Dimensions: support: 1302 x 813 mm frame: 1325 x 832 x 52 mm
Copyright: © The Estate of Alberto Giacometti (Fondation Giacometti, Paris and ADAGP, Paris), licensed in the UK by ACS and DACS, London 2014 | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Alberto Giacometti’s "Caroline" at the Tate is striking—her face is almost a blue mask. The rest rendered in thin, scratchy lines. Editor: And there's a real rawness to those lines, isn't there? You see the making so clearly. I wonder, what kind of paper is this and how did he prepare it? Curator: It’s as if he's trying to capture not just her appearance, but the very fleeting essence of her presence, the weight of being… Editor: I see what you mean. It's like the image is barely held together; the work itself embodies a kind of precarity that speaks to the existential themes Giacometti explored. Curator: It feels so intensely personal, almost as if he's wrestling with the canvas itself. Editor: Right, and you know, thinking about the materials, it makes you wonder about the economy of art-making. Curator: A dance with the void, perhaps. Editor: Exactly. It’s there to see in the work, if you look.
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Giacometti completed these paintings shortly before the 1965 exhibition of his work at the Tate Gallery, which Sylvester curated. They were completed at night and by artificial light. Sylvester wrote of the sense of space in such works. ''It was as if he was looking at the face from very near, so that all sense of the head as a sphere out there in space was lost and he was left with the prominent features ... The poetic mood of the studio''s space is replaced by a forthright confrontation with a presence that dominates the space in front of the canvas.'' Gallery label, September 2004
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