The Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), best known for his violent, erotic novels was also one of the key inspirational figures identified by André Breton in his Surrealist Manifestos and this exhibition offers, with more than forty sculptures and drawings, a rereading of Giacometti's Surrealist works through the prism of Sade's writings.
In the early 1930's, Alberto Giacometti (1901 -1966) joined the Surrealist movement and started to produce sculptures and objects marked by a violent eroticism echoing Sade's writings such as Man and Woman (1931), Cage (1931), and Disagreeable object to be thrown away (1931). In this key phase in the artist's career, references to Sade, 'modern and pared-down', in Giacometti's notebooks are clearly expressing tensions between the representation of his often-violent fantasies and his desire to move back to the representation of reality.
A video by the contemporary artist Estefania Peñafiel Loaiza, who revisits Buñuel and Dali's surrealist film Un Chien andalou (1929), is presented alongside the exhibition.
CRUEL OBJECTS OF DESIRE
GIACOMETTI / SADE
21 NOVEMBER 2019 - 9 FEBRUARY 2020
On the cover: Lili carrying Alberto Giacometti's Disagreeable object, Fondation Giacometti, Paris. Photography: Man Ray Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris © Giacometti and Man Ray Trust
Related Publications
