ALBERTO GIACOMETTI Myth, Magic, and the Man by Laurie Wilson Publisher: Yale University Press Publication Date: August 2003 Price: $40.00//ISBN: 0-300-09037-4 Laurie Wilson "seamlessly weaves together psychobiography, art history and astute cultural analysis to create an irresistibly readable life of one of the most compelling and enigmatic figures in 20th-century art." --Bradley Collins, Ph.D., Instructor, Parsons School of Design Author, Leonardo, Psychoanalysis and Art History "Laurie Wilson's rigorous scholarship, psychoanalytic insight, and aesthetic appreciation are seamlessly integrated in her interpretations of Giacometti's art. Elucidating new and subtle aspects of the subject, this is a work of sophistication and enlightenment." --Harold P. Blum, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, NYU Medical Center NEW BOOK BY ART HISTORIAN AND PSYCHOANALYST, LAURIE WILSON, PROVIDES PENETRATING LOOK AT THE LIFE AND WORK OF ALBERTO GIACOMETTI Wilson's Study Challenges Commonly Held Ideas About The Sculptor Alberto Giacometti, the Italian-Swiss sculptor who lived from 1901 until 1966, was one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century. His drawings and paintings, and most particularly his sculptures of overly long, emaciated figures have fascinated art lovers for nearly sixty years. Yet, although much has been written about Giacometti's life and work, no one has been able to unravel the mystery of his artistic inspiration or to penetrate the depths of his tortured psyche. In her new book ALBERTO GIACOMETTI: Myth, Magic, and the Man, Laurie Wilson combines the disciplines of psychoanalysis and art history to provide an in-depth, multilayered portrait of Giacometti that shatters numerous myths surrounding his life as well as many of the accepted interpretations of his work. Wilson spent more than ten years researching her subject, traveling to places where Giacometti lived or visited; studying his letters, diaries, and essays; reading the same books and magazines that he read; interviewing his family and nearly two dozen people who knew him; and searching all of his known work, including childhood drawings, for clues to what inspired and influenced him. The resulting book, ALBERTO GIACOMETTI: Myth, Magic, and the Man, portrays an artist of amazing genius who often hid, both consciously and unconsciously, the conflicting emotions, relationships, and situations that ignited his creative fire. The son of an established artist and a bourgeois, domineering mother, Alberto Giacometti, along with his two brothers and sister, grew up in a small village in the Swiss Alps. Although his childhood has often been depicted as idyllic, Wilson discovered many incidents that she believes powerfully affected the artist's thinking and later behavior. Perhaps most importantly was the fact that until he was eighteen, Giacometti was expected to serve as a model for his father's paintings. He and his siblings spent long hours posing motionless under their father's gaze. That the children often posed nude had important ramifications for Giacometti's personal life, profoundly influencing his adult sexuality and his relationships with women. Wilson proposes that this early experience of being intently looked at was reproduced in many of his most important works of art including "Observing Head" and "The Cage." Yet, instead of reducing the artist to being a pawn of his past, the author presents Giacometti as brilliantly transmuting his memories into masterpieces. Other overlooked incidents in the artist's life include the experience of witnessing his mother giving birth to his sister when he was two-and-a-half, followed a few days later by the death of his grandmother. Wilson suggests that these two events laid the foundation for intermingling the ideas of birth and death throughout his life. During his childhood he also developed troubling beliefs about the power of his own thoughts to cause harm and an interest in magic that Wilson has been the first to identify. According to the author, Giacometti's Surrealist sculptures, many of which have long been perceived as indecipherable, were particularly influenced by these distorted concepts and fantasies from childhood. Wilson's level of scholarship in ALBERTO GIACOMETTI: Myth, Magic, and the Man is irreproachable. She presents new ways to appreciate and comprehend Giacometti's work, particularly his postwar sculpture. Why did Giacometti so drastically distort the human form? The standard interpretation is often based on the writings of Giacometti's contemporaries such as Sartre who believed that the artist was attempting "to sculpt man as he is seen from a distance." Others assumed it was due to the influence of the holocaust. Based on her research, Wilson postulates something completely different that combines the effect of external events with powerful traits in his personality. In her quest for a deeper understanding of Alberto Giacometti, Laurie Wilson has written a book that will affect not only the way people view the great artist's work, but the way we think about the creative process in general. As Wilson explains in her preface, ALBERTO GIACOMETTI: Myth, Magic, and the Man is a study of the process "through which acts of life can be transformed into works of art -- a process so deeply connected with the human condition, that in a certain way, it is part of each of us." # # # ABOUT THE AUTHOR Laurie Wilson earned her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College, her master's degree in Fine Arts and Fine Arts Education from Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in Art History from City University of New York. She received psychoanalytic training at The NYU Psychoanalytic Institute. After directing and teaching in the graduate art therapy program at New York University for twenty-three years, Dr. Wilson is currently clinical associate professor of psychiatry at NYU Medical Center and practices in New York City.
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