Bianca continued to pose, and Alberto to have difficulty. The bust didn’t satisfy him. He couldn’t finish it. It is curious and intriguing, this difficulty with the bust of Bianca. Nothing like it had occurred before. Till now he had been able to complete without difficulty whatever he began. Busts of Diego and Bruno, of his mother, Simon Bérard, and Alda had all been finished as simply and pleasurably as could be. Then something happened. The difficulty had materialized in the form of a sculpture, and it was in terms of sculpture that Alberto felt he must overcome it. He could easily have gone on making drawings and paintings. They gave no trouble. It was his need to do satisfactorily what it seemed that he could not do at all which determined the character of his resolve. This may in time have been affected, too, by the fate of the sculpture which caused it.
In the bust at which he had worked for so long and with such dissatisfaction, Bianca was represented life-size, braids of hair looped over her ears. Unlike Alda, she was not smiling. Her expression reflected her dislike of posing, of the artist, and of his work. One day this dislike grew to such an extreme that she knocked the sculpture from its stand onto the floor, where it smashed to pieces.
There was an angry scene. Alberto had a fierce temper. Bianca’s mother came running. The recalcitrant model got a slap for her pains. Alberto was not placated. The damage was irreparable. Gathering up the pieces, he threw them into the trash bin and vowed that he would never again make a portrait of his ungrateful cousin. But he bore no grudge. Maybe Bianca’s readiness to mutilate his work made him even more amorous.
Throughout the rest of his life, Alberto repeatedly spoke of
the difficulty he had experienced with the bust of Bianca, explaining again and again that it had been, as it were, his “expulsion from Paradise” and therefore the true beginning of his lifework. “Before that, I believed I saw things very clearly, I had a sort of intimacy with the whole, with the universe. Then suddenly it became alien. You are yourself, and the universe is beyond, which is altogether incomprehensible.”
However, in the accounts of this experience there was another of those factual inaccuracies which point to the truth. He always stated that it was he who had destroyed his work because he was dissatisfied with it. He never said that the bust had been the portrait of a girl with whom he was in love or that it was she who had destroyed it. The difficulty he encountered had destroyed something, and he had to assume responsibility for it. There were times in later years when Giacometti seemed to be of two minds about the precise date and nature of the experience which precipitated his critical sense of difficulty and determined the course of his lifework. Not that there is any question about the events which took place in Rome in the spring of 1921. But he did encounter a similar difficulty four years later in somewhat similar but decisively different circumstances, and he seemed upon occasion to consider the two interchangeable in their character and effect.
Alberto continued to work at the Circolo Artistico, to go to concerts, the theater, and museums. But he didn’t forget home. After more than seven months away, he looked forward with impatience to returning for the summer. Besides, Rome had become oppressively hot.
Bianca had been enrolled at a boarding school in Switzerland, near Zurich. So that she would not have to travel so far alone, it was arranged that Alberto should accompany her to Maloja, where his parents were installed for the summer, and after spending a night there she could take the train from Saint Moritz. As they set out together, he whispered to her, “It’s like our wedding trip.” She did not think of it in that way and was quick to say so.
There was some delay en route. By the time they reached the frontier, it had been closed till the next morning. They were obliged to go to a hotel for the night. After dinner in the hotel
dining room, they went into the garden, where Alberto pushed her back and forth in a swing till it began to grow dark. Then she went to her room, took off her dress, and in her shift sat down to write a letter to her mother. After a time, Alberto knocked on the door. Bianca was reluctant to open, but he insisted. Finally she opened the door a crack and said, “What do you want?”
“I want to draw your feet,” he said.
Thinking the request ridiculous, Bianca did not hesitate to say so. Alberto, however, was again insistent. Realizing that it might be easier to acquiesce than resist, Bianca reluctantly consented, protesting all the while. But Alberto was in earnest. He came in with his paper and pencil and made drawings of her feet until midnight. Then he contentedly returned to his own room.
In the morning the two continued their journey by the post coach, proceeding directly to Saint Moritz, where Bianca was to catch the train after lunch. During the meal Alberto was despondent. For dessert, both ordered chocolate cake. Of all things to eat, chocolate was the one which Alberto liked most. But when the cake appeared, he said, “How can you eat chocolate cake? I’m too sad to eat anything.”
“Then I’ll eat yours,” Bianca pertly replied, and she did.