Sebastien Fitch, Phd.
Following Giacometti: the Paintings
These paintings are grouped into four general categories. The first three – Still Lives, Figures, and Imaginary Portraits – illustrate the limited subject matter that Giacometti allowed himself. The fourth category, Studies and Sidebars, includes works that veer away from the above mentioned limitations, but that share an element - be it methodological or philosophical - that can be traced back to my study of Giacometti's own work.
Still Lives
“This process is akin to reverse alchemy. I want to achieve a sensation, a particular, essential experience that I have myself experienced in the art of another. So I break down their art, explore the process, deconstruct the finished piece into its component parts both practical and conceptual, then try to build it back up again.
Of course, the end result balances between failure and precarious success; a product of the original form filtered, sifted through and with my own self, ideas and aesthetics...”
- studio notes, 2006
Figures
“It's like a drug, this obsession that maybe the next line, the next minute, will bring something new and better. I work on the same figure for two weeks and then reach the point where I almost decide to stop, almost decide 'yes, this will do'. But the next minute I change my mind. After all, if its reached this point now, perhaps it has room to go further...”
- studio notes, 2007
Imaginary Portraits
“Here's a strange observation. The more you look at a person's face, the stranger they become; as if in noticing new details, new aspects of a familiar face, you lose your grip on those elements that, on some unconscious level, your perception of that person hinged upon.
On the other hand, I've found that the more I look at a face I've been painting, as I'm painting it, the more I think it resembles a person, whether imaginary or remembered. But then if I look away, looking back it all crumbles and the face is barely believable at all.
What happens to the perception of a face in reality seems to work backwards when dealing with a face painted...”
- studio notes, 2007
Studies & Sidebars
“I increasingly have the disturbing feeling that, over these many months, I have adopted more than what might be considered healthy of G's working method and, perhaps, even his thought processes. As if obsession were a virus that could be transferred visually across time and space, carried by a painting from one host to another. To truly unlock the obsession of another is to open oneself to the risk of falling into the self-same chasm...”
-studio notes, 2007
