Journeys With the Ice Bear

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An exciting essay on bears in nature. Extreme Photography.......1998-10-05

Kennan Ward:''Grizzlies in the Wild": This is the stuff that gets a "couch potato" out to the campsites! Nature at it's extreme, Indian legend, bears so huge and unique that that they are known far and wide by their names alone. Carniverous and dangerous, the author respects them all. The tenacity of Ward's pursuits and his dedication as a photographer, brings us one of the most inspiring and picturesque books that i've read in a very long time.

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JOURNEY WITH THE ICE BEAR

Manufacturer: North Word Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H28S2I

Book Description

Although Alberto Giacometti has long been recognized as one of the most original artists of the twentieth century, his life and work have not been the subject of a large illustrated monograph for many years. Yves Bonnefoy, poet, essayist and friend of the artist, has been reflecting on Giacometti's work since their first meeting, and began working on this book in 1981 while giving a series of lectures at the College de France. Yves Bonnefoy examines the entire range of Giacometti's creative production: sculpture, painting, drawing, which was the basis of the artist's work, and his lithographs-among the finest produced in this century. By focusing on the works of art themselves rather than on the details of the artist's life, and by relying on the evidence of Giacometti's important writings and statements, the author reveals the psychological and intellectual context of Giacometti's inspiration, and provides a wealth of new interpretations of his drawings, canvases and sculptures.

Giacometti's early artistic development within his family circle, the impact of his voyages to Italy, the nature of his early apprenticeship in Antoine Bourdelle's studio in Paris, and his interest in African and Oceanian arts are traced with the help of contemporary accounts. Bonnefoy attributes great importance to Georges Bataille's thinking-re-evaluated here-and its influence on Giacometti's work, together with that of surrealism and the ideas of Andre Breton, whose relationship with the artist is analyzed. The periods that constituted the most significant moments of Giacometti's life are explored, especially his return to the study of the human figure in 1935, the Walking Man series in 1947, and the period of his study of 'heads' both in painting and sculpture during the 1950s. Bonnefoy's reflection on Giacometti's creative world leads him to raise important questions about the secret and profound relationship that an artist born in the mountains maintained with light, one that Giacometti sought to relive through his emotive landscapes.

In writing Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work Yves Bonnefoy benefited from documentary and photographic assistance from Annette Giacometti and other members of the artist's family, friends, and the galleries that exhibited his work. This study, therefore, evokes not only Giacometti's oeuvre, but also his childhood and later environment, his studios and the works that were important to him.

Bonnefoy's penetrating analysis of Giacometti's work throws much new light on issues central to the understanding of twentieth-century art as a whole. Accompanied by an extensive biographical chronology and bibliography and illustrated with nearly 60 works and documents, many of which are published here for the first time, this monograph will remain an essential for years to come.

Customer Reviews:

Best book on one of true greats.......2007-01-10

Alberto Giacometti gave Western art perhaps the most persuasive and comprehensive view of the state of being human post WW2; eroded to its core yet still possessing the intelligence to think it way out of the mess it constantly makes for itself.

Yves Bonnefoy's book Giacometti is the definitive work on this artist and should be compulsory reading for anyone contemplating becoming a contemporary artist as it contains all the clues that would alow someone to understand such essential things as integrity and the balancing act between idea and artistry.

Giacometti: Alienation and estrangement.......2004-03-23

Alberto Giacometti is among my favorite 20th century sculptors -- his semi-representational sculptures are powerful and expressive of the alienation and estrangement of the human condition.

That's a good book!.......2001-10-22

After i review it and i'll type what i feel!

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It was all in the facial expression with Giacometti-transfixed....
TO SEE VERY MUCH
Absolutley Fabulous!

A Giacometti Portrait
James Lord
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0374515735

Book Description

When we look at a painting hanging on an art gallery wall, we see only what the artist has chosen to disclose--the finished work of art. What remains mysterious is the process of creation itself--the making of the work of art. Everyone who has looked at paintings has wondered about this, and numerous efforts have been made to discover and depict the creative method of important artists. A Giacometti Portrait is a picture of one of the century's greatest artists at work.

James Lord sat for eighteen days while his friend Alberto Giamcometti did his portrait in oil. The artist painted, and the model recorded the sittings and took photographs of the work in its various stages. What emerged was an illumination of what it is to be an artist and what it was to be Giacometti--a portrait in prose of the man and his art. A work of great literarydistinction, A Giacometti Portrait is, above all, a subtle and important evocation of a great artist.

Customer Reviews:

It was all in the facial expression with Giacometti-transfixed...........2007-08-31

I always know when I am confronted with a portrait by Giacometti. The manner in which he presents his work is completely different to that of any other artist. Giacometti was haunted by a desire to understand what it meant to be alive. His own life he could dismiss, but faced with another, the mystery of his alien being-how it filled up space, how it battled with the hostile elements of its existence-seemed to Giacometti infinitely mysterious and marvelous. It was, above all, the head that perpetually challenged him, and more specifically the gaze-the look that another person exchanges with us, which Giacometti saw as both unfolding the mystery of that personality and yet, perpetually concealing it.
The portrait of "Jean Genet" is beautiful. Giacometti had known Genet for a year when he painted "Genet" oil on canvas. It is an impressive picture. It was Genet's appearance that had first drawn Giacometti to him, especially the shape of his head, so bald, so round-a skull in which the whole mystery of personality resided. He avoids the allure of colour; instead the picture is brown and white, with just the faint streaks of earth red to enliven it. Yet never is it more clear that a human being is a creature of majesty.
When Giacometti used his wife as a subject of painting you can see through the art he was striving to come to terms with this person who, in theory, was the closest to him. The piece of work, "ANNETTE" It is almost as though he has scratched her portrait out of a world of white into which she would otherwise disappear. There are black markings that claw her back. She seems as riveted and horrified by the experience of encountering her husband's gaze as he is by hers. Those great eyes of hers glare at the world without emotion, the lips are pursed, and, although the body is sketchy, there is an uncanny sense of presence. He has cought her, as if in a momentary flash of light, and there she will stand transfixed forever.

TO SEE VERY MUCH.......2001-08-06

Anyone who has ever wondered how a truly great artist gets his inspiration, works on a daily basis and incorporates his philosophies of life into his work will want to read this terrific story of how a young, American writer sat for his portrait by the legendary Alberto Giacometti.

Almost non-stop upon their meeting, Giacometti opens up and begins letting his thoughts come tumbling out of his mouth. He tells his subject that he looks like "a thug...if I could paint you as I see you and a policeman saw the picture he'd arrest you immediately!" And then, "Don't laugh. I'm not supposed to make my models laugh." He tells the author of his trip to London's National Gallery where he says, "...I deliberately didn't look at the Rembrandts, because if I had looked at them I wouldn't have been able to look at anything else afterward." Later on in his work, "It's impossible to paint a portrait...the photograph exists and that's all there is to it."

Giacometti was not only one of the greatest artists of the last century he was also, obviously, a wonderful, contradictory, clever, intelligent, verbal, loving, open, warm companion. When the painting is not going well, the artist exclaims, "If only Cezanne were here, he would set everything right with two brush strokes." Lord gently corrects him pointing out that Cezanne had plenty of trouble. And then Giacometti (probably with a hint of happiness) agrees, "Even he had trouble."

One comes to know these two men so well in this small, beautifully written memoir that one feels close to them and to their emotional upset when after only eighteen days, they part ways. The author reminds us that Giacometti would be the first to remark that a portrait could only achieve a "semblence of reality." He hopes that the artist will enjoy this written portrait. As Lord writes, "To see even so little will be to see very much." True.

Included in the paperback are snapshots taken to show Lord's portrait in progress. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Absolutley Fabulous!.......1998-12-08

This book is a must, for fans of Giacometti's work and for artists world wide. It gives one the opportunity to be in the studio with a great artist. It is wonderfull but terrible at the same time, as an artist, I came away from the book feeling completely insignificant untalented and without hope, however this is a good thing, it is an experience all artists must, and do go through. Please read the book you will learn so much!

Alberto Giacometti: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings (Art & Design)

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nice plates

Alberto Giacometti: Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings (Art & Design)

Manufacturer: Prestel Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3791313711

Customer Reviews:

nice plates.......2000-11-07

lots of nice plates and informative text. a good book.

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A very good survey
Giacometti: Alienation and estrangement

Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti , and N. Y.) Museum of Modern Art (New York
Manufacturer: Museum of Modern Art
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0870703404

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Alberto Giacometti, the elegant catalog for a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, seeks to counter overly literary or psychological interpretations of an artist who has long been viewed as a poster boy for existentialism. The atmospheric black-and-white halftones and color plates are organized in closely interrelated, chronological groups to support texts by several experts, including Christian Klemm, curator of the Alberto Giacometti Foundation. By focusing on the work itself--which includes paintings and drawings as well as the famously slender, elongated sculptures--the authors emphasize his exquisitely calibrated response to the roles played by perception and memory. In the portraits, for example, networks of fine lines dematerialize a sitter's face yet preserve her essence. Anne Umland's intriguing discussion of the roles of photography and the fetish in Giacometti's surrealist-era sculpture is one of the many pleasures of this book. --Cathy Curtis

Book Description

This is the most comprehensive survey in many years of the work of one of the 20th century's greatest artists, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). Published to celebrate the centennial of his birth, the book accompanies an exhibition jointly organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Kunsthaus Zürich.

The Swiss-born Giacometti was a supremely inventive sculptor as well as a painter and draftsman of the highest distinction. This volume includes many of his early Cubist-influenced and Surrealist works, often slyly humorous and allusively erotic, as well as his masterful drawings and paintings, and the elongated sculptures of the human head and figure for which he is best known. Published with the full involvement of the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, this will become the standard reference on the artist.
200 illustrations, 100 in full color and 100 duotone, 272 pages, 9 1/2 x 11 3/4"
A Museum of Modern Art Book

Customer Reviews:

A very good survey.......2007-04-15

Surprisingly enough, there are comparatively few quality publications on Giacometti, one of the greatest artists in the XXth century. This catalogue for an exhibition that was held at the Moma and at the Kunsthaus Zurich, draws on the extensive Giacometti holdings of both museums for a comprehensive survey of his career. From his surrealist period to his trademark elongated figures, from his numerous drawings which served as studies both for his sculptures and his paintings, to his lesser-known oils, the whole career and output of the artist is very well illustrated in a book that I highly recommend.

Giacometti: Alienation and estrangement.......2004-03-23

Giacometti well expressed the alienation and estrangement of the human condition in his sculpture.

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an exceptional work of criticism
First Rate Study Of Alberto Giacometti
Portrait of an artist

Looking at Giacometti
David Sylvester
Manufacturer: Owl Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 080504163X

Book Description

Winner of a Venice Bienniale Golden Lion Award, Looking at Giacometti is a compelling mixture of biography and criticism, including an extraordinary interview with Giacometti.

Written over a period of forty years, Looking at Giacometti is a profound response to the art of one of modernism’s greatest sculptors. It takes students from world-renowned art critic David Sylvester’s first visits to Giacometti’s studio in the late 1940s to the author’s prolonged sitting for the artist’s portrait of him in the 1960 and reflections on his complete oeuvre after Giacometti’s death. A compelling mixture of biography and criticism, and including a sixteen-page insert of black and white photographs by Patricia Matisse, this book sheds new light on twentieth-century art and thought.

Customer Reviews:

an exceptional work of criticism.......2002-05-12

This short volume betrays the late David Sylvester's masterful understanding not only of his subject, but of modernist aesthetics overall.

"Looking at Giacometti" documents the way an extraordinary analytical mind came to understand a critical modern artist. The book has a tripartite structure: the first five essays were written while its subject was living; the next five offer a retrospective view of the artist and his work; and the final chapter, written during the 1980s, offers yet another perspective. With each successive chapter, Sylvester's understanding of Giacometti's work deepens, and his passionate, probing curiosity leads him to greater insights.

Of course, Sylvester may be remembered most as a sensitive interviewer (cf. his brilliant interviews with Francis Bacon, his probing Duchamp interview, and his book of BBC interviews with American artists); but his criticism -- particularly on Giacometti and Bacon -- remains exemplary, and indispensible.

This brief but exceptionally insightful study of Giacometti's work is highly recommended to anyone interested in modern art -- and to anyone hoping to write precise, incisive art criticism.

First Rate Study Of Alberto Giacometti.......2000-12-03

One of the best studies of Giacometti available in English, written by a a professional critic who knew, interviewed, and even posed for a portrait by Giacometti. It covers all of Giacometti's artistic periods, his work as both painter and sculptor, and takes into account his writings, to produce a detailed and nuanced portrait of the artist and his work. And, it's especially refreshing to read a book about Giacometti that focuses more on his work than his personality.

As a general introduction to Giacometti, Sylvester's book is far superior to James Lord's overrated "A Giacometti Portrait," and is much more useful than Lord's biography, if you want to understand what Giacometti was trying to accomplish. This book is obviously not as exhaustive as Bonnefoy's enormous study on the subject (160 pages versus 574), but Sylvester's analysis is sharper and more hard-headed.

The photographs of Giacometti's work are limited and rather poor in quality, and none are in color. You'd have to go to the Scheider or Bonnefoy studies of Giacometti for reproductions. But for a serious analysis of Giacometti's work as it developed over his career, read Sylvester.

Portrait of an artist.......2000-12-02

This excellent volume offers an in-depth look at the evolution of Alberto Giacometti's sculpture and painting. Having often visited Giaometti's Paris studio during the last twelve years of the artist's life, the author is able to provide an intimate portrait of one of the major figures of 20th century art and presents a comprehensive, analytical survey of the artist's work. Included is an extensive interview with Giacometti from 1965 and sixteen of Patricia Matisse's black-and-white photographs of the artist's work and studio. The author explores the artist's interest in the process of objectifying reality, the question of how art is perceived, and how Giacometti's work is related to the work of other modern artists. In so doing, he has written a book that is valuable not only for the study of Giacometti's paintings and sculpture but also for a deeper understanding of modern art as a whole.

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Mythic Giacometti
James Lord
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0374218803

Book Description

The Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) was arguably the greatest sculptor of the twentieth century. He was also--as James Lord persuasively argued in Giacometti: A Biography--a heroic figure whose vocation sustained him through a life of crippling anxiety and erotic guilt.

Almost twenty years after it first appeared, Giacometti has attained the status of a classic, one of the most candid and complete biographies of an artist in our time. In Mythic Giacometti, Lord reveals the hidden "blueprint" of that work: a daringly literal, visionary interpretation of the myth of Oedipus as it affected the conduct and outcome of Giacometti's life. The result is a case study both in the development of an artist and in the writing of biography. Lord concentrates on the private totems of Giacometti's life-family legend, childhood memory,
illness and injury, crucial sexual encounters, intimations of mortality-that amounted, in Lord's view, to signs of a tragic destiny directly linked to the central tragedy of Western literature.

Alberto Giacometti (Artists in Their Time)

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Alberto Giacometti (Artists in Their Time)
Jackie Gaff , and Alberto Giacometti
Manufacturer: Franklin Watts
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0531166171

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Alberto Giacometti, 1901-1966
Valerie J. Fletcher
Manufacturer: Smithsonian Inst Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Alberto Giacometti
Herbert Matter , and Mercedes Matter
Manufacturer: Harry N Abrams
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ASIN: 0810909995

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Alberto Giacometti 1901-1960

Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966
Patrick Elliott
Manufacturer: National Galleries of Scotland
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0903598612

Customer Reviews:

Alberto Giacometti 1901-1960.......2000-04-25

This is one of the great books of Giacometti's work. it features works from the early to the later stages of his life. the photgraphs of the pieces are wonderful to look at. the detail of the textures on his sculptures are so real that you just want to touch them

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