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Lot Essay
“If the gaze, that is life, is the main thing,” Giacometti declared, “then the head becomes the main thing, without a doubt” (quoted in R. Hohl, Giacometti: A Biography in Pictures, Ostfidern-Ruit, 1998, p. 146). The gaze in Annette X, the ultimate version in a series of ten heads that Giacometti modeled of his wife Annette between 1962 and 1965, is mesmerizing, with the wide-open, otherworldly eyes of the Byzantine icons the artist admired and drew in his sketchbooks. Completed only months before Giacometti’s death in early 1966, Annette X is the last sculpture that he made of his long-time muse, all the more moving for the insightful sensitivity and sympathetic characterization he brought to her expression, which he varied in this sequence from one head to the next.
These late modeled images of Annette are among the finest that Giacometti created after 1950, following his decision to dedicate himself, in his sculpture and painting, to the representation of a few intimates, Annette and his brother Diego most frequently among them. He had “chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study,” Yves Bonnefoy explained. “He instinctively realized that his object transcended all artistic signs and representations, since it was no less than life itself” (op. cit., 1991, p. 369).
The famously powerful heads and busts of the 1950s are those of Diego, who best suited Giacometti’s need to assert a decisive, heroically masculine presence, into which the artist moreover projected his own unrelenting struggle with self-doubt and the specter of failure, the test he set for himself as the validation of his art. And so it was again during 1963-1964, when he modeled the pairs of Chiavenna and New York busts of Diego, in which the artist appeared to “borrow another face to experience the anguish of what will be his own death” (ibid., p. 519).
While Giacometti painted and drew Annette on an almost daily basis during the 1950s, in grueling sittings that lasted hours at a time, and her features are recognizable in the small heads of standing figures, she had been only once before 1960 the subject of a modeled head. The first of the late Annette busts is subtitled Venise (sold, Christie’s New York, 12 November 2015, lot 29C). It was shown at the 1962 Biennale di Venezia, in which Giacometti was awarded the state prize for sculpture.
In subsequent versions Giacometti narrowed the width of Annette’s shoulders and bust, as he did in the male heads of Diego he was also modeling during this period (see sale, Christie’s New York, 12 November 2015, lot 20C). “The neck itself, with sudden stateliness,” Bonnefoy observed, “possesses that look of slender grace combined with strength which is so moving in real life” (ibid., p. 510).
Giacometti formed Annette’s features in clay with the same clarity and precision that he imparted to her appearance in concurrent paintings and drawings. With her hair pulled back, her fortyish face still youthfully taut and slim, Giacometti appears to have rediscovered in this experience of depicting Annette the young woman he had known nearly twenty years earlier, who in the interim had sacrificed much of herself to live in the presence of a great artist.
In recent years Annette had endured Giacometti’s infatuation with the young prostitute Caroline, who modeled regularly for the artist. “Annette was at this time voicing her frustrations, she was the protest that forced him to ask himself questions about his way of living, about the effects of those habits on her, about the way he had undoubtedly behaved badly towards her,” Bonnefoy explained. “And his guilty conscience, of course, provoked heated denials from him...he also felt distress, compassion and remorse. Hence the solicitude in these busts, this recognition granted, which above all is primarily a victory over himself” (ibid., p. 514).
These late modeled images of Annette are among the finest that Giacometti created after 1950, following his decision to dedicate himself, in his sculpture and painting, to the representation of a few intimates, Annette and his brother Diego most frequently among them. He had “chosen the existence of individuals, the here and now as the chief object of his new and future study,” Yves Bonnefoy explained. “He instinctively realized that his object transcended all artistic signs and representations, since it was no less than life itself” (op. cit., 1991, p. 369).
The famously powerful heads and busts of the 1950s are those of Diego, who best suited Giacometti’s need to assert a decisive, heroically masculine presence, into which the artist moreover projected his own unrelenting struggle with self-doubt and the specter of failure, the test he set for himself as the validation of his art. And so it was again during 1963-1964, when he modeled the pairs of Chiavenna and New York busts of Diego, in which the artist appeared to “borrow another face to experience the anguish of what will be his own death” (ibid., p. 519).
While Giacometti painted and drew Annette on an almost daily basis during the 1950s, in grueling sittings that lasted hours at a time, and her features are recognizable in the small heads of standing figures, she had been only once before 1960 the subject of a modeled head. The first of the late Annette busts is subtitled Venise (sold, Christie’s New York, 12 November 2015, lot 29C). It was shown at the 1962 Biennale di Venezia, in which Giacometti was awarded the state prize for sculpture.
In subsequent versions Giacometti narrowed the width of Annette’s shoulders and bust, as he did in the male heads of Diego he was also modeling during this period (see sale, Christie’s New York, 12 November 2015, lot 20C). “The neck itself, with sudden stateliness,” Bonnefoy observed, “possesses that look of slender grace combined with strength which is so moving in real life” (ibid., p. 510).
Giacometti formed Annette’s features in clay with the same clarity and precision that he imparted to her appearance in concurrent paintings and drawings. With her hair pulled back, her fortyish face still youthfully taut and slim, Giacometti appears to have rediscovered in this experience of depicting Annette the young woman he had known nearly twenty years earlier, who in the interim had sacrificed much of herself to live in the presence of a great artist.
In recent years Annette had endured Giacometti’s infatuation with the young prostitute Caroline, who modeled regularly for the artist. “Annette was at this time voicing her frustrations, she was the protest that forced him to ask himself questions about his way of living, about the effects of those habits on her, about the way he had undoubtedly behaved badly towards her,” Bonnefoy explained. “And his guilty conscience, of course, provoked heated denials from him...he also felt distress, compassion and remorse. Hence the solicitude in these busts, this recognition granted, which above all is primarily a victory over himself” (ibid., p. 514).