In 2013, Hiroshi Sugimoto (Tokyo, 1948) was commissioned to photograph the MoMA Sculpture Garden in New York. Redesigned by architect Philip Johnson in 1953, it houses several masterpieces of modern sculpture. One of them would especially attract the attention of the photographer. It was about Big Woman III (1960) by Alberto Giacometti (1901, Grigioni, Switzerland-1966, Paris), which seemed to encapsulate everything that the Japanese artist had set out to achieve through the photographic medium. That elongated form, six feet tall, impoverished and devoid of all flesh, but at the same time strong, expressed the essence of the soul, “the condition of being.” in extremis”, as the Asian author expresses it. Using a large format 8×10 camera, he photographed her twice; one in the light of day and another in the twilight of the evening. During that process, the author had the sensation of observing a performance of two characters from Japanese Noh theater, where souls come to life and become visible, and the past is reborn as the present. The images would become part of a series called Past Presence.
Of these two images, as well as six others that the photographer would make between 2013 and 2016 of other sculptures by Giacometti, part Giacometti/Sugimoto. On scene; an exquisite and evocative vis-à-vis between the spectral figures of the Asian photographer and those of the Swiss sculptor. Curated by Françoise Cohen, artistic director of the Giacometti Institute, in collaboration with the Japanese artist, the exhibition is part of the programming that the Giacometti Foundation in Paris has been organizing since its reopening in 2018, within the fabulous space it has in an emblematic building built between 2012 and 2014—a mix between Art Nouveau and Art Deco—where the decorator Paul Follot had his studio and residence. The foundation has a permanent installation that reproduces to scale the artist’s tiny studio, originally located at 46 rue Hippolyte Maindron, which the playwright Jean Genet, a friend of the artist, would refer to as a true “other self.”
The photographs have a blurred effect, a way of distancing the viewer from the idea of the reproduction of a sculpture, or something physical, and bringing them closer to the two types of characters that we find in Noh theater: the living and the dead.
Sugimoto’s approach when approaching his photography is conceptual, so that with each new series he introduces a series of parameters that he will apply to all images. In Past Presence A particular technique was imposed that he calls “double infinity focus”, where he forces his camera to focus on an imaginary point of “double infinity” and will obtain a blurry effect as a result. A way to distance the viewer from the idea of the reproduction of a sculpture, or something physical, and bring them closer to the two types of characters that we find in Noh theater: the living and the dead.
A series of portraits made by Sugimoto – including a self-portrait, the architect Peter Zumthor, the actor Takeshi Kitano and his first gallerist, Illeana Sonnabend, all of them shown for the first time – will be responsible for introducing the visitor into an atmosphere loaded with enigma and unreality. The images start from Polaroid negatives, which the author will have exposed to light in order to achieve new and subtle color gradations, as well as effects that escape from a real representation in search of getting as close as possible to the essence of what is represented. The series is shown for the first time in Europe and is presented in contrast to a collection of drawings from the 1940s and 1950s made in pen by the Swiss artist spontaneously on cafe tablecloths, on napkins, on business cards. or pieces of newspapers. “Whether sculpture or painting, the only thing that counts is the drawing,” he would say.
The first time Sugimoto saw a sculpture by Giacometti he felt that something very strong and spiritual emanated from it. Something that he referred to his Japaneseness and, over time, he came to connect with Noh theater. in his book L’atelier d’Alberto Giacometti, Jean Genet pointed to the sculptor’s ability to show a world outside of life. A universe where death was as present as life.
In one corner, the bust of Isaku Yanaihara stands out, who, in 1956, at Giacometti’s request, posed for him. There were then only a few days left before the Japanese philosopher’s return trip to Japan, a return that had to be delayed during the weeks in which he had to remain motionless for hours to please the sculptor. From 1957 to 1961, with the arrival of summer, Giacometti would punctually send him a plane ticket, in order to put an end to a battle that the author believed he was losing again and again: just at the moment when he believed that the image he was looking for was about to be visualized, it disappeared again. “Perhaps Giacometti’s work was nothing more than a struggle with death,” the Japanese philosopher would write upon learning of the artist’s sudden death in 1966. “The countless fine lines that he drew and erased, God knows how many days […] They were nothing more than an attempt to eliminate death from the physical object of the body, that is, from a corpse.” A tireless worker, “Giacometti slept from 5 in the morning to noon, went out to have a coffee, ate two eggs and returned to the studio where sometimes someone posed for him,” highlights the commissioner. “He would rest for a while and then continue working from memory. He worked in series, trying to improve himself in each piece. He often cried when he believed he had not achieved the goals he set for himself.
Big Woman IV (1960-61), made of bronze, stands in front of one of the enigmatic seascapes made by Sugimoto in the Baltic Sea. It belongs to the series Seascapes, in which the photographer explores the concept of time and memory. It is a meticulously composed image, where movement has stopped and the sky and sea reach identical proportions. An image that could have existed at the beginning of time and offers a reflection on the consciousness of existence, of being. Nearby, some masks from the Noh theater, made in the 13th and 14th centuries and belonging to the photographer’s collection, remind us that a certain gesture on a face is nothing more than a single mask of the mind.
The central space of the tour is occupied by the recreation of a Noh theater, proposed by Sugimoto, where, following the rules of the genre, a curtain that represents a pine tree with its outstretched branches, serves as a background for a stage. In front of the public, four sculptures by Giacometti portray kneeling musicians. On the left the Bronze Walker I (1960)on the right a painted plaster, Big Woman (1958). “Noh actors dance at an extremely slow speed on stage and while crossing the bridge known as Hashigakari, they seem to slide from the world of the dead to the world of the living,” Sugimoto writes in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition. “Obviously, the bronze sculptures on the Noh stage don’t move a muscle. But, however, when I close my eyes, that’s when Giacometti’s sculptures start to dance with quite surprising grace.”
Giacometti/Sugimoto. On scene. Giacometti Foundation. Paris. Until June 23
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