MATTI MEGGED
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and ye t to ma inta in its relati on to the concrete prese nce of obj ecti ve
fo rms . H ow can the art i t br idge thi s gap? How can he try
to
express
hi s rela ti on to realit y withou t los ing the my tery a nd wonder of art,
and how can he devo te himself to the uni q ue perception a nd
imaginary wo rl d o f a rt without
10
ing touch with the real li fe that
moved him a nd left such a n impac t on hi s memory a nd experie nce as
an art ist?
G iacometti a ttempted to resolve thi s pa radox in purel y
technical te rms by conce ntratin g on the image o f the huma n head ,
stress in g tha t pa rt of the "obj ec ti ve" bod y tha t visuall y a lludes to the
imagin a ry world created by the a rtist whil e getting rid of a ll other
phys ical deta il s.
Becke tt, too, reached the same concl u ion- a lthough he neve r
spoke of it in these terms - about the head as the focus a nd space for
thi s totality o f li fe. H e first expressed hi s conce rn with the head in
one of hi s earli est works,
Murphy
(1938), where Murphy himself
(es peciall y in C hapter 6) ta lks a bout his mind as a huge, empty ball ,
hermeti call y closed from the world outside a nd conta ining the whole
"real" wo rld within . In hi s la ter works, Beckett emphas izes the
centricity o f the head by mo re plast ic means. The Unnameable is
stuck in a j a r , a nd onl y hi s head emerges. In
Happy Days,
Winny is
thrust in to a mound of sand , a nd in the second ac t we see onl y her
head . In
Play,
the three fi gures, one ma n a nd two women , are aga in
tuck in bi g j a rs a nd onl y the ir heads a re seen .
Whil e preoccupied with images o f the head , G iacometti often
compl a ined a bou t the "thick ve il" lying between him a nd the reality
of the model. He expl a ined it as the result o f see ing onl y the
uncounta ble detail s of the head instead of seeing it as a whole. "In
order to see the head as a whole, I had to place the model farther and
farther away . The fa rther away she was, the smaller her head
became ." This may sound like a technical problem or , if we wi sh , a
problem connec ted with the "phenomenology of perception ," which
Sartre wrote about in hi s a rticl e on Gi acometti , but the ve il tha t
disturbed G iacometti - indeed , until hi s last day - was no t only a
veil created by di sta nce a nd perception. It was the veil that isola tes
the world of a rt from reality.
The onl y resolution to this problem Giacometti found was to
express me ta phoricall y the di sta nce of the soul from reality . H e
achieved this by crea ting fi gures that evoke a living reality, a
presence, whil e releas ing them from the confines of ma terial
resembl a nce to "real" fi gures. In other words, the reality is achieved
