« …l’oeuvre de Giacometti communique la connaissance de la solitude de chaque être et de chaque chose, et que cette solitude est notre gloire la plus sûre. »
Jean Genet
l’atelier d’alberto giacometti (L’Arbalète, 2007)
(« …Giacometti’s work communicates knowledge of the solitude of each being and thing, and knowledge that this solitude is our most certain glory. »)
La solitude glorieuse/Glorious solitude
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
Why is it so important to try to ‘capture’ (what’s in a word) it on canvas over and over again?
Why not just living it?
( I am glad he did though, for otherwhise I would not have known the works…)
Another word for loneliness here is uniqueness.
Beautiful snowflakes, a Zen master said, they don’t fall in a different place! Each snowflake is alone (or all one) in its place. And so are each of us.
Giacometti knew this and spent his life trying to capture that uniqueness/loneliness on canvas, paper, in plaster, bronze…
His endless failure is the measure of his success.
Existential loneliness our glory. So easily said…
How many times when we are drawing, we realy relate to the shape and the void of the white sheet of paper?
how many times when we sculpt we are not only sculpting the clay , or the stone – making a few "holes" here and there… but realy relating to the space, the void ?
how many times when we cross a wide square, we feel the space, in every inch of our body?
how many times we are realy sitting/standing right in the middle of our own loneliness? Not just ‘noticing’ , but completly feeling, entering it, becomming…
But everything is perfect. For its really what it is. Everything comming from something…
Our glory. Yes.
an englisch ‘buddhist’ named William used to say : to be or not to be….