Quote

In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist's obsession with his subject the form is always in proportion to the obsession.

Alberto Giacometti

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Alberto Giacometti
Age: 64 †
Born: 1901
Born: October 10
Died: 1966
Died: January 11
Artist
Designer
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Jewelry Designer
Painter
Printmaker
Sculptor
Writer
Alberṭo Gʼaḳomeṭi
Artist
Measure
Art
Sign
Form
Subject
Work
Subjects
Primordial
Every
Terrible
Formal
Always
Impossible
Obsession
Quality
Qualities
Whether
Proportion

More quotes by Alberto Giacometti

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Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.
Alberto Giacometti
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The more you fail, the more you succeed. It is only when everything is lost and - instead of giving up - you go on, that you experience the momentary prospect of some slight progress. Suddenly you have the feeling - be it an illusion or not - that something new has opened up.
Alberto Giacometti
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If the glass there in front of me astounds me more than all the glasses I've seen in painting, and if I even think that the greatest architectural wonder of the world couldn't affect me more than this glass, it's really not worth while going to the Indies to see some temple or other when I have as much and more right in front of me.
Alberto Giacometti
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At first, one sees the person who is modelling but little by little, all of the possible sculptures that could be made come between artist and model.
Alberto Giacometti
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The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.
Alberto Giacometti
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I don't know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can't do what I want to do.
Alberto Giacometti
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All I can do will only ever be a faint image of what I see and my success will always be less than my failure or perhaps equal to the failure.
Alberto Giacometti
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When one lives with problems of importance, the prostitute is ideal. You pay, and whether or not you fail is of no importance. She doesn't care.
Alberto Giacometti
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I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality... to protect myself.
Alberto Giacometti
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I see something, find it marvelous, want to try and do it. Whether it fails or whether it comes off in the end becomes secondary. . . . So long as I've learned something about why.
Alberto Giacometti
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(Art is) the residue of vision.
Alberto Giacometti
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The head is what matters. The rest of the body plays the part of antennae making life possible for people and life itself is inside the skull.
Alberto Giacometti
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The one thing that fills me with enthusiasm is to try, despite everything, to get nearer to those visions that seem so hard to express.
Alberto Giacometti
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In a burning building I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.
Alberto Giacometti
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What I am looking for is not happiness. I work solely because it is impossible for me to do anything else.
Alberto Giacometti
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In the past I have never thought about loneliness when working, and I don't think about it now. Yet there must be a reason for the fact that so many people talk about it.
Alberto Giacometti
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I've been fifty thousand times to the Louvre. I have copied everything in drawing, trying to understand.
Alberto Giacometti
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Artistically I am still a child with a whole life ahead of me to discover and create. I want something, but I won't know what it is until I succeed in doing it.
Alberto Giacometti
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Failure is my best friend. If I succeeded, it would be like dying. Maybe worse.
Alberto Giacometti
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The more I work, the more I see things differently, that is, everything gains in grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is.
Alberto Giacometti