests, though as the saying goes, birds of a feather stick together, ergo Alberto’s friendship with Sartre and Beauvoir whose lives and chosen roads were mush of the time lived in the like shades of Giacometti’s sculpted interpretations.
        This said takes nothing away from these three luminaries…
        Worthy subject and equally so of the prompted response…!
        Thanks again Rebecca, and too Mary Jo for your insight.

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  7. Fabulous! I went to Smug Mug. Wow, so many great shots. Then I went to Vimeo. I liked!!!
    I was introduced to the works of Giacometti when I was 19. I was living with a sculptor, at the time. We lived in Vancouver. I lived there for 8 years. That Art Gallery, that you said will be replaced, is a wonderful place.
    He took me there to see an art show on Realism. Yes, there were many great works. However, there was 1 painting that I kept returning to. In the end I just stood in front of it, mesmerized. It was “Horse and Train” by Alex Coleville. At closing time, someone came to me and said “you’ll have to leave, the gallery is closing!”
    I must have been standing there at least 1 hour, I think more.
    To this day, it remains my favourite painting, ever!
    Thank you, Rebecca!
    HUGS!

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    1. I found it! I found it!!! I had goosebumps seeing this painting on a monitor. I can only imagine what it was like to see it in the “real” https://aci-iac.ca/art-books/alex-colville/key-works/horse-and-train. I am finding these days to be a creative time of exploration. I have found that my condo can be a coffee shop, tea salon, meditation sanctuary, exercise room, theatre, music hall….. HUGS are coming back your way, swiftly and with great enthusiasm!

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      1. Art does enthuse! I’m thrilled you adore the painting. It really is hypnotizing! If I had 1 wish to own 1 piece of famous art,, this is it!
        Hugs!

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