The Chase Manhattan Bank, one of the world’s largest, was preparing in 1956 for the construction of a new building to house its headquarters in New York City. Plans called for a monolithic structure of sixty stories to stand in downtown Manhattan but also allowed for a spacious plaza facing Pine Street. Something proportionately impressive was wanted to decorate this space. The principal architect was a man named Gordon Bunshaft, a bumptious individual who knew what was what in the art world and owned a considerable collection, including works by Giacometti. A committee was formed to select a sculptor who could produce something grand enough for the Chase Manhattan Plaza. The men first asked to submit preliminary designs were Giacometti and Alexander Calder, whose large-limbed, decorative “stabiles” had recently won recognition.
That Giacometti should have been considered for such a project is surprising. He was not known for the large size or decorative character of his works. Perhaps the architect and committee members fancied that any artist worth consideration would gladly magnify his vision to suit the site. What is more surprising is that the artist should have taken the project seriously as a fit challenge to his ambition and imagination. He had never set foot in New York and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper. Moreover, he had a fear of heights, of empty space, of the void. He liked to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. But he was immediately responsive to the American proposal. It is true that he felt a keen nostalgia for the idea of executing a sculpture to be placed in a city square, and that the theme of people seen either
singly or in groups in urban environments had long been important to him. It is also true that he had always been accustomed to seeing figures that looked no larger than pins below the towering peaks of Bregaglia. And crucial turning points in his development had come from the vision of female figures in city streets at night, once in Padua, once in Paris. Alberto wrote to his mother of the project. It interested him passionately, he said.
There was talk of a quick trip across the Atlantic to view the site. But since Yanaihara’s departure, Alberto had begun painting a portrait of Annette, who posed four hours a day and more, and he was anxious to start yet another bust of Diego. He had no time to go to New York even for the sake of a prospective client as imposing as the Chase Manhattan Bank. Therefore, he was provided with a tiny scale model of building and plaza, allowing him to toy, as it were, with sculptural possibilities. As he was no stranger to the minuscule, this seemed perfectly practicable, and he quickly had an idea. He saw the plaza populated by three sculptures, each one an embodiment of his main aesthetic preoccupations: a head, a female figure, and a man walking. He would do much work with the Chase Manhattan Plaza in mind, but only the idea mattered, of course, not the place.
While Alberto was preparing to see what could be done at the behest of the New York bank, another manipulator of American wealth was at his door. G. David Thompson of Pittsburgh had gone on amassing Giacomettis. His aim was to own the largest, best collection extant. In pursuit of it he was prepared to be as ruthless as in the pursuit of cash, though disposed to part with the littlest amount of the latter as possible. He bought from Maeght. He bought from Pierre Matisse. He bought at auction. He bought from anybody who had a good Giacometti to sell. The one who obviously had the most and best was the artist.
Alberto was a man of principle. He had never entered into a formal contract with Maeght or Matisse. He had undertaken a moral commitment. He meant to repay with interest investments both personal and material made in order to further his career. That the investments were repaid with thumping interest by the dealers to themselves made no difference. Alberto liked to be better than
his word. When the dealers took advantage of him, for which he provided continuing opportunities, he was at pains to see them in the right. Though often solicited by people who wanted to buy from him directly, bypassing regular channels and current prices, he always refused. Almost always.
Thompson was the great, egregious exception. He was shameless and sly. If he could not bully or buy people, he would wheedle and whine. Alberto was far too shrewd to have wool pulled over his eyes by a rascal of Thompson’s ilk. And yet he let himself be had. Again and again. Just as if he had been on the lookout for somebody to make a bad joke of everything he believed in and lived for. With Thompson, if so, he came close to the ideal. Even the well-advertised obsession of the industrialist for art was half a hoax, because the works in his possession were at the mercy of a man unclear in mind about the distinction between ownership and authorship. He did not hesitate, for example, to have unscrupulous restorers fill out a Miró he found a bit “empty” or brighten up paintings he considered too “dull.” Being proprietor of a foundry, he made unauthorized casts of sculptures in his collection, some of them in steel—stainless, of course. Alberto was enraged, and insisted that Thompson have the casts destroyed. The tycoon apologized profusely, invited Alberto and Annette to the most expensive restaurant in Paris, where he himself ate humble pie and promised to melt down every one. Alberto forgave, and he must have forgotten, because Thompson forgot to keep his promise. As if determined to make injury out of insult, the artist allowed his patron to browbeat him into selling works he had for four decades stubbornly refused to part with. He sold drawings by the several dozen at ten dollars each. He fetched from storage sculptures of the Surrealist years and before, unique works in plaster which nobody had ever seen. To Thompson he sold them for a song.
He even painted Thompson’s portrait. Not once but twice. It was enough to make one perplexed, if not suspicious, about his acceptance of the relationship. Perhaps it seemed he had little choice. He could not prevent the collector from acquiring his work, nor could he disregard the fact that Thompson now owned
more of it than anybody else in the world. That placed the two men in a very special situation. There is something profoundly compelling to an artist in the knowledge that a large, representative selection of his work of all periods may be gathered permanently together in a single place, and even in a place so singular as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The idea of that unity sustained beyond the limits of a lifetime is one of the most powerful incentives to creativity. Permanence is what Thompson promised. He insisted that his collections, and especially his Giacometti collection, would never be dispersed, but would one day become the nucleus of an important museum, surrounded by scores of Klees, Picassos, Matisses, Braques, etc.
Alberto was in no position to quibble. He agreed to paint Thompson’s portrait, and perhaps it was easier because contact between them was inhibited by the impossibility of verbal communication. The portraits do not seem to have caused difficulty. One is plainly half-finished, but the other is superbly realized, a blunt, head-on view of the tycoon in his shirtsleeves, his expression dour, his large hands with fingers splayed resting on thick thighs. “Look at those huge hands!” Alberto exclaimed as he worked. “You can just see them raking in the money. Money-grubbing hands.” Thus, the artist was in no doubt as to the true nature of his model, and such certainty must have contributed an extra dimension of inventiveness to the art of playing so largely into Thompson’s hands.
Having encountered no difficulty in portraying somebody he cannot have liked or admired, he encountered none in portraying at the same time a recent acquaintance whom he admired and liked greatly. The new model was Igor Stravinsky. The world-famous composer in his time had known many artists. Picasso had drawn portraits of him in 1920 and designed the decor for one of his ballets. A man of exacting standards both professional and personal, quick to be bored and sharp of tongue, after a lifetime of celebrity and controversy, Stravinsky was not given to seeking out people unlikely to live up to his expectations. He had seen works by Giacometti in American museums and collections, recognized their importance, and decided that it would be worth his while to meet
the artist. They chanced to have a friend in common, a Russian musicologist named Pierre Souvtchinsky, who arranged a meeting over lunch at the composer’s hotel. It was an instant success. Both men had good reason to respect each other, but they could not have foreseen how deep a pleasure would come from opportunities to show it. Indeed, it must be delightful for geniuses to feel a spontaneous affinity, because they alone can appreciate its solace in the isolation they share.
Stravinsky was seventy-five when they met, Alberto twenty-one years younger. It can only have seemed both natural and right that the junior artist should offer his senior the tribute that would testify most eloquently to sympathy and esteem, and that the senior should welcome it. They agreed that the composer would pose for a series of drawings. Giacometti brought his pencils and portfolio to the hotel. Stravinsky posed with patience. That was the beginning of a ritual homage to art and understanding that continued until death ended it. When Stravinsky was in Paris, he would take time from a busy schedule to pose, Alberto to draw. The composer’s visits were brief, occasional. After their meeting in 1957, though, he never failed to see Giacometti when there. A few drawings usually resulted, as well as exuberant dinner parties, sparkling conversations, and eloquent gestures. One evening in the foyer of a Parisian concert hall Stravinsky spotted Alberto from a distance, immediately made his way through the crowd, in which he was recognized by everyone, and passed like Moses through the waters, to greet the artist and kiss him on both cheeks. At the end of the evening, when the audience was jostling through the foyer to the street, Stravinsky again came through the crowd to bid Alberto good night and again kissed him on both cheeks.
The third Giacometti exhibition at the Galerie Maeght took place in June 1957. Alberto, as usual, was anxious that it should include his most recent work, which, as usual, was but a few hours old. He had been up till dawn, working and reworking figurines and busts. When Diego arrived in his studio at eight o’clock, he found four or five new sculptures waiting, with a note from his brother: “Can you cast these for this afternoon? Otherwise, exhibition useless.”
Diego could, of course, and did. Alberto always felt it fair to show his latest work, wanting to be judged on the basis of complete evidence, unafraid of the judgment because his own would be the most severe. If, however, he was the first to acknowledge failure vis-à-vis the absolute, he had a quick eye for the relative aspects of success. He knew his importance.
Writing with gratification to his mother and Bruno, he said that this was the most successful, important, coherent exhibition he had ever produced, the most sincerely admired by everyone, and, in short, the best exhibition of the season in Paris. Of modern art, at least, he conscientiously added. The catalogue contained a long, laudatory text by Jean Genet. Numerous articles in the press promptly confirmed the artist’s own estimate. Alberto sent his mother a photo of himself with a caption describing him as a Parisian celebrity, adding that he expected it would give her pleasure. Without a doubt, it did. As for his own, it lay so deeply buried in his work that he could not find it elsewhere.
In addition to sculptures executed the night before the opening, the exhibition presented most of the important works of the previous few years—sculptures, paintings, drawings: Women of Venice, portraits of Annette, Diego, Yanaihara, figurines and busts made from memory, still lifes in oil and pencil, even a few landscapes. These created an extraordinarily powerful impression, and its power came from the remarkable unity and intensity of Giacometti’s mature style, the superb self-mastery that made of his uncertainties the mainstay of his achievement. The aura of authority which came from the exhibition was the same that people felt in Alberto’s presence. He and his art had become a single reality, of which the future lay entirely in his hands. He could afford to enjoy for a moment the silly business of success. Besides, as he assured his mother, it didn’t distract him from his work, though she sometimes wished that it could.
If, at the corner of the rue de Teheran and the Avenue de Messine, jubilation reigned in the offices of the Galerie Maeght, Pierre Matisse brooded glumly on the fourth floor of 41 East 57 Street in New York. He worried lest the Parisian upstart take first place with Giacometti, fretting for fear Maeght would get more
sculptures, paintings, and drawings than he did. He knew that Clayeux and Alberto were convivial, providing opportunity for transactions to which he was not privy. Distance did not lend enchantment. But, when on the spot, he was not helped by his glum temperament. Arriving at the rue Hippolyte-Maindron to have a look at recent work, he would view it in silence, occasionally murmuring, “Hmmm,” and then say, “Let’s go to lunch.” However, he bought everything he was offered. And now that the business in Giacomettis was good, he presented himself not only as a dealer but as a friend. As such, he was helped greatly by Patricia, who sometimes seemed to prefer the gallery’s artists to its owner. With Pierre Matisse, the suspicion always lurked that the only person, not to say the only artist, who ever counted for anything with him was his father.
Aimé Maeght was unquestionably the founder, proprietor, and prime mover of the gallery that bore his name. After a single decade of business, it had already earned him a large fortune and much prestige. A doting lover of honors and nurser of his vanity, Aimé did not shilly-shally about taking credit for everything. Thereby, unfortunately, came complication in the person of Clayeux. The director of the Galerie Maeght had undeniably done a lot to guarantee its ascension. Content for years to accept satisfaction behind the scenes and in the studios of artists, while basking in the intimacy of his employer, Clayeux eventually began to find the situation chafing. Familial sentiments that had once been entirely gratifying became less so, or were displaced, perhaps, toward younger men brought in by the director to assist him. Maeght was probably too preoccupied by plans for his grandeur to take note of disaffection. Whatever may have been said about his vainglory and braggadocio, much of it true, the truth also is that he never forgot the source of his success or what he owed to those who had helped him attain it: his artists. And he was getting ready to do everybody proud. Himself, too, of course.
He had in mind something no art dealer before him had ever done: creation of a museum to house works by all the artists who had made his fortune. It would provide space for exhibitions of contemporary art, concerts, theatrical productions, and lectures,
with extensive gardens and terraces where large pieces of sculpture could be shown out of doors. He planned to build it on a hilltop near the Riviera town of Saint-Paul-de-Vence, where he already owned a residence. The costs, not to mention the pictures, would all be contributed by him. If the scheme sounded like an exercise in self-aggrandizement, nobody could say that it was the idea of a man who saw things by halves. Still, plenty of people said it was folie de grandeur. Clayeux was one of them, and Alberto agreed.
Yanaihara returned to Paris early in July. Everything for everyone began again. It began, however, on a rather different footing. What had seemed casual happenstance in 1956 looked like premeditation in 1957. The intimacy of the Japanese professor with the Giacometti couple became public knowledge, and the presumption of general consent was taken for granted. Of course, the basis advanced for everyone’s goodwill was the eventual benefit to Alberto’s work.
It did not go well. The difficulty persisted. Yanaihara came to the rue Hippolyte-Maindron every day at one or two, and work continued with only occasional breaks till midnight. The routine was grueling. Alberto was kept going by the conviction that the morrow might bring the consummation he wished. What kept the professor going was a pleasing awareness that his role was a consummation, too. What kept Annette going had little to do with the intellectual relationship between the two men. It was their relation to her that mattered. She would not have noticed a possible relation between the artist’s frustration, the husband’s satisfaction, and the friend’s devotion. Annette lived for feeling, for her own feelings. Their gratification had nothing to do with art or philosophy. For the three persons involved together, the intricacy of their relationship probably prevented dispassionate judgment, but it seems likely that greatest felicity was in the portraits of Yanaihara.
A fool, in any event, could have seen that the ground of the Giacometti menage was shifting beneath everybody’s feet. The person watching most closely was not a fool. It was Diego. He didn’t like what he saw. To begin with, he didn’t like Yanaihara,
whom he had always considered haughty and who never bothered about friendly gestures toward the younger brother of the great artist. What troubled Diego most, however, was not dislike of the artist’s model but disapproval of the artist’s wife. To say that what was going on went on under his nose was too close to the mark for comfort. In fact, only a few inches of flimsy wall separated him from the facts. The room adjacent to Alberto’s bedroom had lately become vacant and been taken over by the brothers, bringing with it, incidentally, at long last a telephone. The telephone room, as it came to be called, was used for storage by both Alberto and Diego, and both of them were in and out of it all day long. Voices, or silences, in the adjoining bedroom were perfectly audible, and it was there that Annette waited for the all-too-occasional intervals of respite which the artist allowed his model.
Diego was neither a prude nor a prig. At fifty-five, he had behind him a full life of worldly common sense. Nothing done by grown people in private for their pleasure could have surprised or shocked him. However, he was still his mother’s son. He knew only too well what would shock her. His view of affairs of the senses was a Latin one, determined by nineteenth-century mores and the conviction that men need not conform to the same code that governed the conduct of women. Invulnerable, in short, to shock, Diego had no guard against moral indignation. His sister-in-law’s behavior seemed scandalous because she was a married woman, because the business was public knowledge, and because, above all, she happened to be married to his brother. As for Alberto’s involvement in the matter, his responsibility for it, complicity in it, or acceptance of it, none of that would have seemed to Diego anything of which he need take account, since Alberto was a man and an artist. Diego kept his disapproval to himself, but he could not keep from frowning. No man’s frown was ever bleaker or more somber.
In the throes of creative difficulty, Alberto was not the best person to look for causes or consider consequences. Diego’s unspoken censure must have distressed him, but decades of fraternal concord could not be undone by a temporary awkwardness. Anyway, Yanaihara had to go back to Japan in September.
Otherwise, the summer passed peacefully enough. One day the date of departure had come, and there would be no putting it off this time. On the last morning, Yanaihara posed for an hour and a half before going to the airport. Alberto and Annette went to see him off. Again they promised one another that everything would begin again. Great believers in the promise of the future they were.
The next night the artist and his wife sat alone together in their room, she sewing beneath the light, he at the table, writing to his mother. A truly domestic scene, Alberto thought, such as the two had not known for years. All the past weeks he had worked as never before, he told his mother, and was convinced it had been of great use. The results would be clear in a month. At present he felt more than ever filled with optimism. And after a month or so, he promised, he would come home. It would be the shadow season. Happy, he would work in his father’s studio. His mother would fuss over him, calling him to meals at regular hours and trying to do something about his clothes. She, too, would pose. They would go for walks together, joke, and argue. She was eighty-six years old. He had every right to be optimistic.