Bust to Dust

Alberto Giacometti looks like a tormented Chico Marx; he also sculps and paints with the bug-eyed fury of a Harpo, and creates things undreamed of even in Groucho's philosophy. His subject matter is the human frame; his approach to it destructive. Giacometti hacks, picks and pocks his plaster sculptures until they stand thin as reeds, then he generally smashes them. He saved just enough to make an exhibition in a Paris gallery last week.

Born in Switzerland 49 years ago, Giacometti found his way to Paris early, dabbled for years in surrealism. To earn a living, he made chandeliers, vases, gimcracks, bird cages and doorknobs. "At first you think [commercial work] is easy," he says, "but then you see even that is difficult." Fine art he finds an almost impossible process: "I'm not sure of my vision unless I see it on canvas or in sculpture, but as I put it down I modify my vision."

The figures Giacometti carves and paints are inevitably fragile and lonely looking; they seem to represent all that is joyless in the human lot. Stretched to the breaking point, they dominate more space than they fill, and this is their sole dignity. But Giacometti's own dignity and sincerity go unquestioned in Paris. His artist-friends generally revere him, spend long nights debating his methods as well as his elusive aim.

Giacometti's ideal would be to spend a lifetime on a single statue, paring ever closer to its essence, but impatience often makes him reduce bust to dust in a matter of minutes. "Despite all my efforts," he complains,"! retain conventional elements I want to get rid of."

In an introduction to the exhibition catalogue, a friend put Giacometti's problem succinctly: "To make, to perfect, to unmake, then to remake, to reperfect, to re-unmake . . ."

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