Page 15 - Studio International - February 1966

Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966

a personal reminiscence by Robin Campbell

Giacometti came to London last July to advise on the on two or three unfinished plasters he brought with him.
installation of the Arts Council retrospective exhibition He spent a good deal of his time in the warehouse and
of his work at the Tate. He had made a short visit in the was always available to be consulted on the installation
previous autumn to look at the rooms where it was to be going on in the galleries upstairs. He also made a
held. At first he told David Sylvester and myself that he series of drawings of his hotel room and one of the
would rather leave the whole installation to us, but after street outside from the balcony. Giacometti's feelings
some persuasion, he began to produce some quite towards seeing his own work in the exhibition rooms
definite ideas about the scope and arrangement of the were curiously mixed. Some days he would walk about
show. There was some discussion, for example, about stamping his feet and swearing : nothing was any good
whether we should use the huge high South Sculpture at all. Next day he might be in a more cheerful frame of
Hall, which is often considered a difficult space to fill mind; a few things weren't so bad as all that, but still
satisfactorily. Giacometti quickly made up his mind to he had 'never realized a head'. The exhibition closed at
have a go at it and wanted it to be the first room the the end of August and Giacometti returned to London for
visitor entered. In the end he promised to come and the last time. He told us it was the best exhibition he had
help us two weeks before the show opened. He was ever had and he was pleased that it had been a success.
very businesslike over the choice of works which he Giacometti went to the exhibitions of Henry Moore and
made with David Sylvester and conscientiously did Francis Bacon which opened while he was here. I
everything he said he would do such as looking out remember he said : 'Compared with Francis Bacon's my
old plasters at his foundry and even remaking in plaster paintings look as if they had been done by an old
a sculpture of c. 1930-31, the Suspended Ball. which spinster'. He was not much in the mood for museums;
we could not otherwise have shown. he went to the National Gallery, Sir John Soane's
Giacometti seemed happy to be in London again Museum which he liked enormously—particularly the
when he returned in July. He took a strong liking to his Hogarths ; when he came out he said he saw Hogarth
hotel in Caxton Street, which has an extraordinary faces everywhere in the street—and we spent several
horseshoe staircase, and where his suite of rooms was hours together in the British Museum. Here he wanted
immensely luxurious in comparison with his austere to see again the little ivory statuette of an Egyptian
studio and bedroom in Paris. Several times he said, only king from Abydos c. 3000 BC, but it wasn't on view and
half joking it seemed to me, that he would be perfectly we looked at some Egyptian paintings which he found
happy to settle in London and work here. He had a marvellously real and life-like. He was excited most of
number of old friends in London and enjoyed seeing all by a tall T'ang tomb figure of a woman in the King
them in small groups and talking with them for hours. Edward VII Gallery. He said he found this a supreme
He and his companions were always the last to leave masterpiece and he spent at least half an hour walking
any restaurant, surrounded by a crowd of hovering round it, away from it and coming back to it again. The
waiters longing to go home. He did not like large parties T'ang figure led him to say that more and more he pre-
and was particularly uneasy if he thought a large group ferred to anything else the impersonal and objective
of people was being collected together in his honour. quality in early art: he had less and less liking for the
Possibly his feelings were a little ambivalent in this; kind of art where the artist put his own feelings and
it seemed to me that in some corner of his complicated attitudes into what he was doing.
Pottery Tomb-figure of a Lady nature he would have been disappointed if no one had At lunch afterwards in a coffee bar (it was about half
Engraved and painted offered to make a fuss of him. past three and too late for a restaurant) he made me,
Chinese, T'ang Dynasty
(A.D. 618-906) An area was provided for him in the warehouse of the as he spoke no English, tell the girl who brought our
Height 44 1/2 in. Tate and he worked there, surrounded by the empty food how pretty he thought her. 'One living girl like that
British Museum, from the
q
Eumorfopoulos Collection packing cases in which his sculptures came to London, is worth more than anything in any museum'.